Good Thursday morning!

When the Hollywood Foreign Press Association announces the winners of this year’s Golden Globes this weekend, the audience will look much different than in years past.

The event will focus on the HFPA’s philanthropy. In addition to a select group of HFPA members, representatives from some of the HFPA’s grantees will be in attendance. There will be few, if any, celebrity guests, and grant honorees will announce the award winners.

Sunday evening’s ceremony, the association’s 79th, will still be held at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Calif., but will lack the food and drink, red carpet or press gallery of previous Golden Globes. The scaled-down event comes after NBC canceled the annual telecast of the awards show, amid criticism of the HFPA’s business practices and lack of diversity.

“Over the past 25 years, the HFPA has donated $50 million to more than 70 entertainment-related charities, film restoration, scholarship programs and humanitarian efforts; incredibly impactful organizations, many of whom were hit hard over the last two years as a result of the pandemic,” the organization said. “Over the last eight months, the HFPA has completely overhauled its bylaws, implementing sweeping changes from top to bottom addressing ethics and code of conduct, diversity, equity and inclusion, governance, membership and more.”

BREAKING GROUND

Chabad building new $12 million educational center in Miami

Chabad.org

The rapidly expanding Chabad Chayil in Highland Lakes, Fla., known for its after-school program serving Jewish public school children, has begun construction on its future home in the Miami-Dade County enclave. The $12 million, five-story, 50,000-square-foot building will house three daily prayer services, Shabbat services and communal Shabbat meals, seasonal programs such as winter camp and summer camp, as well as CHAP (Community Hebrew Afterschool Program), Chabad Chayil’s after-school program, Chabad-Lubavitch’s Mordechai Lightstone told eJP’s Esther Kustanowitz. 

New year, new building: The new center will feature a synagogue, library and beit midrash for adult education, creating a base for all of Chabad’s activities in the area. Chabad expects the new building to be completed at the end of 2022. “The education at Community Hebrew Afterschool Program sits at the sweet spot between regular Jewish day school and and once-a-week Jewish Sunday school,” Rabbi Moishe Kievman of Chabad Chayil in Highland Lakes told eJP. “It runs from 1:45-6 p.m. – and ends earlier for Shabbat on Friday – allowing kids not currently in the day school system a chance at a deeper, more enriching Jewish education.” 

Going big: CHAP, which opened in 2007 with fewer than 12 students, more than doubled its enrollment to 27 by the end of that year and reached a high of 230 students before the pandemic. The experiential after-school program introduces Jewish concepts through art, sports, drama and music, challah and food-related projects and holiday crafts, creating a more integrated Jewish learning experience, Kievman added.

Coming home

Four reasons why so many Jews moved to Israel in 2021 — and one concern

JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images

“A total of 27,050 olim (immigrants) from across the globe arrived in Israel during 2021, representing a 30% increase over the previous year, according to statistics that were recently released by Israel’s Ministry of Aliyah and Integration, The Jewish Agency for Israel and Nefesh B’Nefesh. Incredibly, these numbers included the highest number of American Jews since 1973,” writes Dan Elbaum, head of North America at The Jewish Agency for Israel, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

The big question: “Pause and consider that again. In a year that presented more challenges than most, more American Jews chose to make Israel their home than at any point in many of our lifetimes. We must ask: Why? Why in a year when it has been so difficult to even visit Israel from abroad, did so many more American Jews decide to move there?

High-quality medical care: “While every new citizen has their own story, I would like to offer four key reasons as well as one (sadly disturbing) possibility to explain this phenomenon… First, if the last two years have done anything, they have reinforced the importance of access to high-quality medical care. From the start of the pandemic, prospective olimcame to appreciate that Israeli health care is affordable, advanced and efficient. Israel ranks among the world’s top five countries in the Bloomberg Health-Efficiency Index. The U.S. sadly ranks among the least efficient nations.”

Read the full piece here.

A JEWISH DAY SCHOOL IMPERATIVE

Reenergizing and inspiring your school board of directors

Christina Morillo via Pexels.com

“Over the past six months, a number of day school heads and executive directors recently shared with me (as their coach) concern and frustration in not being able to motivate, inspire or move their boards forward in a meaningful way. Traditionally, this concern is most common for new school heads, or for school boards that have unfortunately been on ‘automatic pilot’ due to inertia or a lack of leadership,” writes Chaim Botwinick, principal of the Hebrew Academy Day School in Margate, Fla., in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Post-COVID institutional fatigue: “At first blush, I attributed these concerns to some form of ‘post-COVID institutional fatigue’ which many day school lay and professional leaders reported experiencing following almost 18 months of school restrictions, lockdowns and new health/safety policies and protocols. To be sure, these COVID-related challenges were beyond stressful, time-consuming and nerve-racking for many day school boards and senior administrators, let alone families and communities.”

Similarities and commonalities: “As I began to analyze these school governance concerns a bit more closely, I observed striking similarities and commonalities. They all had high levels of board turnover; a relatively new board chair/school president who was recently elected to the post; and several new members of the board who were in desperate need of onboarding. All of this governance transitioning took place at the height of the COVID pandemic, which only added additional stress, uncertainty and ambiguity to the mix.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

On the Menu: Can meat grown in a lab be kosher or halal? In Bloomberg Businessweek, Bruce Einhorn, Harry Suhartono and Faseeh Mangi tackle the thorny Jewish and Muslim religious dietary questions surrounding lab-grown meats. Although the industry is still in development, it is still attracting agribusiness giants and billionaire investors like Marc Benioff, Peter Thiel and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. “‘This technology is so novel, so new, trying to find precedent is the greatest challenge,’ said Joel Kenigsberg, a rabbi with London’s United Synagogue who studied Jewish law and science at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and is advising companies on kashrut issues.” [Businessweek]

Reparations & Philanthropy: The idea of reparations for Black Americans is gaining traction among American foundations, Dawn Wolfe writes in Inside Philanthropy. “While the fight for reparations originally had white allies — from Quakers who freed and reimbursed enslaved Africans to one peer of the founding fathers, who freed the people he was enslaving and set their families up for success in 1791 — white support for Black reparations in large part died out after the end of the Civil War. Today, though, the idea of reparations seems to be catching fire, and even American foundations are finally coming on board. Money is being moved to Black-led efforts, including one organization that has been calling for reparations since its founding in 1987. And while IP readers may have heard about the MacArthur Foundation’s $1.5 million grant to the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), and the William T. Grant Foundation’s commitment to the work of reparations advocate Dr. William A. Darity, money is moving on several fronts, with major players like Omidyar, Hewlett and more getting involved.” [InsidePhilanthropy]

Song of the Day

YouTube

Israeli singers Idan Raichel and Ohad Moskowitz teamed up to sing “Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim,” (“If I forget thee, O Jerusalem”), at a recent wedding in Israel.