Your Daily Phil: How psychedelics hurt and maybe help heal Nova survivors
Add EJP on GoogleIn today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we cover yesterday’s SafeHeart conference examining the role that psychedelics played in the Nova music festival massacre and how they can potentially treat survivors. We report on Dorot’s Manhattan gala marking 50 years of connecting generations, and on the Goldrich sisters’ endowment gift to the Holocaust Museum LA campus, the largest in the institution’s history. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Chaim Strauchler on the responsibility to pair influence with accountability, an area the Jewish community overlooks at its moral peril; and a piece by Eran Landau on the importance of including agency among the metrics we use to measure Jewish philanthropy’s impact. Also in this issue: Ilan Stavans, Myra Lee and Albert Fleischman and Youssef Ziadna.
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
Jewish National Fund-USA’s Global Conference for Israel kicks off today in San Diego. Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch and World Zionist Organization Chairman Rabbi Doron Perez are slated to speak today alongside Rabbi Erez Sherman of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and Young Israel of North Beverly Hills’ Rabbi Pini Dunner in what is being billed as a “bold” conversation on Israel.
The Iranian American Jewish Federation of New York is set to mark its 25th anniversary with a gala tonight.
What You Should Know
The Oct. 7, 2023, massacre at the Nova music festival, in which 378 people were killed, was unique among mass-casualty attacks: Many of the young partygoers were under the influence of mind-altering substances — from alcohol and marijuana to psychedelic mushrooms, MDMA and LSD — when Hamas terrorists struck at sunrise.
Three years later, the Israeli nonprofit SafeHeart is tracking more than 1,200 of those survivors in a long-term study while treating them with open-ended care, and asking unprecedented questions: What role did those drugs play in their trauma, and what role can those same compounds play in their healing?
“There has never been a trauma under such drugs like this. A mass-casualty event with drugs at the center of it,” Efrat Atun, SafeHeart’s CEO, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet yesterday on the sidelines of the group’s second annual conference in Jaffa, Israel.
Nearly two-thirds of the Nova survivors that the organization tracks have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, more than three times the rate typically seen after serious trauma, according to the nonprofit. “It’s because of the traumatic event that they went through all day and all the drugs, and also because it was three [subsequent] years of war,” Atun said.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ ?
News
ON THE SCENE
With Manhattan gala, Dorot marks 50 years of bridging the generational gap
Beneath the American Museum of Natural History’s iconic blue whale, nearly 600 people sat down to dine and mark Dorot’s 50th anniversary. Dorot, which began as a small effort by Columbia University graduates to visit isolated older neighbors, now engages roughly 8,000 older adults a year across 46 states, its executive director, Mark Meridy, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim, with more than 7,500 volunteers.
Beyond loneliness: Although Dorot is a Jewish organization, Meridy said, it serves people of all backgrounds, viewing bringing people together as “the best way to combat” divisiveness and rising antisemitism.
MAJOR GIFTS
Goldrich sisters commit $20 million endowment for Holocaust Museum LA campus founded by their father
The Goldrich Cultural Center, which houses the Holocaust Museum LA, received a $10 million endowment from the daughters of the museum’s founder, with the potential to double it, in what the institution called the largest donation in its 65-year history, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
A daughter’s memory: “In memory of those we lost, my sister and I have joined in this mission as a legacy to our father,” Andrea Goldrich Cayton said in a statement. “The ongoing education provided by this museum and campus is something we feel we must support.”
Opinion
REAL TALK
The other side of Jewish influence
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Chaim Strauchler of Congregation Rinat Yisrael in Teaneck, N.J., an alumnus of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, urges American Jewry to engage in more cheshbon hanefesh — accounting of the soul — about our approach to power, loyalty and accountability.
“At a moment when American Jews feel increasingly vulnerable, we understandably seek stronger institutions, more effective advocates and greater influence. These aspirations are legitimate. But influence is not inherently virtuous.”
MEASURING IMPACT
Philanthropy’s missing metric: Did we return agency?
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Eran Landau recommends adding another dimension to how funders and nonprofits think about impact: Is a beneficiary better equipped to do something after receiving our help, or less?
“An intervention can be successful on paper while quietly weakening the person it was designed to support: the ‘need’ was met and a metric turned green, but the person assisted may leave the process feeling more defined by what has happened to them, more dependent on an institution’s interpretation of their needs or less convinced that they can still shape what happens next.”
Worthy Reads
Lessons from Kadima Closure: In the Baltimore Jewish Times, the editorial board of Mid-Atlantic Media draws on eJewishPhilanthropy reporter Nira Dayanim’s investigation into the closure of Los Angeles’ Kadima Hebrew Academy to argue that boards must scrutinize even their most generous benefactors, warning that a donor’s rescue can saddle an institution with obligations it can’t sustain. “The lesson is not to distrust philanthropists or discourage ambitious projects. It is to recognize that generosity cannot substitute for accountability, and short-term survival cannot be mistaken for long-term success. A benefactor can save a school from closing tomorrow. A board’s responsibility is to ensure it can remain open for generations.”
Dictionary Bias: In The New York Times, Amherst College professor Ilan Stavans urges the Royal Spanish Academy to delete a dictionary meaning that equates “judío,” the Spanish word for Jew, with a miser or usurer, a definition it has kept despite a 2024 Argentine court order. “Dictionaries are living entities. They have always included misconceptions, since they reflect the society they define. They also have the capacity to redefine, and push us to recognize our own prejudices. Now we just need the bravery to change them.”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
The Myra Lee and Albert Fleischman Foundation gave $1 million to the Jewish Theological Seminary to create a fellowship covering full tuition and a living stipend for three rabbinical students each year…
Jewish Big Brothers Big Sisters of Los Angeles and the Foundation for Camp Bob Waldorf raised more than $315,000 for local children’s summer camp at their annual Sunday Funday event…rofit Project Home to double its TRUST program, which provides unrestricted cash to low-income single mothers…
Word on the Street
At the Israel Hayom Summit in New York yesterday, the Israeli newspaper’s publisher, Miriam Adelson, urged Israelis and Americans to use the remaining two years of the Trump administration to confront their shared enemies, and called on Jews to refuse to let antisemites define their identity. Strauss Group Chair Ofra Strauss told the summit “the one who truly won the war was the Israeli spirit in civil society, which showed real resilience”…
At the newspaper’s conference, Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion announced that the city will name a square in its new Moradot Arnona neighborhood for the late philanthropist Sheldon Adelson, honoring his role in the first Trump administration’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy to the city…
Rep.-elect Brad Lander’s (D-NY) new communications director, Jesse Myerson, is a “publicly self-identified communist” who has denied Israel’s right to exist and equated the slogan “Am Yisrael Chai” with “globalize the intifada,” Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports…
Anti-Israel commenters called for a boycott of clothing brand Quince after it cast David Schwimmer, an outspoken supporter of Israel, in a new “Friends”-themed ad campaign…
Vine Ventures, a U.S. firm that backs startups in both America and Israel, raised $236 million for its third and largest fund, about half of which will be earmarked for Israeli companies…
Former Trump administration official Josh Gruenbaum said several elite university presidents and trustees quietly embraced federal funding pressure over campus antisemitism as cover against faculty resistance, telling Dan Senor’s “Call Me Back” podcast they felt held “hostage” by their faculties…
In The Wall Street Journal, Charles Isherwood reviews the Broadway production of “Here There Are Blueberries,” Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s drama built on a photo album of Auschwitz staff at leisure…
Israeli authorities demolished homes belonging to the family of Youssef Ziadna, the driver hailed as a national hero for rescuing 30 people from the Nova festival on Oct. 7, 2023, as part of a broader demolition campaign against the Negev’s unrecognized Bedouin villages…
The Brandeis Center is suing the Education Department to force the release of a repeatedly postponed report naming foreign donors to U.S. universities and moved to join a separate case in which a university group is trying to block it, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…
The parents of Julia Hyman, a 27-year-old Rudin Management employee killed in last year’s Park Avenue mass shooting, sued the building owner and its security contractors, alleging lapses such as failing to lock down elevators that let the gunman reach her floor…
Kraft Group, led by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is proposing a $16 billion, 10-building data center campus in Sutton, Mass., a town of about 9,700, where every resident who spoke at a first public hearing opposed it…
Chabad-Lubavitch announced plans to open a center in Tirana, Albania, the first Chabad presence in the country that served as a haven for Jews during the Holocaust…
Judge Richard Posner, the federal appeals judge who helped pioneer the economic analysis of law and became the most-cited American legal scholar of his era, died Tuesday at 87…
Pic of the Day
Skydance Co-CEO Ynon Kreiz (left), actor Gal Gadot and Skydance Chair and Co-CEO David Ellison attend the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s annual Humanitarian Award Dinner last night in Los Angeles, where Kreiz received the prize.
Bianna Golodryga, former CNN senior global affairs analyst, was presented with the organization’s Jewish Heritage Award at the dinner for “her commitment to truthful, responsible journalism and upholding journalism’s responsibility to inform the public.”
Speaking at the event, Gadot lamented the rise in antisemitism. “I’m frightened by how quickly hatred of Jews is spreading — and how openly it is expressed and accepted,” Gadot said, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “If people get used to hearing and seeing hatred and looking the other way, then where does it end?”
Ahead of the gala, it was announced that Gadot and her husband, Jaron Varsano, will executive produce a film adaptation of Don’t Feed the Lion, Golodryga and Yonit Levi’s novel for middle-schoolers about a Jewish boy confronting antisemitism, in partnership with Fox Entertainment Studios and the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s Moriah Media.
Birthdays
Thad Levine, former EVP of MLB’s Minnesota Twins, now special advisor to baseball operations for the Milwaukee Brewers, turns 55
Rabbi Shmuel Kamenetsky, co-founder and dean of the Talmudical Yeshiva of Philadelphia, turns 102
Carol Gluck, professor emerita of history at Columbia University and expert on Japan, turns 85
Morley Winograd, author and chairman of the board of directors of the Campaign for Free College Tuition, turns 84
Steven Scheiner, accountant and former PwC partner in Phoenix, Ariz.
Stephen M. Saland, former New York state senator, he is a descendant of Rabbi Shmuel Salant, the former Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Jerusalem, turns 83
Al Michaels, sportscaster for “Thursday Night Football” on Prime Video, after more than 50 years at NBC and ABC, turns 82
Bernard Wachsman, attorney in Brooklyn
Linda Rosenthal, member of the New York State Assembly since 2006, her district includes Manhattan’s Upper West Side, turns 69
Neal Shusterman, author of young-adult fiction and winner of the 2015 National Book Award for Challenger Deep, turns 64
Naomi Wolf, author, journalist and former political advisor to Al Gore and Bill Clinton, turns 64
Michael Kremer, Nobel laureate and chief economist of the World Bank Group, turns 62
Elizabeth Beckman “Libby” Schaaf, former mayor of Oakland, Calif., now president and CEO of the Bay Area Council, turns 61
Rabbi Róbert Frölich, rabbi of the Dohány Street Synagogue in Budapest, turns 61
Sanford E. “Sandy” Perl, partner in the Chicago office of Kirkland & Ellis, turns 61
Jeffrey Zients, White House chief of staff for the last two years of the Biden administration, turns 60
Joanne “Jo” Coburn, British journalist with Times Radio, turns 59
Rabbi Elimelech Biderman, Hasidic lecturer with thousands of students, known as Reb Meilech, turns 59
Robert Ilatov, member of the Knesset until 2019 for the Yisrael Beiteinu party, turns 55
Devra First, restaurant critic and food writer for The Boston Globe, turns 54
Nina Brosh, Israeli fashion model and actor, turns 51
Rabbi Eliyahu Hasid, former member of the Knesset for the United Torah Judaism party, turns 50
Aviva Zucker Snyder, campus support director at Hillel International
Dave Weinberg, founder of Gently Ventures
Kelly Kruger, actor best known for her roles on “The Young and the Restless” and “The Bold and the Beautiful,” turns 45
Matthew Berkman, assistant professor of Jewish studies at Oberlin College, turns 42
Spencer Lucker, special advisor for the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity
Mikhail Varshavski, New Jersey-based primary care physician known as Doctor Mike, he is an internet celebrity on YouTube and Instagram, turns 37
Adela Cojab, legal fellow at the National Jewish Advocacy Center, turns 30
C.J. Stubbs, an MLB free agent, turns 30
