Your Daily Phil: How a Stage 4 cancer diagnosis launched an Israel volunteer hub
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we spotlight an initiative making it easier for people to find volunteer opportunities in Israel and interview antisemitism envoy nominee Yehuda Kaploun about his plans for the office if confirmed. We feature an opinion piece by Matthew Grossman about the importance of fostering curiosity in Jewish education geared toward teens, and Debra Weinberg responds to an earlier op-ed identifying grandparents as an underutilized resource in formal Jewish education. Also in this issue: Rachel Harari, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Dan Rubin.
What We’re Watching
Historians Pamela Nadell and James Loeffler will speak tonight about modern-day antisemitism and Nadell’s new book on the topic at an event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington.
UJA-Federation of New York is hosting a talk tonight by British political commentator Melanie Phillips.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH EJP’S JAY DEITCHER
Seven years ago, Dvora Inwood’s daughter needed to complete volunteer-work requirements for her New Jersey high school, but finding service work was difficult with nonprofits buried in Google’s search results. The 13-year-old pitched her techie mom an idea: a search engine for volunteer work.
“I wasn’t going to build a website, platform, search engine for her when she was 13,” Inwood told eJewishPhilanthropy. At the time, Inwood was busy working as product manager at education company McGraw Hill. Then a Stage 4 colon cancer diagnosis in 2022 opened her schedule.
Yearning for something positive during her treatment, Inwood corralled her daughter’s friends to create Samaritan Scout, a nonprofit search engine connecting people with volunteer opportunities. Feeling a similar sense of despair after the Oct. 7 attacks, she partnered with Mosaic United, an initiative of Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, to create a platform powered by Samaritan Scout to link Diaspora Jews to volunteer opportunities in Israel: Volunteer Hub.
Co-founder William Rosenthal was a senior in high school at the start of Samaritan Scout. “I was wondering if it would be possible to aggregate as many local volunteer opportunities as I could, put it into this sort of platform and have people submit their interests and hobbies and passions and whatever they like to do, and use AI to show them the best opportunities available to them nearby,” Rosenthal told eJP.
That summer, Rosenthal worked 40-hour weeks programming the Samaritan Scout platform, and in August, as he prepared to enter his first semester of college, Inwood received her final cancer treatment, but with her in recovery, Samaritan Scout began losing steam. Then came the Oct. 7 massacres in Israel, and like many American Jews, Inwood felt powerless to help Israelis. Her mind started brewing. “When people are struggling, when they’re hurting for something, they want a place to put that,” Inwood said. “They want another direction to go to feel better.”
A friend connected Inwood with Mosaic United, which was interested in partnering. Once she realized she could help Israelis, Inwood’s passion to help in America was reignited: Samaritan Scout launched in the summer of 2024, with Volunteer Hub following in the spring of 2025.
The college-aged volunteers who created both platforms come from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds; but even as campuses raged with protests, not a single volunteer dropped out when they found out they would be helping in Israel. “At the end of the day, the meaning of this project — of both Volunteer Hub, Samaritan Scout, all of it — is to help people get involved, to help people give back to their communities, to help people do good,” Rosenthal said.
THE FACTS FIGHT
Antisemitism envoy nominee Yehuda Kaploun backs labeling misinformation on social media
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as U.S. antisemitism special envoy, warned in an interview with Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider that inaccurate, inflammatory content is being allowed to spread on social media, and pledged to work with social networks to curb the spread of antisemitic falsehoods online. Kaploun spoke to JI yesterday, with his Senate confirmation vote for the State Department role expected this month before the holiday recess.
What he said: “The ideal outcome is, I want to continue America’s tradition of free speech and allowing free speech anywhere and everywhere, freedom of expression,” Kaploun said. “But I would like the platforms — because of the advent of AI and those technologies, you have the ability to recognize when something is not factually correct and it should be labeled as such. I think that’s something that we’d like to target.” His comments about working with social media platforms to label misinformation contradict the approach of the Trump administration, which has urged the major platforms not to “censor” information.
Read the full interview here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
GROWTH MECHANISM
Curiosity and the Jewish education of teens
“Over the years, teens have shared important insights with me about their motivation and interests when it comes to Jewish learning,” writes Matthew Grossman, CEO of BBYO, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Their curiosity may be intellectually rooted, but the interpretation process comes from a place of emotion and application. Developing curricula for this audience should not focus on asking, ‘What do they need to know?’ but rather, ‘How do we help them question what they think they know?’”
Encourage, don’t fear, questions: “It is our hope that teens will tirelessly wrestle with the issues they confront. That they’ll want to see all sides of an argument until they are uncomfortable with their own stance. That they’ll pine for truth and direction. This educational approach is consistent with Judaism itself: Just when you think you’ve figured something out, there’s a new teacher, a new commentary and a new perspective. … The future of our Jewish community will be shaped by the way in which we nurture curiosity among our young people. Programs, institutions and educators who encourage questioning and exploration will set the groundwork. And the key ingredients will include maximizing the diversity of the audience, educators, content, settings and ideas.”
READER RESPONDS
The timeless link: Why investing in grandparents secures the Jewish future
“As we grapple with questions about the future of Jewish life, identity and continuity in the United States, consider this: An estimated 1.4 million Jewish grandparents can have a profound impact on their Jewish family, their children and their grandchildren that is amplified over the generations. As Josh Schalk explained compellingly in eJewishPhilanthropy (“Leveraging intergenerational wisdom in formal Jewish education,” Nov. 21), if you care about the Jewish future, you should invest in grandparents and welcome them into our community’s Jewish engagement efforts,” writes Debra Weinberg, executive director of the Jewish Grandparents Network, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Offer tools, spaces for connection: “Investing in grandparents means more than simply celebrating them. It means promoting and catalyzing the important conversations that need to take place and creating space — both in-person and virtually — for intentional and meaningful interaction between generations.”
Worthy Reads
The Power of Yes (and No): In an article for Prizmah journal Kaleidoscope, Rachel Harari reflects on her professional journey to becoming head of school at The SAM School in New York City. “Leadership, I’ve learned, is less about a single bold step and more about a thousand subtle ones. It grows in the tension between aspiration and doubt, in the courage to try and the humility to adjust. It grows in the relationships you nurture, in the mentors who steady you, and in the people who reflect back the leader you’ve slowly become. If I could offer one thought to anyone who stands where I once stood, curious, intimidated, wondering whether they belong in the rooms they dream of, it would be this: You don’t become a leader when someone hands you a title. You become a leader in the space between yes and no, in the choices you make when no one is watching, and in the resilience you build every time something doesn’t go your way.” [Kaleidoscope]
Big Sky Beacon: In The Wall Street Journal, Daniel Freedman ties the upcoming Hanukkah holiday to the lessons learned from an antisemitic incident in Billings, Mont., more than three decades ago in which the community showed solidarity with a Jewish family whose home, which displayed a menorah, was attacked. “This solidarity cuts to the heart of Hanukkah. … When the non-Jews of Billings put up their menorahs, they were standing for religious liberty for all. … Hanukkah’s celebration of faith’s victory against even the mightiest adversary was central to its message and would inspire generations. It inspired the people of Billings more than 30 years ago, and it has inspired the Jewish people through some of their most trying times in history — from the Spanish Inquisition to the Holocaust.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
A new study by the Israel Tax Authority found that income inequality in the country is far greater than previously thought…
The Bank of Israel responded to a bill to exempt Haredi men from military service, finding that the legislation would come at major financial costs as Haredi conscription would be far cheaper than relying on reservists and because the bill removes incentives that would bring more Haredi men into the workforce…
The British Holocaust Memorial Day Trust cut ties with its Scottish representative, Melanie Goldberg, due to her association with the Israeli Arab-Jewish solidarity group Standing Together…
In a Times of Israel opinion piece, former Human Rights Watch senior editor Danielle Haas criticized Amnesty International’s latest report, which found that Hamas indeed committed crimes against humanity with its Oct. 7 terror attacks, noting that the human rights group published its findings more than two years after the massacres — despite being far faster to accuse Israel of genocide — gave undue credence to Hamas claims, used “anodyne euphemisms” and otherwise downplayed the severity of the terror group’s actions…
The Holocaust Expropriated Art Recovery (HEAR) Act of 2025, a bill to help Holocaust survivors and their families reclaim artwork stolen by the Nazis, passed the Senate yesterday by unanimous consent…
Yeshiva University’s latest IRS 990 Form shows that the institution’s expenses exceeded its revenues by $33 million, though a spokesperson told the student newspaper, the YU Commentator, which first reported on the issue, that the deficit appears far larger than it is as it does not take into account unrealized capital gains…
ArtNet News reports that United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan is the person who purchased Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Elisabeth Lederer” for $236 million from the estate of Leonard Lauder last month…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy spotlights the efforts of the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust to improve medical care in rural communities in the United States…
The JCC Association of North America called on the Kansas City Royals baseball team to rethink its plans to build a stadium in Overland Park, Kan., as the current location would have negative consequences on the local Jewish community center…
The Wall Street Journal looks at the implementation of a new law in Australia barring teenagers younger than 16 from using social media…
Israel’s Education Ministry issued a new directive to schools nationwide banning cellphones from elementary schools beginning in February…
In a New York Times opinion piece, Jessica Grose reflects on her interfaith family’s approach to the winter holiday season…
Just in time for Hanukkah, Israeli archaeologists uncovered the longest continuous remains of a wall that surrounded Jerusalem during the time of the Hasmonean Kingdom…
Dan Rubin, a general partner at Alloy Ventures and board member of the Shalom Hartman Institute, died this week…
Major Gifts
Debbie and Michael Flacks pledged $3 million in a matching grant for the Israeli anti-poverty charity Colel Chabad…
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage awarded a $360,000 grant to the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia for its exhibition marking America’s 250th anniversary, “The First Salute,” which opens in April…
The Jewish Federation of Cleveland said that it is roughly halfway through its challenge to raise $90 million in order to receive the same amount in matching funds from the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation…
The Jewish National Fund-USA announced more than $5 million in grants for Zionist organizations this year through its Boruchin Center, including $950,000 for the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, $500,000 for the Israel on Campus Coalition, $500,000 for Yavne College in Israel and $400,000 for the Z3 Project, among others…
Pic of the Day
Henry Hamra, one of the founders of a new organization that will work to restore property stolen from Syrian Jews, wears a tallit and prays yesterday next to his son, Joseph, inside the Faranj synagogue in Damascus soon after his group was granted official recognition by the Syrian government. The Hamras are part of a group of Syrian Jews who have been working to rebuild Syria’s Jewish community — and improve the country’s international standing — since longtime ruler Bashar Assad was ousted last year.
The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also published video footage showing a visit this week by a Jewish group, including two unnamed rabbis from Israel, to long-abandoned synagogues in Aleppo, which was once home to a large, prominent Jewish community. SOHR reported that Aleppo’s governor has promised to restore the city’s Jewish assets to their rightful owners after they were seized by “networks of corrupt officials” under Assad.
Birthdays
Digital media expert and entrepreneur, he serves as chair emeritus of the UJA-New York of New York’s marketing communications committee, Michael E. Kassan turns 75…
U.S. secretary of state in the Obama administration and former U.S. senator, John Kerry turns 82… Lumber and wood products executive in Bethany, Conn., Stuart Paley… University professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought at Yeshiva University, Rabbi Jacob J. Schacter turns 75… Professor of international economics at Princeton University, Gene Grossman turns 70… Former senior attorney in the environmental and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Perry Rosen turns 70… Best-selling author, she has published 11 novels including seven books in The Mommy-Track Mysteries series, Ayelet Waldman turns 61… Beverly Hills-based cosmetic surgeon for many celebrities, Dr. Simon Ourian turns 59… Partner in Pomerantz LLP where he leads the corporate governance litigation practice, he serves as a trustee of Manhattan’s Beit Rabban Day School, Gustavo F. Bruckner… Senior director of Middle East programs at the Atlantic Council, William F. Wechsler… Former member of the Knesset for the Labor party and then the Independence party, she just launched the Oz party, Einat Wilf… Senior fellow and director of policy research at the Israel Policy Forum, Shira Efron… Israeli poet and founder of the cultural group Ars Poetica, Adi Keissar turns 45… Hasidic rapper from Boston, known as Nosson, Nathan Isaac Zand turns 44… Israeli actor, director, playwright, rapper and singer, known by his stage name Pedro Grass, Amit Ulman turns 40… Head of people and communications at Constellation, Michael Chananie… CEO at D.C.-based Brown Strategy, Josh Brown… Sports editor for Apple News until 2024, now a freelance content strategist for FanDuel, Kelly Cohen… National political reporter at The Washington Post, Marianne LeVine… Managing director of alternative investments at CAIS, Judah Schulman… Senior editor at Apple News, Gideon Resnick… Actress and singer, Hailee Steinfeld turns 29… Associate at Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, Segev David Kanik…
