Your Daily Phil: AJC, Shoah Foundation partner to document contemporary antisemitism
Good Monday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a memorial ceremony for North Americans in Israel who have been killed in war or terror attacks and on a new partnership between the USC Shoah Foundation and American Jewish Committee to collect testimonies of contemporary antisemitism. We interview nonprofit lobbyist Elana Broitman about her new comic book starring a menopausal superhero. In the latest installment of “The 501(C) Suite,” Mark Charendoff reflects on the political complexities of Jewish liturgy’s “Prayer for the Welfare of the Government”; and we feature an opinion piece by Shira Gould about learning from the anti-Israel movement to work toward long-term gains rather than just short-term wins. Also in this newsletter: Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos, Shany Mor and Jerami Shecter.
What We’re Watching
The American Jewish Committee’s Global Forum continues today. John Spencer, Ellie Cohanim and Bill Kristol will all speak on the main stage.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum is hosting an event tonight at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan featuring former Israeli hostage Noa Argamani as well as the relatives of slain hostages Omer Neutra, Itay Chen and Shiri Bibas.
What You Should Know
The first North American Jews to die defending the Zionist idea were Jacob Tucker and William Scharff. They were veterans of the Jewish Battalions in World War I, who stayed in then-Palestine to help protect settlements in the north that were under threat amid rising tensions as the British, French and local Arab tribes vied for control of the area. Tucker and Scharff were killed in the Battle of Tel Hai on March 1, 1920. From their deaths to Oct. 6, 2023, 360 North Americans in Israel were killed in battle or in terror attacks, their names inscribed in a memorial outside of Jerusalem, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
“Since then, with immense sorrow, 85 people have been added, including eight from this past year,” said David Solomon, CEO of the Association of American and Canadians in Israel, which maintains the memorial wall, along with Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, at the annual ceremony for fallen North Americans last night.
The eight added this year, some of whom were killed in the past year and some who were only found this year to have been killed, are: Regev Amar, Yona Bezalel Brief, Yaron Eliezer Chitiz, Netta Epstein, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Nadav Elchanan Knoller, Omer Neutra and Eliyahu Moshe Zimbalist.
Solomon noted that North American immigrants — unlike other immigrants — are generally not fleeing anything when they move to Israel, but rather they come out of ideology and idealism. “These olim made aliyah… not because they were living under despotic regimes but because Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. They came to Israel to build a Jewish and democratic homeland that would work with the nations of the world for the betterment of the Jewish people and the entire world,” he said.
The ceremony, which is held a few days before Yom HaZikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day, was attended by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, Canadian Ambassador to Israel Leslie Scanlon, along with leaders from the World Zionist Organization, KKL-JNF and other organizations, as well as family members of fallen soldiers and terror attack victims.
“Today, we recognize eight individuals who are being added to the memorial wall,” Huckabee said in his address. “I’ll simply say today that while I cherish the opportunity to be here acknowledging and honoring those eight, I pray that this time next year that the ambassador from Canada and I can come with a different reason and purpose, that we come to celebrate that there are no new names to be added to the wall.”
David Lubin, the father of Rose Lubin — a U.S.-born soldier in the Border Police who was killed in the line of duty in November 2023 — described his daughter as a contradiction and an inspiration.
“She was able to live her life being [two different things] at the same time. She was the girl with pink hair wearing spandex who was shomer Shabbat. She was the varsity wrestler on the boys wrestling team and was on the varsity cheerleading team,” Lubin said.
“While off duty, on Oct. 7, she was at her home, Kibbutz Saad, when it was attacked by Hamas… She immediately volunteered even after being warned that she may not survive the day. She did not hesitate, and she spent 12 hours guarding the gates, [directing] helicopters and bringing people to safety,” he said.
“A month later, on Nov. 6, while on duty [in Jerusalem’s Old City], Rose was attacked by a 16-year-old terrorist and died from wounds she sustained from the attack. This was and will continue to be the most painful day for our family. We will never be the same. But not being the same is not always a bad thing. Rose’s life and death have opened our eyes and the world to who she was and what she stood for… Rose believed and lived her life unifying people, and now, even in her death, she still continues to unify people,” Lubin said. “Rose has inspired people around the world to write music, plant gardens, donate classrooms, do mitzvahs, give tzedakah, pray, love Israel, connect with her spirituality, donate Torahs, donate scholarships, donate ambulances and even name babies after her.”
Though the AACI ceremony is the only one to specifically honor North American fallen soldiers and victims of terror, others this week will mark the contributions of fallen foreign-born Israelis and — for the first time — the Diaspora Jews who were targeted for being Jews in terror attacks abroad.
The latter initiative, which added victims of antisemitic attacks abroad to Israel’s Yom HaZikaron commemorations, was introduced by the Ruderman Family Foundation in 2023 and was approved by Israel’s government last May. The initiative, dubbed “Remembering Together,” is backed by the Israeli government and the World Zionist Organization.
COME TOGETHER
AJC joins USC Shoah Foundation to collect testimony of contemporary antisemitism
The USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with the American Jewish Committee on its program to document and educate the public about contemporary antisemitism, the organizations announced at the AJC Global Forum yesterday, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. In recent years, the Shoah Foundation, which was created to collect testimonies of Holocaust survivors, has expanded its focus to include post-1945 antisemitism, including the Oct. 7 terror attacks, as part of a project known as the Contemporary Antisemitism Collection. Robert J. Williams, CEO and Finci-Viterbi chair of the USC Shoah Foundation, told eJP in 2023 that the foundation planned to collect upwards of 10,000 testimonies of contemporary antisemitism; it has so far nearly gathered 100.
The USC Shoah Foundation is partnering with the American Jewish Committee on its program to document and educate the public about contemporary antisemitism, the organizations announced at the AJC Global Forum yesterday, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. In recent years, the Shoah Foundation, which was created to collect testimonies of Holocaust survivors, has expanded its focus to include post-1945 antisemitism, including the Oct. 7 terror attacks, as part of a project known as the Contemporary Antisemitism Collection. Robert J. Williams, CEO and Finci-Viterbi chair of the USC Shoah Foundation, told eJP in 2023 that the foundation planned to collect upwards of 10,000 testimonies of contemporary antisemitism; it has so far nearly gathered 100.
TURNING THE PAGE
How a former Jewish nonprofit exec found her superpower in storytelling
It’s an unlikely origin story for a comic-book superhero: standing at the front of a boardroom in a snazzy blazer, delivering an important presentation until it’s derailed by … a hot flash. That’s when she begins to discover her superpower. Meet Mina, the star of “Holy Menopause: Adventures of a Middle-Aged Superheroine,” a new comic book published by Bunny Gonopolskaya, the pen name of Elana Broitman, a former Jewish communal executive and government affairs consultant who is most familiar to Jewish communal leaders not as an artist or a writer, but as the former senior vice president of public affairs at Jewish Federations of North America until September 2023. Broitman spoke with Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider about her new book.
Fighting bad guys: Broitman, 58, has held senior roles in the private sector, on Capitol Hill and at nonprofits. She never felt like sexism held her back in her career until she hit menopause — and sexism combined with more subtle ageism to make a potent, toxic combination. “My way of working through emotions was always to just do some art,” Broitman told JI in an interview last week. So she created Mina, who uses her superpowers of invisibility and burning-hot hands — a result of the hot flashes — in order to fight bad guys (“Guys,” in this case, being literal, because the villains in Holy Menopause are all men.) “What a better way to impact culture,” said Broitman, “than to create a superhero whose very powers are from the things that maybe undermine them in people’s eyes.”
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
THE 501(C) SUITE
Prayer for the government
“One prayer that most services have in common, even if the wording varies slightly, is the ‘Prayer for the Welfare of the Government.’… It’s been a while since this prayer served to unify us as a people… I understand the sentiment. Like so many of us, I, too, struggle with how to balance my values and commitments in a moment of extreme political volatility,” writes Mark Charendoff, president of Maimonides Fund, in eJewishPhilanthropy’s exclusive opinion column “The 501(C) Suite” in advance of Yom HaAtzmaut on Thursday. “The ‘Prayer for Welfare of the Government’ offers us a way forward. It labels the ruler’s authority as a divine right (‘God who gives salvation unto kings…’) and asks God to protect our rulers from their enemies — but it never says that God has imbued our rulers with infallibility.”
And let us say, amen: “On Israel’s Independence Day, Jews around the world will sing ‘Hatikvah,’ Israel’s national anthem. The word hatikvah, the hope, shares a Hebrew root with kav — a line, a direction. Ultimately what gives us hope is not blind optimism, but a promise from God that history is moving in a direction, ever forward, toward redemption for the Jewish people and for humanity. As Jews throughout history prayed for their government, they did so with full understanding that their government was never going to get things quite right. While they had confidence that one day a redeemer would come to Zion, this was not that day. This was another stop along the way to redemption. So we pray that the imperfect leaders we have, in Washington and in Jerusalem, succeed in efforts to make us more secure, and that the King of Kings will ‘put into their hearts… compassion to do good.’”
OUR LEGACY OF PERSISTENCE
Just keep going: What Jewish campus professionals owe their students
“I work with Jewish college students across the country whose stories are being hijacked by extremist movements. Some feel that educating about Israel and the Jewish people is a lost cause, and I get that,” writes Shira Gould, associate director of campus strategy at StandWithUs, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Yet I am reminded that the position we are in now is largely due to the persistence of our adversaries. This anti-Israel movement did not appear out of nowhere. They spent decades promoting pro-Hamas propaganda through hateful campaigns with repetitive and consistent messaging, and when faced with our opposition, they simply doubled down… Their strategy is simple: outlast us.”
A long-haul mindset: “Persistence must be part of the student response, but it cannot be their burden alone. When students ask, ‘Why should I bother showing up to the student government meeting? They won’t listen,’ Jewish professionals must step up with clarity, encouragement and courage… Too often, well-intentioned professionals instruct students to dodge hard conversations about the conflict, opting for ‘safe’ talking points… Ultimately, this leaves a dangerous vacuum that our opponents are eager to fill with propaganda. We need to model productive engagement and debate even when it’s hard, and even when we are likely to lose. Real education takes time, and every anti-Israel campaign is an opportunity to reach new audiences. If we lose a student government vote but educate one new person about Israel and the Jewish story, that is a win. And if we keep showing up for those small wins, they will turn into big ones.”
Worthy Reads
Do Not Retreat: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jazmín Chávez, an immigration attorney and executive at Hispanics in Philanthropy, shares her message for funders after she and a colleague — both naturalized American citizens — were recently detained by ICE while traveling for work from the U.S. to Mexico. “Many asked how to help, so I pointed them to local immigrant-rights and social justice organizations. But for those in philanthropy who responded with alarm, my message was different. I challenged funders to reassess their giving strategies to ensure they’re still funding immigrant-rights and movement leaders, as well as Latine-led and serving organizations… All of this is critical because program officers from both big funders and smaller community foundations have told me that grant makers who once supported immigrants and refugees have halted such funding, fearing they’ll be targeted next… But giving up is the worst possible response. At a time of deep anxiety about what comes next for immigrants and those who serve them, grant makers should demonstrate their concern by taking concrete action.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]
Mob Mentality: In The Atlantic, Graeme Wood recounts Israeli far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s recent appearance at a salon organized by the Yale University secret society Shabtai. “The most direct question came from an attendee who wanted to know about Ben-Gvir’s attitude toward Baruch Goldstein. In 1995, when he was 18 years old, Ben-Gvir described Goldstein as his ‘hero’ and dressed up as Goldstein for Purim. Until [2020], Ben-Gvir displayed a portrait of Goldstein prominently in his living room…‘People change,’ he said. ‘I oppose what Goldstein did.’ He framed his transformation as moral, and said he was not who he was when he was 17… I told Ben-Gvir that I found his contrition perfunctory and unconvincing, and I challenged him, if he was sincere, to prove it… He couldn’t even bring himself to pretend. He just asserted that he had changed. ‘I’m sure you did things when you were 17 that you are not proud of,’ he said. (He removed the portrait when he was 44.) And he said again that time and family make a difference—but he added not a word about the inherent value of human life, or the disgrace brought upon religion and country by someone who massacres civilians, especially in a moment of total vulnerability. The evening ended soon after, and when Ben-Gvir left the building, he reentered his milieu: a crowd of protesters, angry and loud. In the photos of his exit, he is flanked by security but unmistakably comfortable with the hullabaloo, even relishing it. He seemed more ready to confront a baying mob than to answer simple moral questions. The photos of him during this confrontation show him signing V for Victory, and looking happier and more energized than he’d looked inside.” [TheAtlantic]
When Libel Lives On: On TheTorah(dot)com, Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos draws a connecting line between a historical account of Jews killing a Christian boy in a small town in fifth century Syria and antisemitic propaganda circulating online today. “Socrates of Constantinople (ca. 380–ca. 450), about whom we know little, compiled his seven-volume Ecclesiastical History sometime between 439 and 445 C.E …. Tucked into his history is a brief account of violence that broke out between Jews and Christians in Immonmestar (frequently rendered Inmestar), an obscure town in Roman Syria, located between Chalcis and Antioch… While Socrates does not identify the occasion the Jews are celebrating, since the early 18th century, scholars have pointed to narratological, linguistic, and legal evidence that the incident occurred during Purim. Thus, Socrates could be describing an enactment of hanging Haman in effigy, and as Simon Dubnow (1860–1941) proposed, the Christians of Immonmestar misinterpreted (or misrepresented) what they had witnessed… The literary history of the account highlights the consequences of extracting a chapter like this from its literary context and circulating it freely as evidence of a past event… [It] has perpetuated — and continues to perpetuate — a false accusation that actively encourages violence against Jews.” [TheTorah(dot)com]
Warning from Across the Pond: In the Jewish Chronicle, Shany Mor warns of the “Corbynization” of left-wing American circles. “As with so many more benign trends, Britain is just ten or so years ahead of the US. And the long march of geostrategic antisemitism’s institutional capture in the US is only about a decade behind Britain’s. Each major milestone – the capture of academia, the arts world, the various NGOs, a few major newspapers and journals of the smart set – was reached on these shores well before crossing the pond. And just as in Britain, so in the United States there is no realistic path to building a majority coalition around antisemitism either in its geostrategic or conventional forms. … American liberals, American Jews, and especially liberal American Jews would be well advised to be extra vigilant about this British import, which no tariff will protect them from. The British experience of the 2010s has a few useful lessons and warnings for what awaits the Americans in the 2020s.” [JewishChronicle]
Word on the Street
Facing mounting legal challenges, the Justice Department is reversing hundreds of student visa cancellations, mostly involving minor arrests or dismissed charges, and will halt further cancellations based on Student and Exchange Visitor Information Systems database records until a better system is created…
President Donald Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate the Democrats main online donations platform ActBlue for what the White House says is a crackdown on “illegal ‘straw donor’ and foreign contributions in American elections.” The funding group called Trump’s move “blatantly unlawful” and vowed legal action to protect itself…
Interim U.S. Attorney Edward Martin Jr. sent a letter to Wikimedia Foundation with a series of questions pertaining to its tax-exempt status and expressing concern about “editor misconduct” including “content manipulation, bullying, and off-platform canvassing,” particularly those concerning the Israel-Hamas conflict which he says “are clearly targeted against Israel to benefit other countries”…
Los Angeles synagogue Valley Beth Shalom has installed $1.24 million worth of solar panels and energy efficiency improvements that should save the synagogue and school close to $180,000 in annual utility costs. The system is expected to pay for itself within five years…
Jewish Family Service San Diego has suspended its migrant shelter services due to funding shortages and fewer asylum-seeker arrivals. Following an executive order by President Donald Trump targeting immigration funding in sanctuary cities it has not yet received the $22 million it had been allocated in September 2024…
Ahead of Israel’s Yom HaZikaron and Yom HaAtzmaut, the Israeli rabbinical organization Tzohar has created a new prayer addressing the pain from loss and from the 59 hostages still in captivity combined with the hope and joy of Israel’s independence…
The Anti-Defamation League hired television producer Sherman Fabes as its vice president of communications and digital…
Muslim philanthropist Suleyman Kerimov funded and laid the cornerstone for the new synagogue in the city of Derbent in Dagestan, Russia, after the original synagogue and Torah scrolls were burnt by terrorists last June…
The grave of Rabbi Chaim Vital in Damascus’ Jewish cemetery was desecrated as unknown culprits dug a pit near it, possibly looking for remains…
NPR spotlights the “shlissel challah,” a key-shaped loaf that is traditionally made the Shabbat after Passover, which has gone viral on social media…
Suspension of federal testing of commercially produced milk by the Food and Drug Administration will have no impact on the kosher status of milk as the primary oversight of farms and dairy factories is the responsibility of state governments and the FDA is only secondary…
The NYPD is investigating clashes that took place last week outside of Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, between demonstrators and counterprotesters during a surprise visit by Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir…
Jerami Shecter has been named the next chief development officer at Memory Workers…
Israel sent its envoy to the Vatican, Yaron Sideman, to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, instead of sending an official Israeli delegation, days after Israel’s Foreign Ministry deleted a post memorializing the pontiff, who died last week…
Olive Koren, 14, a member of Congregation Rodef Sholom in San Rafael, Calif., and a camper at the Osher Marin JCC’s Camp Kehillah, was killed in a April 18 car crash that left four other teens dead and two injured…
Pic of the Day
Sharon Sharabi (making a heart) and his brother, Eli Sharabi, who was released from Hamas captivity on Feb. 8 as part of a ceasefire agreement, speak to a group of Holocaust survivors last Wednesday ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp as part of the March of the Living.
Birthdays
Actress and film critic, she is the writer and star of the CBC comedy series “Workin’ Moms,” Catherine Reitman…
Former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., he also served four terms in the Knesset, Zalman Shoval… Retired judge of the Maryland Court of Appeals (now known as the Supreme Court of Maryland), Judge Irma Steinberg Raker… Retired four-star United States Marine Corps general, Robert Magnus… Retired SVP and COO of IPRO and former president of the Bronx/Riverdale YM-YWHA and the Riverdale Jewish Center, Harry M. Feder… Cantor who has served in Houston; Galveston, Texas; and Buffalo, N.Y., Sharon Eve Colbert… Criminal defense attorney, Abbe David Lowell… Director of congregational engagement at Temple Beth Sholom of Miami Beach, Fla., Mark Baranek… Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, Elena Kagan… American-born Israeli writer and translator, David Hazony… Director of criminal justice innovation, development and engagement at USDOJ during the Biden administration, Karen C. Friedman… Comedy writer, television producer and showrunner, Daniel Joshua Goor… Retired soccer player, she played for the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team from 1997 to 2000, Sara Whalen Hess… Founder of GlobeTrotScott Strategies, Scott Mayerowitz… Model, actress and TV host, known for her role in the soap opera “Fashion House,” Donna Feldman… CEO and founder of The Branch, Ravi Gupta… Freelance journalist, formerly at ESPN and Sports Illustrated, Jason Schwartz… Senior editor at Politico Magazine, Benjamin Isaac Weyl… President of Saratoga Strategies, a D.C.-based strategic communications and crisis management firm, Joshua Schwerin… Head coach of the women’s soccer team at Yeshiva University, Ryan Alexander Hezekiah Adeleye… Israeli artist and photographer, Neta Cones… Marketing director at College Golf Experience, Jeffrey Hensiek… Associate in the finance department of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Robert S. Murstein… Senior reporter for Cybersecurity Dive, Eric J. Geller… Founder and CEO of Diamond Travel Services and CEO of A Better Way ABA, Ahron Fragin… Midfielder for Major League Soccer’s New York Red Bulls, Daniel Ethan Edelman…
