Your Daily Phil: Ernest, Evelyn Rady again ‘challenge’ Hadassah with $10M
Add EJP on GoogleGood Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we get the scoop on Ernest and Evelyn Rady’s $10 million matching donation for pediatrics at Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem, and spotlight a recent lobbying trip by Jewish graduate students to Capitol Hill. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny spotlighting a model for peer-to-peer giving, and a piece by Janice W. Fernheimer, Karen Petrone and Lauren Hill calling for more support for teachers involved in Holocaust education — a pathway for helping students learn to recognize and respond to antisemitism. Also in this issue: Rabbi Bill Kaplan, Steve Ballmer and Gloria Steinem.
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 Donald Trump will host several Hasidic rabbis in the Oval Office today to convey his Rosh Hashanah greetings, a meeting the White House claimed is the first of its kind since 1979.
The Los Angeles premiere of “Tovah,” a documentary tracing the life and career of actress and activist Tovah Feldshuh, will screen this evening at Los Angeles’ Sinai Temple, followed by a discussion with Feldshuh, director David Serero and the synagogue’s co-senior rabbi, Nicole Guzik.
Three people were killed last night in two separate shootings in Nazareth less than three hours apart, as criminal violence continues to wreak havoc on Israel’s Arab communities; in total, 171 people have been killed in such violence this year.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S JUSTIN HAYET
San Diego philanthropists Ernest and Evelyn Rady have pledged a $10 million matching gift to Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, funding three pediatrics programs at the group’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem that will together form the Rady Pediatric Center, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet has learned. The couple issued a similar $10 million challenge grant last year — also for pediatrics.
For Rady, who founded the real estate investment firm American Assets, Inc., and Insurance Company of the West, the connection with the Jerusalem hospital runs back more than eight decades. “My mother was the president of Hadassah in Winnipeg, Canada, and I heard about Hadassah for many, many years,” he told eJewishPhilanthropy. “I followed Hadassah and the good work they do; what they do in Israel is really important. The thing that is most important for me is taking care of children.”
News
HILL HUDDLE
Jewish graduate students arrive on the Hill to urge lawmakers to tackle campus antisemitism
For 40 Jewish graduate students gathered on Capitol Hill on Monday, the trip to Washington was not simply an exercise in advocacy. Many arrived carrying stories from campuses where they had felt increasingly isolated, targeted or ignored — and left with a desire to do something about it, reports Matthew Shea for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Lobbying 101: The students gathered for the Jewish Grad Organization’s Partners Summit and met with congressional offices throughout the day to advocate for the Jewish American Security Act, a bipartisan bill designed to strengthen security on university campuses, among other efforts to combat antisemitism across American society.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff?
Opinion
WASTE NOT, WANT NOT
Jewish communities and the reuse economy
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Cantor Hillary Chorny of Temple Beth Am in Los Angeles offers her synagogue’s WhatsApp “buy nothing” group as a model other communities can use to create peer-to-peer platforms for gemilut chassadim, acts of kindness.
“From baby goods to Purim costumes, kids’ sweatshirts to couches, we watched as dozens of exchanges took place every day. Months later, the group is active at a sustained and impressive scale. The success of the goods exchange reveals some of the underlying gaps that exist even in thriving Jewish communities like ours and can be addressed through this type of platform.”
COMBATING ANTISEMITISM
If we want Holocaust education to fight antisemitism today, we must invest in teachers
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Kentucky Holocaust Education Initiative co-directors Janice W. Fernheimer and Karen Petrone and chief learning officer Lauren Hill note that while more than half of all U.S. states have enacted mandates for Holocaust education at multiple grade levels over the past few years, passing a mandate is only a first step.
“The real question is whether we can significantly invest in teachers to make that mandate effective rather than simply symbolic. After five years leading the University of Kentucky-Jewish Heritage Fund (JHF) Kentucky Holocaust Education Initiative, we have learned that meaningful Holocaust education depends on sustained investments in teachers, communities and professional networks.”
Worthy Reads
Discourse Deconstructed: In his Substack “Identity/Crisis,” Shalom Hartman’s Yehuda Kurtzer considers the backlash against Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s closed-door remarks about sacrificing Jewish safety for the greater good. “I think we need to be equally vigilant to ensure that in our zeal to protect our people from our actual enemies, we do not collapse those people together with our friends (and our people) whose tolerance for criticism and self-criticism may exceed our own. As dangerous as it is to not take threats seriously, so is the allowing of a survival instinct to metastasize into our taking away our own moral deliberation and to shrink our community in the process.”
When Haiti Said Yes: In The Forward, Henryka Manès asserts that Jews are morally bound to oppose the deportation of some 350,000 Haitians losing Temporary Protected Status, invoking Haiti’s granting of visas to Jewish refugees ahead of the Holocaust. “In the late 1930s, Haiti said yes to desperate Jewish refugees while bigger nations said no. My family wasn’t among those saved, but the grace of that gesture stayed with me forever..”
Mission Meets Market: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Spectrum Designs Foundation CEO Patrick Bardsley makes the case that nonprofits can and must build serious earned-revenue businesses, without sacrificing their mission. “Being a nonprofit shouldn’t isolate you from the marketplace — it should give you one more reason to become excellent within it.”d me something I have never forgotten. After discussing our community’s 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
Brandeis University raised a record $138 million in fiscal 2026, powered by historic gifts and broad donor participation, as it readies the October public launch of a fundraising drive tied to its liberal-arts overhaul…
Transitions
Rabbi Bill Kaplan was appointed senior vice president of JCC Camps of North America…
Hyim Brandes began a new role as director of the AI platform JewishPro at M2: The Institute for Experimental Jewish Education…
Steve Schuster was named editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent…
Michal Gelbart is ending her role at the Israel Innovation Institute as its vice president of operations and innovation communities…
Word on the Street
The NBA has hit the Los Angeles Clippers with the harshest team penalty in North American pro sports history for evading its salary cap: stripping five first-round draft picks, levying a $30 million fine and suspending owner Steve Ballmer for one year…
Blackstone is leading a $27 million round into Tel Aviv cyber startup Huskeys at a roughly $100 million valuation…
The World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division is suing Israeli fashion house Comme il Faut and founder Sybil Goldfainer for NIS 1 million ($333,000) for a new campaign focused on settler violence, which includes the use of the division’s name…
PayPal laid off roughly 25% of its 300 employees in Israel…
Haaretz spotlights a new initiative by the Combat Diamonds Forum, Brothers and Sisters in Arms and Israel’s Premier League that is helping combat Israeli veterans with PTSD return to soccer stadiums through quiet zones, service-dog access and fireworks warnings, after crowds and pyrotechnics drove many from the game…
Actor Mark Ruffalo reportedly tried to enlist Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt — with the assistance of Greenblatt’s former Obama administration colleague Norm Eisen — to help Ruffalo make amends after remarks he made opposing the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery were characterized by critics as antisemitic, an offer that Greenblatt refused…
The U.K’s Charity Commission is reviewing Sun of Freedom, a Manchester-based pro-Palestinian organization, over a trustee-linked clothing line critics call antisemitic…
Frank Bialystok, the Polish-born historian whose scholarship reframed how Canada’s Jewish community understood history and who built bridges between Polish and Jewish Canadians, died at 80…
Gloria Steinem, the writer and activist who became the face of the modern women’s movement and co-founded Ms. magazine in 1971, died yesterday at her home in New York City at 92…
Pic of the Day
Students and parents at an ORT Ukraine school open the school year on Tuesday in a bomb shelter in light of Russian airstrikes on the country.
Birthdays
Edward Felsenthal, executive chairman of Time magazine, turns 60
Irma Kurtz, London-based advice columnist for the U.K.’s Cosmopolitan magazine for over 40 years, known there as an agony aunt, turns 91
Robert Sugarman, past chair of the Anti-Defamation League and later the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, turns 87
Estella Sneider, Psy.D., media personality, psychologist and socialite, also known as Dr. Estella, turns 76
Gary Zaetz, retired software engineer at IBM for 39 years, he persevered after many years to locate and inter the remains of the crew of a crashed World War II American B-24 in the Indian Himalayans, turns 72
Steve Schirripa, actor best known for portraying Bobby Baccalieri on “The Sopranos,” more recently he has appeared in 146 episodes of CBS’ “Blue Bloods,” turns 69
Jonathan Silver, chair of the global sustainability platform at Apollo Global Management
Brad M. Edelman, offensive lineman for the NFL’s New Orleans Saints in the 1980s, now a professional photographer, turns 66
Adam Reiss, producer and reporter at NBC News, early in his career, spent eight years as a volunteer broadcaster and reader for the Jewish Guild for the Blind, turns 61
Rick Perlstein, historian and journalist who has written four books on the rise of the American conservative movement, turns 57
Einat Kalisch-Rotem, mayor of Haifa until 2024, she was the first woman to lead that city, turns 56
Jason Rothstein, executive director at the Michael Reese Research & Education Foundation
Todd Lindeman, VP of data visualization at Moody’s Corporation
Shawn Sachs, CEO of PR and communications firm Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis
Rustin Silverstein, founder of the Silverstein Group, providing strategic policy, crisis management and communications advice
Rabbi Avraham Bronstein, former rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue, turns 46
Avital Ingber, founder of Ingber Philanthropy Group, formerly chief advancement officer of Honeymoon Israel
Joel Kliksberg, head of global public affairs marketing at Meta / Facebook
Brian Stelter, chief media analyst for CNN Worldwide and the lead author of the “Reliable Sources” newsletter, turns 41
Lindsey Glantz, South Florida-based attorney, she served as the co-chair of Jewish Federations of North America’s national young leadership cabinet
Megan Amram, comedy writer, producer and performer, turns 39
Kaia Gerber, fashion model and actor, turns 25
