Your Daily Phil: HUC rising as fundraising, enrollment spike
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on Hebrew Union College’s record-breaking year for fundraising and enrollment, and on Elan Carr stepping down as CEO of the Israeli-American Council and Rachel Fish being hired to lead the Israel Institute. We feature an opinion piece by Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and Lisa Barkan proposing that the solution to American Jews’ higher education woes is Israeli universities, and one by Dahlia Bendavid advocating for an immersive Birthright-style trip to energize Jewish nonprofit professionals. Also in this issue: Aaron Katler, Bucky Apisdorf and John and Laura Arnold.
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 4thPresident Donald Trump said that the United States’ ceasefire agreement with Iran was “over,” calling the country “scum,” after a round of back-and-forth attacks that began with Iranian strikes on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
The annual Contemporary Antisemitism conference continues today in Haifa.
Today, Tel Aviv University is launching the Sylvan Adams Sport Science Institute, which will connect academia and elite sport.
Also at Tel Aviv University, former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel will give an address laying out his vision for the future of U.S.-Israel relations.
This evening, Holocaust survivors Vera and Laszlo Adler will throw out the ceremonial first pitch as the Tampa Bay Rays face the New York Yankees at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.
What You Should Know
Hebrew Union College announced today that it had raised over $50 million in the 2026 fiscal year — its most successful year yet. The fundraising haul comes as the Reform seminary, which has navigated financial strains and held its final graduation in May at its historic Cincinnati campus, also announced its largest incoming rabbinical class in 15 years, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.
The seminary is also preparing to move from its Manhattan location in Greenwich Village, its home since 1979, to the Upper West Side. “We’re in the middle of changes because our board has supported [an] administration that has the courage to face the future based not on recreating the past or what always has been, but by being true to the values that got us here in the first place,” Andrew Rehfeld, the president of HUC, told eJP.
The record fundraising year also comes as the seminary has faced growing criticism from within the movement for its acceptance and tolerance of anti-Zionist students, which Rehfeld has defended as the price that the movement must pay for academic freedom.
News
TRANSITIONS
Elan Carr to step down as CEO of Israeli-American Council after three years at helm
Israeli-American Council CEO Elan Carr, who steered the organization through the fraught post-Oct. 7 period, will step down on Sept. 30 after nearly three years in the role, the organization announced. The group’s board is launching a search for his successor, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.
Before the storm: Carr, whose father helped found the IAC, took the helm on Oct. 4, 2023. Carr, who served as U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism in the first Trump administration, is credited with leading the organization through its efforts to combat antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel in the period that followed the Oct. 7 terror attacks.
TRANSITIONS
Rachel Fish to take helm of Israel Institute, will depart Boundless
Rachel Fish has been hired to lead the Israel Institute, succeeding Ariel Ilan Roth, who has led the organization as its executive director since it was founded by the Schusterman Family Philanthropies in 2012 to support Israel studies and Israeli academics in the U.S., reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
Departures: Fish, the co-founder and president of the research nonprofit Boundless, will step down from her current role at the organization. In a letter to stakeholders, the organization said that Fish will “continue to oversee our planned educational offerings and support a thoughtful transition through the end of the calendar year.” She will remain the director of the President’s Initiative on Antisemitism at Brandeis University, where she serves as an associate research professor at its Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies.
Opinion
OPTION ISRAEL
The answer to the campus crisis was there all along
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Fleur Hassan-Nahoum and Lisa Barkan, the co-founders of Campus Israel, make the case for Israeli universities as the answer to rising tuition costs, heightened campus antisemitism and the other challenges facing North American college students.
“The opportunity to earn a world-class degree in one of the world’s most innovative economies has existed all along. The challenge was never the absence of an alternative. It was the absence of awareness.”
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCES
What happens when we trade our desks for service and purpose?
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Dahlia Bendavid, the vice president of Israel and global impact at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, argues that immersive Israel experiences are a critical tool for nonprofit professionals to better understand their mission and one another.
“Months from now, participants may not remember every statistic they heard or the name of every person they met. But they will remember packing vegetables alongside one another, listening to stories of resilience, sharing meals, laughing on long bus rides and witnessing the impact of the federation’s work with their own eyes.”
Worthy Reads
AI Won’t Wait: In his Substack, Upstart’s Aaron Katler warns that AI could make 25% to 50% of administrative roles in the Jewish nonprofit sector redundant within two to five years and suggests the sector follow a five-phase framework before acting: observe, understand, experiment, build, redesign. “The window to catch up to this moment is still open, but it won’t stay that way much longer. And everything else, every program launched without this foundation, is noise we can’t afford.”
Happy Divided Anniversary: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, James Pollard and Anne D’Innocenzio contend that nonprofits and brands’ efforts to unite Americans around the 250th anniversary are undercut by declining patriotic sentiment and politically divided commemorations. “The more they encourage young people to consider local impact, where she [Audra Watson] said they hold the most influence, the more she finds they depart from partisanship.”
Organizing Beats Money: In the Times of Israel, Let’s Do Something co-founder and CEO Bucky Apisdorf argues Jewish institutional advocacy is losing to grassroots movements like the Democratic Socialists of America that win through organizing over fundraising. Apisdorf urges Jewish groups to do the same. “The question is no longer whether the world has changed. The question is whether we’re willing to build new institutions from the ground up, institutions that work seamlessly in the dynamic and ever-shifting context of our new world.”
Major Gifts
Philanthropists John and Laura Arnold are directing $2.6 million in previously unreported grants to studying the financial, mental health and behavioral risks of online sports betting; the grants will be awarded to researchers at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Wisconsin…
Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs announced a new undergraduate major in global affairs and public policy, backed by a donation from the Mike and Sofia Segal Foundation for an undisclosed amount…
Word on the Street
After announcing plans to spin off its leadership programs into an independent organization in May, the Wexner Foundation has now released the name for the new nonprofit — Sulam: The North American Jewish Leadership Network…
A masked assailant smashed Haaretz‘s Tel Aviv office’s glass doors overnight with a brick just days after a similar attack on the offices of Israel’s Channel 12…
In a Washington Post opinion piece, Yuksel Aydin calls for the government to take quick action to help protect senior citizens from the increasingly common elder fraud scams targeting them…
For the first time, the State of California’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program has received permanent annual funding — $80 million a year — to pay for security upgrades at synagogues and other nonprofits considered vulnerable to hate crimes…
Germany and Israel signed an agreement raising Berlin’s annual funding for Yad Vashem to 5 million euros ($5.71 million) through 2030, an increase from the 1 million euros ($1.14 million) pledged in a 2020 framework deal…
The New York Times editorial board argues that the University of California’s 2020 decision to stop considering SAT/ACT scores has caused a sharp decline in student preparedness and urges regents to reverse the policy…
Israel’s consulate in New York was evacuated from its Midtown Manhattan building after a nearby high-rise building under construction showed signs of collapsing, prompting evacuations across the neighborhood…
Israeli Haredi news outlet Kikar HaShabbat reports that Ezra Unger, 36, a Borough Park, Brooklyn, real estate entrepreneur, is in advanced negotiations to purchase Israel’s budget carrier Arkia with the goal of turning it into a Shabbat-observant airline…
The Recanati family has bought out the Federman family‘s stake in Maccabi Tel Aviv for $50 million, giving the Recanati family 58% control of the basketball team…
In a New York Times interview, Ezra Klein speaks with A Land for All co-directors Rula Hardal and May Pundak about their confederation proposal to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict…
Ira Jacob Steinmetz, a career Jewish communal service professional who led community centers and Jewish federations in Miami, Memphis, New York and St. Louis, died yesterday at 90…
Blanche Sosland, a Kansas City Jewish community leader who co-founded Hebrew Academy of Greater Kansas City and Midwest Center for Holocaust Education, died on Sunday at 90…
Pic of the Day
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez (second from left), meets with the heads of the Israeli military’s aid delegation to the country yesterday.
The rare meeting was held despite Venezuela cutting ties with Israel in 2009, as members of Israel Defense Forces assist the country with search-and-rescue operations following devastating twin earthquakes last month, which killed more than 3,500people, injured thousands more and left nearly 18,000 people homeless.
Birthdays
Ellen Weinberg-Hughes, former ice hockey player, her three sons were seventh, first and fourth picks overall, respectively, in the 2018, 2019 and 2021 NHL Drafts, turns 58
Arthur “Art” Abramson, retired in 2016 after 26 years as executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council, turns 78
Marianne Deborah Williamson, Democratic candidate for president of the U.S. in 2020 and 2024, turns 74
Vicki Barnett, mayor of Farmington Hills, Mich., until 2023, she is a former member of the Michigan state House of Representatives, turns 72
Barbara Ann Radnofsky, attorney and Democratic politician from Texas, turns 70
Howard Gutman, attorney and a former U.S. ambassador to Belgium in the Obama administration, turns 70
Samuel Scott Olens, partner of the global law firm Dentons, was the first Jewish person to win statewide office in Georgia as attorney general, turns 69
Tziporah Malka “Tzipi” Livni, former member of Knesset who had served as Israel’s foreign minister, justice minister, agriculture minister and housing minister, turns 68
Rabbi Joshua Samuel Taub, retired rabbi at Temple Emanuel in Beaumont, Texas
Eli N. Futerman, co-president of Rochester, New York-based Hahn Automotive Warehouse, he is on the board of governors of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester
Mallory Hurwitz Tarcher Lewis, writer, television producer, ventriloquist and puppeteer, turns 64
Marina W. Lewin, SVP and COO of the Jewish Communal Fund
Ron Kampeas, Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency until his retirement from that role at the end of 2024, he continues to write for JTA, turns 66
Steven Richard Sheffey, consultant strategist, policy advisor and writer, he served as corporate counsel to Allstate Insurance for 28 years, turns 66
Dan K. Rosenthal, Americas president of DGA Group, he is a former Clinton White House senior staffer, turns 60
Douglas Belkin, higher education reporter for The Wall Street Journal
Bradford S. “Brad” Lander, Democratic nominee for New York’s 10th Congressional District, turns 57
Meir Raskas, managing director of investor relations for Harbor Group International
Eyal Boers, Israeli film director, producer and researcher, turns 51
Jenna H. Ben-Yehuda, EVP of the Atlantic Council
Robbie Medwed, Atlanta-based educator, activist and writer
Ariel Jacob Helwani, sports journalist, known for his coverage of mixed martial arts and professional wrestling, turns 44
Alon Sachar, senior legal counsel at Horizons Law and Consulting
Stefanie Feldman, policy and communications consultant following four years as an assistant to the president during the Biden administration, turns 38
Amichai Stein, diplomatic correspondent at The Jerusalem Post and i24NEWS
