Your Daily Phil: At JFNA’s GA, two secretaries, no solution
Add EJP on GoogleIn today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report from the opening of the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington, where former Secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and Tony Blinken made their first joint appearance since leaving office, and interview Julie Fisher, executive director of The Good People Fund, about her organization’s support for fledgling nonprofits. We also cover a Philadelphia rally in support of Jewish and Israeli-owned restaurants targeted by an antisemitic bike protest. With the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht approaching this evening, we feature an opinion piece by Revital Yakin Krakowsky about ceding spaces for Jewish memory and Jewish life and a piece by Joanna Beata Michlic laying out her vision for Holocaust education. Also in this issue: Deborah Lipstadt, Ilisa Cappell and Michal Braverman-Blumenstik.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
President Isaac Herzog officially tasked Yashar party leader Gadi Eisenkot with forming a government last night. Tomorrow, the 120 members of the 26th Knesset will be sworn into office; of them, 47 have never before served in parliament; 33 are women; 27 are attorneys; and six had immediate family members killed or taken captive in the Oct. 7 terror attacks or resulting war in Gaza.
The Jewish Federation of North America’s General Assembly continues today in Washington. Actress Selma Blair, writer Douglas Murray and Jewish Agency Chairman Doron Almog are slated to speak at this morning’s plenary. If you’re there, say hi to eJP’s Jay Deitcher!
The two-day EduNation Jerusalem – Israel’s first international education conference kicked off today.
Today marks Sigd, an Ethiopian Jewish holiday celebrating the renewal of the covenant with God, communal unity and the historic return to Jerusalem. In Washington, the Israeli Embassy is hosting its annual Sigd celebration with a performance by Ethiopian-born Israeli singer Gili Yalo.
Former U.S. antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt will receive the Jonathan Sacks Institute Prize tonight at Bar-Ilan University outside Tel Aviv, marking the former British chief rabbi’s sixth yahrzeit with a conversation on the politics of Jew-hatred alongside Jonathan Rynhold, institute’s academic director. If you’re there, say hi to eJP’s Judah Ari Gross!
The American Jewish Committee and the World Union of Jewish Students will open their first Young Jewish Leaders Advocacy Summit today in Chicago, gathering more than 60 emerging student leaders for three days of advocacy and leadership training.
More than 500 Black American and African Christian leaders are visiting Israel this week.
What You Should Know
The stage at this year’s Jewish Federations of North America annual General Assembly was bathed in red, white and blue lighting, with a massive Magen David painted in the colors of the American flag. The decor was a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States and recognition of the prosperity that the country has offered to its Jewish community, even if for some Jews it may feel as though the golden era of American Jewry has ended, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher from the gathering.
The gathering opened with the first joint public appearance of former Secretaries of State Mike Pompeo and Tony Blinken since they left office
The tension between sides when discussing Israel and a Palestinian state has become, “so violent, so polarized and so dehumanized,” Blinken said, recognizing his stance is not popular at the moment. “To those who are advocating from the river to the sea, who want Israel to go away, guess what? It’s not. For those who are advocating for a greater Israel, who want to continue to build settlements, who want the Palestinians to go away? Guess what? They’re not. There are 7 million Jews. There are 7 million Arabs and Palestinians. No one is going anywhere.”
Discussing President Donald Trump’s recent announcement that the U.S. would be cutting military aid to Israel, Pompeo warned that what was at stake was more than money. “Whether we provide the $4 billion a year, which… mostly goes to buy U.S. weapon systems from Lockheed Martin and big defense contractors, is much less material than the nature of the relationship between the United States and Israel,” he said.
Capitol Hill view: Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod speaks with Josh Nason, JFNA’s senior director of political affairs, about the sea change in Washington after the Democrats swept the midterms and why it represents a “massive relationship-building challenge and opportunity” for the Jewish community…
News
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
As ‘venture capitalists of the tzedakah world,’ Good People Fund looks to invest early
When Julie Fisher first met Naomi Eisenberger, the founder of The Good People Fund, at the organization’s 10th-anniversary celebration in Tel Aviv eight years ago, she doubted philanthropy could work the way Eisenberger described it: Find good people and back them while they do good. Fisher now leads the organization built on that idea, succeeding Eisenberger at the New Jersey-based grantmaker.
Fisher spoke with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet during her organization’s mission to Israel earlier this month, discussing the fund’s early-stage model, its response to the Oct. 7 terror attacks and whether small grants can draw a new generation of American donors closer to Israel.
Justin Hayet: Would you describe The Good People Fund as a consulting firm, as a giving circle, as a scout? How would you explain it?
Julie Fisher: We are the venture capitalists of the tzedakah world. We started very much as a circle, and we are transitioning to a team that does some incubation. We do not call ourselves an incubator, but a lot of what we do looks like incubation and wraparound support. … We recognize potential where others may be frightened by risk, providing not only critical seed funding but also mentoring, guidance and connections that help these emerging organizations grow and thrive.
SHOW OF SOLIDARITY
Philadelphians rally in support of Jewish businesses threatened by antisemitic bike protest
A show of solidarity from Philadelphia residents and elected officials overshadowed an antisemitic bicycle protest targeting several Jewish- and Israeli-owned restaurants in the city’s Rittenhouse Square neighborhood on Sunday with one restaurant owner describing the outpouring of support as something that she had never experienced in her life, Jewish Insider‘s Haley Cohen reports.
Solidarity served: Marti Lieberman, owner of Mac Mart, a macaroni-and-cheese kiosk that typically closes on Sundays, decided to open during the protest. She said customers formed a protective barrier between the restaurants and protesters, shouting words of encouragement. Every targeted restaurant was met with long lines of patrons showing support. “Everything turned into a massive pot of positivity,” Lieberman told JI.
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Opinion
ZACHOR V’SHAMOR
We must continue to choose visibility
IIn an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy on the eve of the 88th anniversary of Kristallnacht, March of the Living CEO Revital Yakin Krakowsky acknowledges the priorities European institutions, security officials and Jewish communities are weighing when they determine whether to cancel or postpone a Jewish exhibit or other cultural event, but also warns against allowing withdrawal from the public space “to become the permanent solution society offers Jews” — or that we offer ourselves.
“The call for visibility is therefore addressed both to Jewish communities and to those responsible for enabling them to live safely. The goal is for openly Jewish life to be ordinary, rather than an act requiring exceptional courage.”
MY MANIFESTO
What Holocaust education must become
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Joanna Beata Michlic, associate director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights at Gratz College and director of the school’s Holocaust and genocide studies graduate programs, presents her approach to improving Holocaust education, from the sources and subject matter covered to the skills teachers must impart.
“The distinction between historically grounded comparison and politically driven distortions, false analogies and Holocaust inversions must become one of the essential skills that Holocaust education teaches. But students can only learn to make such distinctions if they understand how historical knowledge is constructed, tested and grounded in evidence. This brings us to one of the foundations of historical education: serious engagement with primary sources.”
Worthy Reads
Parent Trap: In a Prizmah blog post, Ilisa Cappell, the organization’s chief leadership and engagement officer, urges Jewish day school boards to invest in their partnership with heads of school, training trustees, many of them current parents, to set aside family interests and handle disagreement constructively. “The fire that drives us to improve our schools for our children is natural and worth cultivating. But as trustees, we will not always vote or act the way our own child needs in a given moment. Self-awareness is essential.”
Agents of Change: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, senior editor Ben Gose speaks with Elisabeth Carpenter, the founding chair of the Circle Foundation, a corporate grantmaker that hands research, scoring and briefings to AI agents so its two human leaders can focus on relationships with grantees. “‘AI recommends, AI drafts, AI challenges, AI analyzes. But humans decide. That’s extremely important to understand[,’ Carpenter said.]”needs and future aspirations, they said, ‘I don’t give because you asked. I give because I trust.’ Those six words crystallized everything I had come to believe about philanthropy.”
Major Gifts
The Susterman family of Hallandale, Fla., donated a new ambulance to Hatzalah South Florida for the Aventura area, bringing the family’s gifts to the volunteer EMS group to at least five vehicles…
Google[dot]org, the tech giant’s philanthropic arm, gave Israel’s Clalit Health Services a two-year grant to build an AI voice assistant that lets its 5 million patients book care in their own dialects…
The Center for Jewish History and the Claims Conference launched “Inside Kristallnacht,” an immersive online experience in which 94-year-old survivor Charlotte Knobloch guides users through the 1938 pogrom; through a $305,000 grant from the Claims Conference, an in-person version of the exhibit will be displayed at the Center, and the museum will help pay to bus in local schools that need assistance, the Center told eJewishPhilanthropy…
Transitions
L.A.-based journalist Louis Keene is leaving The Forward….
Word on the Street
More than 1,000 Diaspora Jewish figures, including Charles Bronfman, John Ruskay, Sir Mick Davis, Sir Trevor Chinn, Angelica Berrie, Kenneth Bob, Sally Gottesman and Rabbi Sharon Brous, signed an open letter spearheaded by The London Initiative calling on Gadi Eisenkot to form a coalition with Arab parties based on “the vision set out by Israel’s founders in the Declaration of Independence”…
UNICEF estimates that weekend storms flooded more than 19,000 Gaza tents, displacing over 100,000 people as doctors warn of rising meningitis…
StandWithUs launched StandWithUs Action, a nonpartisan 501(c)(4) affiliate that will organize grassroots political pressure at the state and local levels against antisemitism and anti-Zionist extremism…
A Paris court ordered a Nazi-looted Camille Pissarro painting returned to Jewish collector Salomon Flavian’s heirs and gave Sotheby’s two months to identify its 2024 buyer…
A federal judge directed the owner of Oakland, Calif.’s Jerusalem Coffee House, known for its “Sweet Sinwar” drink, to pay $59,000 for repeatedly defying evidence orders in a Jewish customer’s discrimination suit…
Departing Microsoft Israel R&D chief Michal Braverman-Blumenstik, who doubled the center’s workforce to about 3,000, warned in an exit interview with Ynet that Israel’s international isolation threatens its edge in AI and high tech…
Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter delivered the keynote address last night at Chabad’s annual International Conference of Shluchim…
Thousands of Chabad rabbis from more than 100 countries gathered in Brooklyn on Sunday for their annual group photo…
Slovenia is the newest country slated for a permanent Chabad center as the movement announced at its annual emissaries conference that Rabbi Yossi Krinsky and Rochele Krinsky will open one in Ljubljana…
Israel’s Channel 13 indefinitely suspended host Eyal Berkovic after he mocked and denied the medical credentials of Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed (D-MI) and Arab Israeli MK Ahmad Tibi…
J. Robert Seder, a Worcester (Mass.) bankruptcy lawyer who led the Jewish Federation of Central Massachusetts and the Jewish Healthcare Center, died Thursday at 86…
Michael Jacobson, an Atlanta business and tax advisor who led Jewish National Fund’s Atlanta chapter and held leadership roles within the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, died Saturday at 71…
Pic of the Day
StandWithUs co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein and StandWithUs Israel CEO Michael Dickson, joined by Tel Aviv Stock Exchange economics division head Ron Klein, staff and members of the group’s Solidarity Mission, ring the opening bell at the exchange this morning to mark the Israel advocacy group’s 25th anniversary. The mission brought community leaders, StandWithUs national board members and philanthropists from across the United States.
“What began 25 years ago with a handful of rallies in support of Israel and assistance to Jewish students who felt isolated in the face of campus antisemitism has become a powerful global movement,” Dickson said. “Since then, we have grown into an international organization with a multimillion-dollar budget, operating more than 15 offices across six continents.”
Birthdays
Tal Keinan, chairman and CEO of Sky Harbour, he is an American-born Israeli fighter pilot and author of a 2018 book on the future of Judaism, turns 57
Shulamit Lapid, Israeli novelist and playwright, she is the mother of former Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid, turns 92
Sir Victor Blank, British businessman and philanthropist, formerly chairman of Lloyds TSB, a major U.K. bank, turns 84
Jerry Weinstein, professional baseball manager in the minor leagues and college, he managed Team Israel in 2016 and 2017, turns 83
Zevulun Orlev, Israeli war hero and long-time past member of the Knesset, turns 81
Hal Dash, principal of Los Angeles-based PR and public affairs firm Cerrell Associates
Daniel Ajzen, San Diego-based media developer
Mitchell Bedell
Charles Kupperman, former deputy national security advisor for President Donald Trump, turns 76
Joel Seidman, documentary producer
Nancy Jacobson, political consultant and fundraiser, founder and governing board member of No Labels, turns 64
Samara Hutman, director of Los Angeles-based Remember Us: The Holocaust Bnai Mitzvah Project
Amy Beth Aronson, professor of journalism and media studies at Fordham University, turns 64
Douglas Gessner, partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, he represents private equity and venture capital sponsors
Peter Lichtenbaum, partner at Covington & Burling specializing in export controls and sanctions, he was previously the assistant secretary of commerce for export administration during the Bush 43 administration, turns 61
Dan Schlissel, Grammy Award-winning record producer specializing in comedy, turns 56
Aliza Kline, founding CEO of OneTable (promoting Shabbat meals for young people throughout the country), she stepped down as CEO in 2024
Richard H. Bernstein, associate justice of the Michigan Supreme Court since 2015, turns 52
Guy Raz, journalist and pioneering podcaster, he is the creator and host of “How I Built This” and “Wisdom from the Top,” turns 51
Maya Bouskilla, Israeli singer and actor, turns 49
Daniel Squadron, co-founder and president of the States Project, he was elected the youngest member of the New York State Senate in 2008, serving until 2017, turns 47
David Levine, senior advisor at Orchestra, a PR and communications firm
Ari Benjamin Lesser, singer, songwriter and rapper, turns 40
Matthew Adam McCoy, Army JAG officer
Rabbi Shlomo Porter, founder of the Etz Chaim Center of Jewish Studies in Baltimore
