Your Daily Phil: How to get Jewish leaders to switch from being reactive to proactive
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the launch of the Trump Accounts yesterday in the Oval Office. We report on a $12.5 million donation to Yeshiva University to launch a new engineering program, and on Spertus Institute acquiring the shuttered iCenter’s Conflicts of Interest program. We feature an opinion piece by Sarah Levin calling for Jewish leaders to take a proactive approach to considering the community’s future, and one by Jordan Namerow and Rabbi Or Rose on techniques that can be used to encourage productive dialogue between those with diverging opinions about Israel. Also in this issue: Anne Neuberger, LeahBerry and Rahm Emanuel.
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
The 4th Annual Conference for Educators on Jewish Peoplehood is taking place today at Merkaz Hadarim Cultural Center in Haifa.
Also in Haifa, the Contemporary Antisemitism 2026 conference is underway at the University of Haifa, running through Thursday. Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt is due to give a keynote address at tonight’s opening gala.
Jewish Funders Network is hosting its Jerusalem Summer Gathering this evening at the home of philanthropist Ruth Cummings.
What You Should Know
President Donald Trump, flanked by top financial and political figures, virtually rang the opening bells of the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq in the Oval Office yesterday, formally launching so-called Trump Accounts, the investment vehicles for children jump-started by a $6.25 billion donation from Michael and Susan Dell.
While the Trump Accounts have been hailed for offering a potential leg up for American children and for encouraging greater financial literacy, some economists have warned that by requiring parents to opt into the program, millions of children — and particularly the neediest children — will be left out and that the greatest beneficiaries of the tax-advantaged accounts will be those who already have the means to take full advantage of them. Taken together, the program risks increasing economic disparities.
A cautionary tale can be found in a similar program in Israel, dubbed “Saving for Every Child,” in which the government deposits NIS 58 ($19) into an account every month from birth to age 18, which can be matched by parents. The Israeli model shows that, for philanthropy, in addition to supporting the Trump Accounts program directly, to ensure that the most and the neediest children are helped by the funds, efforts must be made to remove barriers and make the accounts as accessible as possible and to educate parents about their benefits.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
MAJOR GIFTS
Alex and Diana Tsigutkin donate $12.5 million for YU electrical, computer engineering program
Tech CEO and philanthropist Alex Tsigutkin and his wife, Diana, donated $12.5 million to Yeshiva University to establish a new electrical and computer engineering program that will be named in their honor, the school exclusively told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.
Powering innovation: The program is meant to serve as a pathway offering undergraduate electives that will guarantee admission into the school’s computer science and engineering graduate programs. The donation will also support $25,000 scholarships for at least 10 undergraduates annually.
EXCLUSIVE
Spertus Institute acquires shuttered iCenter’s Conflicts of Interest program
When the Israel education-focused iCenter announced it was shuttering in February after 17 years, the board called it both “an ending and a handoff.” Today, the Chicago-based Spertus Institute took the baton. Beginning this fall, the school will be the new home for the iCenter’s Conflicts of Interest program, which trains educators in new methods to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the institute told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.
A new home: Launched in 2023, Conflicts of Interest was one of iCenter’s newest initiatives, aimed at training educators to know how to have difficult conversations about Israel. The Spertus Institute will keep the program the same — including three days of in-person seminars — but the goal is to expand to serve more cohorts and provide additional programs for alumni. The institute also hopes that the curriculum can be a model for educators discussing polarizing issues as a whole, Spertus said.
Opinion
SECURE OUR FUTURE
Beyond reactivity and toward Jewish preparedness
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Altruicity founder Jonah Halper argues that the disparity between megaIn an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Sarah Levin, the executive director of JIMENA, calls on the Jewish community to be proactive in considering its long-term future.
“Communities wired for danger detection struggle to envision futures. The next chapter of Jewish leadership requires us to break that pattern, not with less memory or less vigilance, but with more strategic imagination and the philanthropic resources to build what imagination requires.”
COMPANIONS NOT COMBATANTS
Face-to-face: What Boston-area Jewish leaders learned during hard conversations about Israel
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Jordan Namerow and Rabbi Or Rose, the co-directors of Hebrew College’s Panim el Panim Fellowship, reflect on how Jewish leaders can grapple with diverging opinions about Israel.
“None of us possesses the entire map. None of us can navigate this terrain alone. We could all benefit from listening like we might be wrong, remaining curious when the path grows difficult and trusting that stronger relationships can help us find our way forward.”
Worthy Reads
Echoes of Entebbe: In The Atlantic, reflecting on the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Entebbe hostage rescue that freed her parents, Anne Neuberger, the former deputy national security advisor in the Biden administration, argues that freedom survives only when people are willing to defend it and warns that today’s romanticizing of political violence erodes that same resolve. “My family’s history taught me that freedom is fragile. Entebbe taught me that it survives only because people choose to defend it.”
Mind the Gap: In The Times of Israel, Jim Joseph Foundation’s Barry Finestone argues that the growing rift between Israeli and Diaspora Jews since Oct. 7 can be repaired through more exchange trips, mutual-aid partnerships, cross-community leadership networks, and mutual intellectual humility. “We need to stop treating the Israel-Diaspora relationship as an abstract communal issue. It is personal, familial, and urgent. We know how to fund, how to build, and how to convene.”
Windows Not Walls: In Commonweal Magazine, Pardes’ Rabbi Leon A. Morris explores Judah Magnes’ 1923 vision for a Jerusalem synagogue that welcomed prayers from other faiths, using it to argue that real openness to other religions comes from being deeply rooted in your own tradition. “A tradition capable of genuine openness does not make peace with its own dissolution. It goes deep into itself and finds at its core not walls but a window.”
Major Gifts
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie’s charter-reform committee raised $1.5 million in late June from Laurene Powell Jobs’ Emerson Collective, John Doerr and other tech executives, bringing the committee’s 2026 fundraising total to $8.6 million…
Transitions
YisJewish Federations of North America announced its incoming Board of Trustees officers, with Dena Boronkay Rashes serving as national campaign chair alongside David B. Golder as treasurer and Ann Pava as secretary…
Sid Jacobson JCC on Long Island named Howard Rombom as the organization’s new board president, succeeding Nancy Waldbaum…
Stephen Daniel Arnoff is leaving his role as CEO of Fuchsberg Jerusalem Center…
Leah Berry joined Momentum as its new global director of development…
Jonathan Gruber began a new role at the newly established The Gordon Family Foundation…
Sabin Sidney started a new role as senior advisor at the Department of Education…
Haggai Kimmelman joined Mosaic United as its vice president of informal education…
Word on the Street
A new Israel Democracy Institute survey found that only 26% of Jewish Israelis now believe President Donald Trump views Israel’s security as a central consideration, a 15-point drop following the U.S.-Iran memorandum, even as most still see the current U.S.-Israel tensions as temporary, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports…
Two leading psychologists are launching an initiative to help future clinicians better care for Jewish patients, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen has learned, amid a surge of antisemitism in the mental health field that has left Jewish therapists and clients facing isolation and discrimination.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced an expansion, hiring 10 new staff members throughout its operations…
Jewish students at Columbia University who reached a multimillion-dollar settlement with the school over its handling of antisemitism filed a lawsuit against attorney Marc Kasowitz, alleging that the lawyer, who had represented dozens of students, netted more than half of the settlement’s payout, totaling some $6.4 million, in legal fees after telling plaintiffs that a third party would be covering the fees…
The Bank of Israel cut interest rates to 3.5%, marking its third rate cut this year, citing eased Iran tensions, and raised its 2026 growth forecast to 4%…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that more than $500 million has been pledged toward skilled-trades training aimed at preparing workers for AI-resistant jobs with major grants coming from Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Ford Foundation, BlackRock, Home Depot and Lowe’s…
A new Associated Press poll found that roughly a third of Americans, as well as a similar proportion of Jewish Americans, believe Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has amounted to genocide…
Israeli Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs announced that roughly NIS 500 million ($166 million) from the Shin Bet budget will be redirected to combat crime in Arab communities…
Cyberwell founder and CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor cautioned Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion that social media platforms need categorized hate-speech data sets as antisemitic content increasingly justifies violence…
Leonard Abramson, the founder of U.S. Healthcare who donated $140 million to build the University of Pennsylvania’s Abramson Cancer Research Institute and was a major funder of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, died on July 4 at 93…
Pic of the Day
Prospective 2028 presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel visits Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital yesterday, learning about a partnership with the nonprofit Project Rozana and the An-Najah National University Hospital in the West Bank city of Nablus, where Palestinian doctors are trained alongside Israelis.
“At Ichilov Hospital, I met with Israeli and Arab doctors, nurses, and medical staff who work together, caring for every patient, no questions asked,” Emanuel wrote on Facebook after the visit. “Others have the luxury to debate whether coexistence is possible. The medical professionals at Ichilov Hospital do not debate it — they make it a practice of their profession.”
Emanuel is visiting Israel this week, meeting today with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, along with other civil and political leaders. Tomorrow, he is slated to give a speech at Tel Aviv University, laying out his vision for American foreign policy toward Israel and the Middle East. According to Politico, this includes ending unconditional U.S. support for Israel and pushing for a regional peace agreement.
Birthdays
Rabbi Mosheh Lichtenstein, co-rosh yeshiva of Yeshivat Har Etzion located in the West Bank settlement of Alon Shvut, turns 65
Kenneth Rosenthal, retired president of The Seeing Eye, the world’s premier guide dog school for the blind, turns 88
Adele Goldberg, early collaborator on object-oriented computer programming in the 1970s, turns 81
Ronald N. Weiser, Michigan-based real estate developer, he served as U.S. ambassador to Slovakia during the Bush 43 administration, turns 81
Richard Prasquier, cardiologist and former president of CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jews, turns 81
Lawrence C. Gottlieb, board member of the Israel Policy Forum, he spent 27 years as a bankruptcy attorney at Cooley LLP, turns 79
Yitzhak Tshuva, Israeli business mogul with vast holdings in energy (Delek Group) and real estate (El-Ad Group), turns 78
Menachem Ben-Sasson, former president of Hebrew University and a past member of the Knesset, turns 75
Leonard Steven Schleifer, co-founder and CEO of the biotechnology company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, turns 74
Rami Fortis, pioneer of Israeli punk rock, nicknamed “HaMeshuga,” turns 72
Richard Gold, USAID official for 28 years until 2008, he now consults internationally on Rule of Law issues
Avrum Lapin, president of The Lapin Group
Akiva Goldsman, Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director and producer, turns 64
Michael Howard Goldstein, former president of the United Synagogue in the U.K., turns 63
Mark Hetfield, president of HIAS since 2013, he first joined the immigration group in 1989 as a caseworker in Rome, turns 59
Jordan B. Gorfinkel, comic book creator and a cappella singer, he published the Passover Haggadah Graphic Novel, turns 59
David Jeremiah Barron, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, turns 59
Robin Weigert, television and film actor, turns 57
German Zakharyayev, Azerbaijani-born businessman, he is a VP of the Russian Jewish Congress and the president of the International Charity Foundation of Mountain Jews, turns 55
Rachel Rosen, chief communications officer for Democratic Majority for Israel
Amy Handman, consultant and project manager for nonprofits
Todd Raymond Golden, head coach of the Florida Gators men’s basketball team that won the NCAA national championship in 2025, turns 41
Alysha Angelica Clark, WNBA player, she played on Israeli teams for six seasons, turns 39
Netsanet Mekonnen, Ethiopian-born Israeli actor, she is active in the protest movement for social justice, turns 38
Sam Schwartzstein, Prime Video analytics expert on “Thursday Night Football,” turns 37
Gil Cohen, Olympic sports sailor, she competed for Israel in both the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, turns 34
Megan Wessenberg, originally a figure skater and later a pairs skater, now an active competitive pairs skater competing for France, turns 28
Danielle Cohen-Kanik, U.S. editor at Jewish Insider
Shalom Klein
