Your Daily Phil: Arab Israeli family honors father slain in gun violence through education
Add EJP on GoogleGood Tuesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we interview Charles Asher Small, the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, about his efforts to combat Qatar’s “soft power” influence, and report on an Arab Israeli family’s memorial scholarship for a father lost to criminal violence. We feature opinion pieces by Rachel Sumekh and Orit Mizner about cultivating a community that normalizes asking for and offering help and steps to improve our “communal architecture.” Also in this issue: Jeffrey J. Sussman, Alon Arbatz and Gail Asper.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
Jewish Federations of North America is hosting a breakfast for Jewish leaders in honor of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) at its Washington office ahead of the late senator’s funeral today.
The Paley Museum in New York opens its “Beyond the Headlines: Jewish Life in America Today” this evening, kicking off a four-part series on the “Media’s Role in Combating Antisemitism,” with speakers Michael Kassan, Richard Edelman and Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch; CNN’s Bianna Golodryga is moderating.
The 20th Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature will be awarded to Haaretz journalist Amir Tibon for his Oct. 7 memoir, The Gates of Gaza, this evening at a private ceremony in Jerusalem.
Also this evening, Central Synagogue in Manhattan will hold a memorial service for Wesley LePatner, one year after the Blackstone executive and Jewish philanthropist was killed in a shooting at the firm’s Midtown headquarters.
What You Should Know
Addressing a conference hosted by one of Israel’s top national security think tanks on Monday, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, one of the leading contenders to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, vowed to “immediately” declare Qatar an enemy state upon entering office, calling the country “a violent antisemitic cancer that is spreading metastases to the West.”
The remarks by the prime ministerial hopeful revived a long-running debate about Qatar, which invests heavily in so-called “soft power,” in education, politics, business and in the media. This has increased considerably in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, which were conducted by Hamas, a beneficiary of Qatar. Charles Asher Small, the founder and director of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, has for decades been raising the alarm about Qatar, seeing it as an unabashed enemy of the West and responsible for much of the antisemitism that has been unleashed post-Oct. 7. Small spoke with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross during a recent trip to Israel, a few weeks before the start of ISGAP’s annual summer institute, this year in Cambridge, England, which kicked off on Sunday and runs through Aug. 7.
JAG: How are you able to draw a line between the funding and the ideology? Is it not possible that these trends have been underway for decades, unrelated to Qatar and Qatari funding?
CAS: So in one of our reports, called “The Network of Hate,” we show that American universities that are taking money from Qatar have 300% more instances of antisemitism compared to American universities that are not taking money from Qatar. So it’s one indication. The other thing I would say: We run a center at Cambridge in the U.K. … And I know — my colleagues at Cambridge know — that if they insisted on taking a professor who calls for the destruction of Israel as a member of our staff, I would refuse. And if they insisted, I’d take my $500,000-$600,000, and I’d go home.
Could you imagine if I came with $1 billion, with $10 billion, what kind of soft power you would have?
News
IN MEMORIAM
‘Wherever you can help — help’: A bereaved family’s answer to gun violence in Arab Israeli society
The Arab Israeli sector is most often on the receiving end of philanthropy in Israel — beneficiaries of welfare programs, shared-society initiatives and education efforts. In a reversal of that trend, the Alwhwah family has for four years funded a scholarship for outstanding students at Levinsky-Wingate Academic College, the Tel Aviv teachers’ college from which Usama Alwhwah graduated, along with two of his sisters, in memory of their father, Marwan Alwhwah, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
When the numbers have names: The Alwhwah family’s story tracks the grim gun-violence statistics facing Arab Israeli society. “In 2020, a feud began between my family and another family in Lod,” Alwhwah said. That year, his uncle was murdered. In 2021, his cousin. And on Aug. 26, 2022, the violence claimed the life of his father — a mechanic who, his son says, had no involvement in the feud that took his brother’s life. Police arrested and tried one man; others involved have never been caught.
Opinion
FEELING THE LOVE
What Tu B’Av can teach us about addressing Jewish poverty
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rachel Sumekh, CEO of TEN: Together Ending Need, spotlights research revealing the extent and impact of poverty within the Jewish community and sees a model for our communal response in the Talmud’s description of Tu B’Av, which is celebrated tomorrow.
“In the Mishnah, Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel describes how, before the women went out to dance in the fields, they would borrow white dresses from one another ‘so as not to embarrass one who did not have her own.’ … That’s the whole point — a community where offering and asking for help does not feel daunting. We tell a good story about our commitment to tzedakah. It’s time we told an equally honest one about who still needs it. The first thing it requires is admitting that some of us are standing at the edge of the field with nothing to wear.”
SMART DESIGN
The community we build next
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Momentum COO Orit Mizner writes that the rolling crises of the past three years have not only revealed the American Jewish community’s character but also its architecture.
“Communities need places where federations, synagogues, schools, camps, JCCs, Israel organizations, service agencies, youth organizations, philanthropists and lay leaders can ask bigger questions. Where are we succeeding together? Where are we falling short? Who is missing from our community? What investments today will matter ten years from now? That, to me, is community architecture. Not a new program, not another initiative, but the intentional design of how a community thinks together, plans together, learns together and builds together.”
Worthy Reads
Flood Watch: In her Substack, Delivery Associates executive Laurel Blatchford warns that an estimated $37 billion to $100 billion in new AI-generated philanthropic capital is about to flood the social impact sector, and that the field is unprepared. “More money flowing into the same constrained system produced the same constrained outcomes. Sometimes worse, because pressure without capacity breaks things.”
Writers Against Free Speech: In The Washington Post, Ramesh Ponnuru argues that PEN America has repeatedly stumbled over Israel — most recently prompting President Dinaw Mengestu’s resignation — revealing that many of the nation’s writers are unreliable defenders of free speech. “Members of the literary community can’t agree on what is a bigger threat to free expression: disrupting talks or keeping them from being disrupted, refusing to let Israeli publishers translate a book or deploring that refusal.”
Dashboard Giving: The Chronicle of Philanthropy examines how foundations like the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Walton Family Foundation are adopting data dashboards to vet proposals and track strategy. “Dashboards don’t replace judgment. They don’t make decisions, but they improve the conditions for good decisions by making that evidence visible, organized, and easier to discuss.”
Transitions
Jeffrey J. Sussman joined the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee as its new chief marketing and communications officer…
Israeli entrepreneur Alon Arbatz joined the board of Keshet Donor-Advised Fund…
Brown RISD Hillel hired Rabbi Sam Weiss as its next executive director…
Andrea J. Martin, assistant professor of Law at Penn State’s Dickinson Law School, has been named a commissioner on Pennsylvania’s Human Relations Commission…
Jewish Community Relations Council of New York has named Rabbi Mayer Waxman its vice president of Israel and Jewish affairs…
Word on the Street
The Department of Justice has launched a grand jury investigation into bankrupt summer camp operator Simad Holdings and its controlling shareholders, brothers Michael and David Shabsels, who are also facing a separate civil probe into alleged Paycheck Protection Program fraud…
Calcalist reports Sheba Medical Center has become the first hospital outside the U.S. to join OpenAI‘s healthcare program…
Jared Kushner‘s Affinity Partners sold a quarter of its stake in Phoenix Financial, Israel’s largest insurer, for NIS 1.05 billion ($340 million) though it still remains the company’s largest shareholder…
??Winnipeg philanthropist Gail Asper, whose family gave more than $24 million to build the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, says the foundation is halting its support, including a planned $50,000 Holocaust exhibit gift, over a Nakba display…
A massive fire destroyed the Ukraine gravesite complex of Rabbi Shneur Liadi, the founder of the Chabad Hasidic movement…
The glass doors at the entrance to Israel’s Channel 12 newsroom in Tel Aviv were smashed for the second time this month…
A Wall Street Journal review of about 2,000 filings from the largest U.S. public companies found nearly $600 million in executive perks over the past year, with personal security the largest category at roughly $170 million…
In an opinion piece in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, William Daroff and Betsy Berns Korn, the CEO and board chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, decry New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s repeated claim that Israel committed a “genocide” in Gaza, comparing it to medieval blood libels…
Several Jewish legal organizations sent Mamdani a letter protesting the makeup of his 18-person judicial nominating advisory committee, which contains no Jewish representation…
David Fox, credited with building Kirkland & Ellis into the world’s largest law firm, has now launched Irving, a law firm primarily driven by AI, and is building a center for AI at Hebrew University’s law school…
The New York Times profiles Sammy Nussdorf, the Jewish 29-year-old who parlayed his family’s business acumen and his TikTok account into Meadow Lane, a viral Lower Manhattan gourmet market…
“Mazel Tough,” a new romantic comedy series about modern dating in the Jewish community, will feature Jewish stars Alex Rich, Adam Shapiro, Michael Vlamis and Jonathan Lipnicki…
British musician Boy George released a new single defending Israel’s actions in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks. Posted to his X account with the hashtag “Shalom,” the song is titled “We Will Dance Again,” a mantra used by survivors of the Nova music festival festival massacre…
Eddie Smith Jr., 83, turned down roughly $400 million in offers to buy his North Carolina boat maker, Grady-White, and instead pledged its future profits to charity through a purpose trust, echoing Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard‘s 2022 move…
The 50-year-old kippah-wearing man stabbed on Manhattan’s Upper West Side during Tisha B’Av, identified as Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, was in the process of moving to Florida…
Pic of the Day
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani meets with a rabbinic delegation at Lusail Palace yesterday in Doha.
The delegation was led by Rabbi Mendy Chitrik and includes his son, Rabbi Eliyahu Chitrik, and Rabbi Yehuda Gerami, chief rabbi of Iran. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani also attended, reports Jewish Insider‘s Haley Cohen.
Birthdays
Ori Pfeffer, Jerusalem-born actor with more than 30 movie and television roles in the U.S., turns 51
Yehuda Bacon, survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau as a teen, he emigrated to Israel and became an artist, turns 97
Walter David Jacobson, Chicago radio and television news personality, turns 89
Michael Mukasey, U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan, then U.S. attorney general during the Bush 43 administration, now of counsel at the international law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, turns 85
Marcus Storch, Ph.D., Swedish industrialist, chairman of the Nobel Foundation (manager of the Nobel Prize) from 2005 to 2013, turns 84
Amira Dotan, in 1986 she became the first woman in the IDF to hold the rank of brigadier general, she then served as a member of Knesset, and now serves on multiple for-profit and nonprofit boards, turns 79
Joe Pollak, tax professional, turns 76
Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years until he retired in 2023, turns 75
Izek Shomof, Tel Aviv-born real estate developer, he has restored many historic buildings in Downtown Los Angeles, turns 67
Marty Friedman, partner and managing director of Meadow Lane Advisors, he serves on the board of American Jewish World Service
Michel Mercier, French-Israeli hairdresser and entrepreneur, turns 65
Marc Hilliard Fogel, American schoolteacher, wrongfully detained by Russia in 2021, he was released in the early weeks of the Trump 47 administration, turns 65
Mara Davis, talent booker, publicist and television and radio personality in Atlanta, turns 57
Joshua M. “Josh” Linkner, tech entrepreneur who has invested in more than 100 startups, New York Times best-selling author, turns 56
Elizabeth Berkley Lauren, actor and reality show personality, turns 54
Anne Wojcicki, co-founder of the personal genomics and biotechnology company 23andMe, she recently regained control of the company, turns 53
Jennifer Lew Goldstone, inaugural Jewish life venture fellow at the William Davidson Foundation, now deputy CEO at UpStart
Leondra Kruger, associate justice of the Supreme Court of California, turns 50
Ksenia Svetlova, Israeli journalist and former member of the Knesset, turns 49
Jay Zeidman, managing partner at Altitude Ventures, a healthcare venture capital firm, he served as White House Jewish liaison from 2005 to 2007
Laura Nahmias, senior reporter at Bloomberg News
Kira Radinsky, Ph.D., CEO and CTO at Diagnostic Robotics in Jerusalem, the firm produced an app for managing COVID-19 patients during the pandemic, turns 40
Samuel Mondry-Cohen, VP of player personnel at MLB’s Miami Marlins
Menachem “Mark” Perl, director of operations at Elite Healthcare Consultants
Asher Chazen Grodman, actor and producer who stars in the CBS series “Ghosts,” turns 39
Ruby Cramer, staff writer at The New Yorker
