Your Daily Phil: After Boulder attack, security takes on fresh urgency
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we share responses from Jewish leaders and organizations to Sunday’s terror attack in Boulder, Colo. We report on a new partnership between the charity platform Daily Giving and Charedi Impact Philanthropy and the latest developments in legislation regarding federal funding for nonprofit security grants. We feature an opinion piece by Rabba Yaffa Epstein with lessons from Shavuot to take into educational settings all year round, and one by Talia Kaplan with a message for the fifth annual Holocaust Survivor Day. Also in this issue: Betsy Berns Korn, Mark Cuban and Gary Lubner.
What We’re Watching
The Israeli disability nonprofit Beit Issie Shapiro is inaugurating the country’s first inclusive early childhood campus today in Ra’anana. If you’re there, say hello to eJP’s Judith Sudilovsky.
Anu Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv is hosting a reception tonight to mark the opening of its new exhibition, “A Lens of Her Own,” featuring Jewish female photographers from 100 years ago and today. If you’re there, say hello to eJP’s Judah Ari Gross.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH EJP’S JUDAH ARI GROSS
With Sunday’s fire attack in Boulder, Colo., the surge in antisemitism that has swept the globe since Oct. 7, 2023, continues its new, violent stage, one that will surely dominate the Jewish communal agenda.
It started in mid-April after an arsonist set fire to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home, just hours after his family’s Passover Seder concluded. Then came the deadly shooting in late May outside the Capital Jewish Museum.
Sunday’s Molotov cocktail and makeshift flamethrower attack at a march in support of the 58 hostages still held in Gaza had echoes in Europe as well. Over the weekend, vandals in Paris targeted two synagogues and a Holocaust memorial in the city, dousing them in green paint.
In a report published last week, which had to be updated in the wake of the Boulder attack, the Anti-Defamation League noted that in five and a half years, it documented 16 “terrorist plots or attacks targeting Jews, Zionists or Jewish institutions in the U.S. Notably, nine of those incidents occurred within just the past 12 months.”
Already on edge, the American Jewish community must now focus yet more of its time, energy and resources into ensuring that Jewish activities and communal life can continue safely. In a place with Jewish life as flourishing and abundant as the United States, this will be no easy task. It will mean more security infrastructure for synagogues (there are approximately 3,700 throughout the country) and schools (there are around 1,200 of them), along with predominantly Jewish neighborhoods and other physical locations, as well as additional measures at events and gatherings. In addition to funding, it will require concerted, coordinated political lobbying and public diplomacy.
The issue of security has become the sine qua non of the American Jewish agenda, overriding all other priorities: among them, Jewish education, identity-building, youth activities, family services, reproductive rights and Israel advocacy.
In response to the Boulder attack, Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, doubled down on a communal call for $1 billion in federal nonprofit security grants, along with five other security-releated demands, including increased FBI focus on antisemitic domestic terrorism and increased federal funding for local law enforcement. “This must be the highest priority for the Trump administration and Congress,” he said.
The Trump administration may require some convincing: As of Saturday — before the Boulder attack but after the Washington terror attack — the White House had not included an increase in funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program in its budget request to Congress, keeping it at the current level of $274.5 million. More on this below.
In an opinion piece in Newsday, Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, responded to calls to “move on” and accusations that the Jewish community was using these antisemitism attacks for political purposes. “We cannot and will not move on to other issues and act like these attacks are somehow just par for the course in America today. I will not give credence to the thought that wanting to prevent more Jewish blood from being spilled is somehow exploitative rather than an obligation borne from grief and self-preservation,” Deutch wrote.
While there was a similar push for security and demands to combat antisemitism in the wake of the 2018 Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh — still the deadliest antisemitic attack in American history — and the 2022 hostage-taking at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, the political fight this time around will be far more fraught.
As Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, notes in an opinion piece in The New York Times, combating this emergent violent left-wing antisemitism will require progressive Jews — that is, the majority of Jews — to condemn political allies, not opponents.
“As a country, we Americans are practiced in calling out antisemitism when it appears in the form of bullets aimed at synagogues or neo-Nazis chanting ‘Jews will not replace us.’ But fighting hate means calling out antisemitism every time — long before speech turns violent — even when it comes from activists who otherwise share our values. When antisemitism emerges within progressive spaces, cloaked in the language of justice, too often it is met with silence and discomfort, creating echo chambers where dangerous ideas are amplified rather than confronted,” Katz wrote.
“We need allies who show up not only when Jews are murdered or attacked, but also when Jews are vilified. … We need people who understand that standing against hate means standing with Jews — not only some of us, not only when it is easy, not only when we are grieving,” she wrote. (In a possible sign of this difficulty, the left-leaning newspaper’s headline for her piece omits this criticism, opting instead for exactly the type of after-the-fact sympathy that she decried in the piece.)
Speaking last week, Pennsylvania First Lady Lori Shapiro told the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh that her family would continue hosting Jewish holiday celebrations at the governor’s mansion. “We will again build a sukkah, host Shabbat dinners and join together for community seders at the residence,” she said. “And of course, we will continue to speak out against hate directed toward any of our faith communities, because an attack aimed against any person because of what they look like, where they come from, who they love or who they pray to, makes us all less safe.”
Bruce Shaffer, the co-head of the Boulder chapter of Run For Their Lives, which organized the march on Sunday, said that it would hold another event next Sunday. “We will not be deterred or stopped by this kind of action,” Shaffer told The Times of Israel. “Canceling the march is exactly what these people want us to do.”
BETTER TOGETHER
Charedi Impact Philanthropy partners with Daily Giving, will perform due diligence on Israeli nonprofits
During a five-day mission in Israel, Dr. Jonathan Donath, who co-founded the online donation platform Daily Giving in 2019, announced that his organization was partnering with Charedi Impact Philanthropy, which will begin conducting due diligence on its behalf, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky.
Serious stewards: “We are the stewards of the tzedakah money of over 21,000 people, and we take that very seriously,” Donath said, during the trip with top donors to visit Daily Giving beneficiaries. “In the U.S.A., we have a strong team of volunteer lawyers who do due diligence for us. In Israel, it is much harder to be confident to be sure the nonprofits are doing the right thing. But Charedi Impact does really good due diligence on the financial side for Israeli nonprofits. We wanted to use someone very reputable to help do due diligence, and Charedi Impact is the perfect partner.”
SPENDING FREEZE
Trump doesn’t request an increase in funding for nonprofit security grants
President Donald Trump’s full budget request to Congress on Friday recommended Congress hold the Nonprofit Security Grant Program at its current level of $274.5 million, in spite of chronic funding shortages and pressure from both lawmakers and the Jewish community for substantially increased funding at a time of rising antisemitism, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Doing less with less: In 2024, at that funding level, and with an additional $180 million available from the national security supplemental bill last year, 43% of funding requests were fulfilled. Supporters of the program in the House and Senate have urged Appropriations Committee leaders and the administration to allocate $500 million for the program, while Jewish groups asked for $1 billion in the wake of the murder of two Israeli Embassy employees at the Capital Jewish Museum. The budget also requests no funding for two hate crimes prevention grant programs, the Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer NO HATE Act Program and the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Grants Program.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
A WHOLE PEOPLE ENDEAVOR
The leaders Israel needs may not live there — yet
“A few years ago, I found myself on a flight sitting next to Stanley Fischer, the former governor of the Bank of Israel. I introduced myself and thanked him — quietly but sincerely — for his service to Israel. He smiled, humble as ever. It was a short exchange, but one that stayed with me,” writes Morielle Lotan, CEO of Adir, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy following Fischer’s death on Saturday at 81.
Step into history: “For too long, Israeli leadership has been defined narrowly — by geography, military service, political pedigree. But the challenges we face today are transnational, psychological and existential. The forces threatening Israel are not only firing rockets — they’re waging ideological warfare, hijacking algorithms and shaking global norms. To meet this moment, leadership must be reframed. It must include those outside of Israel — Jews of the Diaspora — who bring not only skills, but also distance, perspective and an unshakable yearning to contribute. Some may be drawn by pain, others by purpose, some by history, others by hope… Israel was never meant to be insular. It was never meant to rely solely on the accident of birth. It was meant to be a collective endeavor — where people chose it, and in choosing, shaped it. Stanley Fischer saw that clearly. He didn’t wait to be asked. He packed his bags, moved his life and stepped into history. That is leadership.”
A PARTICIPATORY PROCESS
Taking Sinai with us: Bringing the message of Shavuot to all Jewish educational spaces
“Pirkei Avot, the seminal work of Jewish values, opens with the concept that the experience of Mt. Sinai was not a static one-time event in the Jewish past,” writes Rabba Yaffa Epstein, senior scholar and educator-in-residence at The Jewish Education Project, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Every generation of Jews is invited to be part of this dynamic chain of transmission that continues the divine conversation begun at Sinai.”
Empower learners: “Today, there can be a powerful desire among educators to act as intermediaries for our students, wanting to protect them from the difficulties of Jewish text study, feeling that Jewish texts can sometimes be problematic, challenging to understand, or even boring or irrelevant. Yet this protective instinct runs counter to the very essence of the Sinai experience. Instead, we can and should show our students the value of intellectual grit — the value of wrestling directly with text. Their own questions, ideas and insights are precisely what make Torah study and Jewish education so powerful. When we introduce our students to the primary texts of Torah and allow them to spend time truly studying them, asking hard and new questions and wondering about what the words and phrases mean, they often develop brilliant and insightful interpretations that we might never have considered. Not only this, but we are also teaching them that their ideas matter, giving them a sense of pride and ownership over the Torah.”
LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS
Cherishing our Holocaust survivors
“Today communities across the globe mark the fifth annual Holocaust Survivor Day — a moment to honor resilience, confront injustice and reaffirm our collective responsibility to the last living witnesses of the Holocaust,” writes Talia Kaplan, executive director of Seed the Dream Foundation, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Holocaust Survivor Day is not only a moment to look back; it is a call to action. It asks us to cherish the living witnesses to history not just with our words, but with our deeds.”
Rising to the challenge: “Over a decade ago, when Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Philadelphia reached out to Seed the Dream Foundation, we were confronted with a sobering reality: Holocaust survivors in our own community were living in poverty. We learned that nearly one-third of the 100,000 survivors in the United States at the time were living below the poverty line. This silent crisis demanded action. In response, Seed the Dream Foundation partnered with Kavod, a nonprofit dedicated to addressing the urgent needs of Holocaust survivors. Together, we created Kavod SHEF (Survivors of the Holocaust Emergency Fund) to raise awareness and mobilize national and local philanthropic support. Every dollar raised nationally was matched by Seed the Dream, and local Jewish Federations matched funds in their own communities… In 2018, we turned our focus to Israel… Partnering with Latet, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Jewish Federations of North America, the Foundation for the Welfare of Holocaust Victims and Aviv, we launched SHEF IL, a national effort to address the critical gaps in services.”
Worthy Reads
A History Lesson: In Time, Samantha Abramson delves into the history of the Capital Jewish Museum, site of the recent shooting attack in D.C. where two staff members from the Israeli Embassy were killed. “For many Americans, that may have been the first time they’ve heard of the museum, where I served as an educator from 2011 to 2019… [T]he organization has a deep backstory that makes it an essential institution for understanding the flourishing of individual and American Jewish identity in the face of antisemitism. The museum’s history also illuminates the advocacy efforts that have defined Washington’s Jewish community for over two centuries as they found their place within American democracy… This history that the Capital Jewish Museum represents — of using education, advocacy, and allyship to address antisemitism head on — offers a roadmap for responding to the challenges posed by increasing antisemitism in 2025.” [Time]
Words Matter: In The Atlantic, Bruce Hoffman emphasizes that the prevalence and acceptability of “anti-Zionist” messaging online and at demonstrations against the war in Gaza is having lethal consequences. “Terrorism doesn’t occur in a vacuum. It depends on the oxygen of rhetoric for sustenance and encouragement. Nearly two years after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, the cumulative effect of calls to ‘Globalize the intifada’ and ‘End Zionists’ perhaps inevitably led to the horrific attack yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, where a man yelled ‘Free Palestine’ as he threw an incendiary device at a Jewish gathering in support of the hostages. Words matter. The protester at Columbia University in 2024 holding a sign labeling Jewish demonstrators who were waving Israeli flags as Al-Qasam’s next targets was dismissed as being hyperbolic. So were the By Any Means Necessary banners carried at demonstrations and the red inverted triangles, similar to those Hamas uses to mark Israeli targets, spray-painted on university buildings, a national monument, and even the apartment building of a museum director. When demonstrators wave the flags of terrorist organizations, wear headbands celebrating those same groups, and publicly commemorate the martyrdom of terrorist leaders such as Hamas’s Yahya Sinwar and Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah, they’re not throwing the bomb, but their message can light the fuse.” [TheAtlantic]
Be Accountable: In the Washington Blade, D.C.-area activist Marty Rouse speaks up on behalf of LGBTQ Jews who aren’t sure if it will be safe for them to show up at local events during Pride month. “Across the country, Jewish LGBTQ people are being asked to choose between parts of who they are. I’ve seen groups disinvited from Pride events for displaying a Jewish star. I’ve heard from friends who are now afraid to wear religious symbols in LGBTQ spaces. And I’ve witnessed silence from movement leaders when antisemitism appears — cloaked in politics, but no less dangerous. As a gay Jewish man, I know how that erasure feels. And I know what it looks like to be told you’re welcome only if you agree to leave part of yourself at the door. WorldPride in D.C. must not send that message. This is our city. And this is our chance to lead. We can’t just be proud — we have to be accountable. We have to ensure that Pride is truly a space for all of us, including LGBTQ Jews who carry grief, identity, and history that may not always align neatly with dominant narratives. That means taking action. It means working with groups like A Wider Bridge to make sure Jewish LGBTQ people are included at every level of planning. It means briefing security teams and marshals to protect — not police — those who show up with Jewish symbols. It means being clear that antisemitism, like all forms of hate, has no place at Pride.” [WashingtonBlade]
Word on the Street
Two past U.S. special envoys to monitor and combat antisemitism, Deborah Lipstadt and Elan Carr, and nominee-to-be Yehuda Kaploun penned a joint opinion piece in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency calling for antisemitism to be treated as a bipartisan issue…
In an unprecedented move, the Florida Board of Governors rejected the confirmation of Santa Ono, the former president of the University of Michigan, as the University of Florida’s next president, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…
The Environmental and Energy Study Institute examines how two synagogues — California’s Valley Beth Shalom and Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard Hebrew Center — used federal tax credits to pay for solar panels…
KTNV in Las Vegas spotlights Heidi Straus, a local Holocaust educator who is working to establish Nevada’s first permanent Holocaust museum…
The Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle spotlights Divorce First Responder, a pilot program funded by the Jewish Women’s Foundation of Greater Pittsburgh and the SteelTree Fund of Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh that is meant to help Jewish families navigate divorces…
New York City’s Whitney Museum of American Art is suspending its Independent Study Program after last year’s was marred by anti-Israel activism, including one participant demanding that audience members leave his performance if they supported Israel, which the museum said violated its anti-harassment policies…
The New York City poverty nonprofit Robin Hood increased its grantmaking by 40% in the first half of this year compared to 2024, which the organization said was in response to growing needs and shrinking welfare programs…
Entrepreneur Mark Cuban, musician Wyclef Jean and celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson will headline Global Citizen’s summer conference on urban revitalization in Detroit in July…
The Times interviews South African-born British businessman and philanthropist Gary Lubner, including about his charitable giving in his birth country, which he said came from a sense of “deep obligation” from his privileged upbringing during apartheid…
President Donald Trump withdrew the nomination of Jason Isaacman to be the head of NASA, with a White House spokesperson saying that it is “essential that the next leader of NASA is in complete alignment with President Trump’s America First agenda”…
In a newly surfaced clip of New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani from 2021, the legislator, who is currently mounting a bid for New York City mayor, acknowledged that he identifies as an anti-Zionist, saying, “In the anti-Zionist movement that I believe in and belong to, there is no room for antisemitism”…
CBS News interviews the family of Sarah Milgrim, one of two Israeli Embassy employees killed in a terror attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum last month…
The French National Assembly unanimously voted to promote Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general more than a century after the Jewish army officer was stripped of his rank in an incident widely attributed to antisemitism…
South African author Lynn Freed, whose writings focused on her childhood in a Jewish community in apartheid South Africa, died at 79…
Macroeconomist Stanley Fischer, who served as governor of the Bank of Israel and vice chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve, died at 81…
Morris Talansky, a Jewish American real estate mogul who was a key witness in the corruption trial against former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, died on Monday at 92…
Sandra Lee Raabin Meyer, a major New York City philanthropist who gave to local and Jewish causes, died on May 25 at 95…
Major Gifts
The Richard King Mellon Foundation awarded a $2.5 million grant to Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life for its education and remembrance center…
Alfred E. Mann Charities donated $12 million to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles for pediatric cell and gene therapy research and treatment…
The Samueli Foundation has contributed an additional $2 million in unrestricted funding to each of three organizations focused on eviction prevention: Pathways of Hope, South County Outreach and Families Forward; this comes after an initial $1.5 million donation for a pilot program…
Transitions
Betsy Berns Korn assumed the role of chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations over the weekend, succeeding Harriet P. Schleifer…
Pic of the Day
Parents dance with the “crop” of babies born in the past year on Kibbutz Nirim near the Gaza border on Sunday, as part of an event marking the Shavuot holiday, which celebrates the giving of the Torah and the wheat harvest. This is the first time that the event has been held since the Oct. 7 terror attacks, in which five members of the kibbutz were killed and another five were taken hostage.
Birthdays
French-Israeli entrepreneur, angel investor in over 360 start-ups, Jeremie Berrebi…
Co-founder of Boston Properties and owner of U.S. News & World Report, Mort Zuckerman… Professor emeritus of organic chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science and winner of the 2012 Israel Prize, David Milstein… Retired chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, Stephen J. Markman… Judge on the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia since 2018, he was the longest tenured member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (42 years from 1974 to 2016), Mark B. Cohen… Lineman for the Miami Dolphins for 11 seasons, which included three Super Bowl appearances and four Pro Bowls, then a judge on the 11th Judicial Circuit of Florida (Miami-Dade County), Ed Newman… British journalist, author of 11 books and columnist for The Times of London, The Jerusalem Post and The Jewish Chronicle, Melanie Phillips… Israeli supermodel, Bar Refaeli… First-ever Jewish governor of Hawaii and then chief operating officer of Illinois, she serves on the board of directors of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Linda Lingle… President and CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC until 2023, now a professor at Johns Hopkins, Daniel H. Weiss… Co-founder of Ripco Real Estate, Todd Cooper… Chair in Human Cancer Genetics at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Dr. Matthew Langer Meyerson… Law professor at both the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, Ayelet Shachar… U.S. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)… D.C.-based photographer and founder of Revamped Media, Daniel Swartz… Reporter for The Washington Post, Colby Itkowitz… Senior planning analyst at Con Edison in NYC, Adam E. Soclof… Director at Dentons Global Advisors, Jason Hillel Attermann… Managing editor at eJewishPhilanthropy, Judah Ari Gross… Gena Wolfson… Political coordinating producer for NBC, Emily Gold… Former member of the New York State Assembly, now vice president of government relations at UJA-Federation of New York, Daniel Rosenthal… Ken Moss…
