Your Daily Phil: Innovation ‘thinkubator’ Jumpstart comes to a close
Good Monday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the reactions to the latest release of Israeli hostages, who were starved and reportedly tortured. We report on the closure of the Jewish innovation “thinkubator”Jumpstart and on an initiative to return books looted by Nazis to their rightful owners. We feature an opinion piece by Donald Summers highlighting strategic missteps nonprofits should avoid; and Idana Goldberg makes her debut as the newest contributor to The 501(C) Suite, eJewishPhilanthropy’s exclusive opinion column where leading foundation executives share what they are working on and thinking about with the wider philanthropic field. Also in this newsletter: Jeffrey Lurie, Clarence B. Jones and Jeremy Leibler.
What We’re Watching
The Israel branch of the pluralist Hadar Institute will host a screening tonight of the documentary “Centered: Joe Lieberman,” followed by an onstage discussion with the former vice presidential candidate’s stepson and rosh yeshiva of Hadar, Rabbi Ethan Tucker.
Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund is inaugurating the “Iron Swords Forest,” Israel’s largest memorial forest, tomorrow morning near Be’eri Forest, just outside the Gaza Strip, in honor of the victims and fallen soldiers from the Oct. 7 terror attacks and the Israel-Hamas war.
The Israel Climate Change Conference will kick off tomorrow morning at Beersheva’s Ben-Gurion University.
The Paley Foundation will hold its 10th anniversary conference tomorrow morning, focused on “Israel’s security challenges and the Haredi society,” featuring former top military officials and politicians from across the political spectrum.
What You Should Know
The images of Or Levy, Eli Sharabi and Ohad Ben Ami emerging gaunt, starved and pale from Hamas captivity on Saturday viscerally confirmed what had long been known through military intelligence assessments, interviews with other released captives and media reports — that the hostages, specifically the men, are being deliberately starved and severely mistreated, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
As he was paraded across a stage in front of a mob of armed, masked men, Sharabi — whose entire family was murdered in the Oct. 7 massacres — gave a glimpse into the psychological torture that he was subjected to, being pressed by his captor to tell the crowd that he was “happy to be returing to my family, my friends, to my wife and my daughters.” He only learned of their deaths upon returning to Israel.
Though there was joy at Ben Ami’s reunion with his wife, who had also been taken hostage, and daughters and at Levy, whose wife was murdered in the attacks (which he also had not been told while in captivity), returning to his 3-year-old son, the general response in Israel and beyond to the release of the three hostages was markedly different than in the previous rounds.
Almost immediately comparisons were made to the similarly skeletal images of survivors of the Holocaust. And in the days since their release, a fuller, more dire picture of their suffering over the past 16 months has emerged. Family members of the hostages have shared with the Israeli press their loved ones’ experiences in captivity: being choked, gagged, burned and more.
The family of one hostage told Israel’s Channel 13 that in some cases the hostages were forced to choose which of them would — and wouldn’t — be given food. Another told Channel 12 that he was kept chained to the floor for 15 months, having to relearn to walk shortly before his release.
“These brutal conditions have severe health consequences. [There is a] significant decline in their conditions, which raises deep and serious concerns about the fates of those who remain in captivity,” a senior doctor at Sheba Medical Center, which received two of the hostages, told reporters.
The released hostages also brought information about those still in captivity, including those whose fates were previously unknown, such as Alon Ohel, who was held with Sharabi and Levy and who turned 24 today. “He has shrapnel in his eye, he has shrapnel in his shoulder, he has shrapnel in his arm. My Alon was bound — bound! — in chains, this entire time, and they had almost no food,” Ohel’s mother, Idit, said on Channel 12 last night based on information she had recently been given. “I don’t think there’s a single mother who could accept that her son is hungry — hungry for food — and chained in shackles for so many days,” she sobbed, demanding that he be released “tomorrow.”
The hostages’ emaciated conditions and news about their treatment, and that of the remaining hostages, have spurred renewed calls for the Israeli government to see through the full hostage-release and cease-fire deal, despite opposition from some ministers and parts of Israeli society to the agreement, which would entail having the Israeli military permanently withdraw from Gaza and leave Hamas in power. For other parts of Israeli society, mainly on the right, Hamas’ treatment of the hostages has reinforced their determination for Israel to abandon the agreement and resume military operations to destroy the terror group.
“The images of Eli, Ohad and Or upon their release are deeply distressing. Starved and tortured by Hamas terrorists,” American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch said. “This is a race against time. Every hostage must come home. Now.”
In a video statement, Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, whose son Hersh was kidnapped from the same bomb shelter as Levy and was later executed by Hamas terrorists, called on President Donald Trump and his Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff to renegotiate the hostage-release deal to make it “bigger and faster — All 76 hostages out this week. End of war. Who benefits from dragging it out for so long? Not the people of this region. Let’s get it done right now.”
Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while flying to the Super Bowl in New Orleans yesterday, Trump indicated an interest in just that. “They looked like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition,” he said. “I don’t know how much longer we can take that… We’re going to lose our patience.”
END OF AN ERA
After nearly 17 years, innovation-focused Jumpstart comes to a stop
Amid what would later be recognized as a “boom” in Jewish nonprofit innovation, Felicia Herman remembers a conversation she had with the founders of Jumpstart — Joshua Avedon and Shawn Landres — at an event for Jewish startup leaders in 2008. At the event, co-hosted by the Samuel Bronfman Foundation and The Natan Fund (which Herman was then executive director of), Landres proposed a “quick and dirty” survey of the field to establish a baseline ahead of the emerging financial crisis. That survey, the field-defining Jewish Innovation Ecosystem report, was a jumping off point for Jumpstart, the research and design lab that — through a combination of data, best practices and fiscal sponsorship — both chronicled and helped catalyze the “boom.” Now, nearly 17 years later, the California-based “thinkubator” will be winding down over the next few months, after concluding its operations on Dec. 31, 2024, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.
A finite endeavor: Jumpstart went on to support a number of initiatives through its fiscal sponsorship program, including Sefaria, Haggadot.com, the Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, Jewish Free Loan Chicago, Jewish Solar Challenge, JLens Investor Network, Muslim-Jewish Conference, Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom and Tzedek America. According to a statement, all remaining sponsored projects have either moved to new platforms or to their own tax-exempt entities. “We’ve always had the sense of Jumpstart, not being an infinite organization,” Landres told eJP. With initiatives like UpStart labs still actively working to steward emerging Jewish initiatives, Avedon said he feels confident stepping away: “We’re pleased about where things have landed. This is a great time to say goodbye.”
LITERARY JUSTICE
Restitution project genealogists track down rightful heirs of Nazi-looted books
When Amos Guiora saw the email drop into his inbox he had no idea what to make of it. He didn’t recognize the sender, but the subject line startled him: Schlomo Nathan Goldberg, the name of his paternal grandfather who perished in Auschwitz in 1944. “It was 11:30 at night and the subject line was my grandfather’s name,” recalled the law professor, who splits his time between Salt Lake City and Israel. “I had tears in my eyes — I was blown away.” The message came from an amateur genealogist who was volunteering with the Looted Books Project, a joint initiative of JewishGen’s Kalikow Genealogy Center at the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Leo Baeck Institute, which is working with Leibl Rosenberg, of the Jewish community in Nuremberg, Germany, to restitute 9,000 books that were looted from victims of the Nazi regime and found in the library of a notorious Nazi, Julius Streicher, at the end of World War II, Lianne Kolirin reports for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Decades of work: Rosenberg has spent more than 30 years researching the provenance of these books, which are currently held at the Nuremberg Municipal Library, in order to return them to their rightful heirs. The number of books being repatriated is now on the rise thanks to the scores of volunteers who have come onboard. In just three months they have tracked down 87 heirs — some of whom are inheriting multiple titles — including Guiora. Guiora is now eagerly awaiting the arrival of four volumes of Talmudic text, all of which bear his grandfather’s name in Hebrew and are being dispatched at the expense of the German government.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
THE 501(C) SUITE
The art of asking good questions
“When aspiring professionals ask me about necessary competencies for foundation work, they often expect me to emphasize financial acumen or strategic planning,” writes Idana Goldberg, CEO of the Russell Berrie Foundation, in the latest installment of The 501(C) Suite. “While these matter, I consistently return something more fundamental: the ability to ask the right questions.”
Ask wisely, listen well: “As our team experiments with generative AI tools to enhance our effectiveness and generate new knowledge, we’re learning that the quality of our questions directly determines the usefulness of the answers. And in our climate of hyper-polarization, where certainty squelches curiosity, the humility inherent in asking questions can build bridges and open minds. We mustn’t use questions to avoid the hard work of research and analysis, or of actually listening to the answers. Good questions come from understanding the context, history and what you’re trying to achieve — whether as a grantee or a grantmaker. In philanthropy, our most insightful questions often come after studying an issue, understanding the landscape and grappling with the complexities of creating meaningful change. In conflict, breakthroughs emerge when questions create space for reflection, exploration and discovery. Questions emerge from knowledge, not in place of it, and are meaningless if you don’t open yourself to the possibility of hearing something unexpected in the answers.”
BEST PRACTICES
Random kindness or real change?
“Random Acts of Kindness Week is a once-a-year, worldwide reminder to ‘make kindness the norm.’ It is precisely the sort of positive, change-oriented thinking that drives almost every nonprofit organization,” writes Donald Summers, founder and CEO of Altruist Partners LLC and founder and executive director of the Altruist Accelerator, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Yet how much randomness is actually at play here? If people around the world start making a conscious and collective effort to inject more kindness into their day, it’s suddenly not so random at all.”
Key insights: “So why the lack of randomness? Because that’s what works. If you’re actually trying to ‘make kindness the norm,’ you need a plan — even if that plan is counterintuitively built around randomness. This is a lesson every nonprofit organization needs to learn. Failures in philanthropy aren’t about anything unknowable. They aren’t about something random. Quite the contrary, quantitative studies of nonprofit failure are becoming increasingly common. And what’s the underlying lesson? Nonprofits fail for predictable, not-so-random reasons. After decades of evaluating organizations at every level, these are the five not-so-random reasons for failure I’ve noticed most often.”
Worthy Reads
Feeling the Strain: In USA Today, Clarence B. Jones, Martin Luther King Jr.’s adviser, lawyer and draft speechwriter who was featured in the Super Bowl ad produced last year by Robert Kraft’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, expresses concern that the Black community in America is being asked by the Jewish community to throw unconditional support behind Israel’s war in Gaza, or else be accused of abandoning the Black-Jewish relationship. “In my estimation, the armed assault by Hamas on Israel’s music festival and its surrounding Jewish communities on Oct. 7, 2023, marked not only the start of the Gaza war but also the beginning of the end of the Black-Jewish civil rights coalition in the United States… Decades of 24/7 African American support wasn’t sufficient to many Jewish organizations and leaders. Now, to be authentic if you were a Black leader, your support in the Black-Jewish coalition is only ‘acceptable’ if you also support the actions of Israel, right or wrong… Blacks are not being asked; they’re being challenged to a loyalty oath of action — you support Israel’s fight against Hamas or, de facto, you don’t support our domestic Jewish struggle against antisemitism… My hope is that we begin to reconsider and untangle the issues between a sacred way of life — Judaism — and a geopolitical situation, tied to very earthly things indeed, before the very deep bonds of these two groups of persecuted Americans permanently shears apart.” [USAToday]
What We’re Fighting For: In The Jerusalem Post, Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, urges funders not to focus their resources on raising awareness of and combating post-Oct. 7 antisemitism to the exclusion of other important needs. “If we allow Oct. 7 to define Jewish identity purely through the lens of trauma, it may deepen engagement for a time — but it will not last. The coming years must be about more than fighting hate. They must be about ensuring that Jewish life — rooted in education, literacy, and connection to Israel — thrives on its own terms. This is where Jewish philanthropy must be strategic. Over the past 15 months, I have dedicated nearly all my energy to combating antisemitism in Australia and confronting a government that failed to stand by Israel in its time of need. I have raised funds for these efforts and understand their necessity. But I am deeply concerned that the pendulum is swinging too far. If we allocate resources disproportionately toward fighting antisemitism, we risk neglecting the very thing we are trying to protect: a thriving, meaningful Jewish identity.” [JPost]
Turn Off the Autopilot: In his substack newsletter “Moneyball Judaism,” Rabbi Joshua Rabin warns against “metacognitive myopia” — the habit of blindly accepting information as fact if it is presented as backed up by a data sample. “In the Jewish community, we have a relatively small number of people and institutions who produce large data samples, and much of the data produced comes from organizations that paid someone a large sum of money to do third-party evaluations. In neither case is this ideal, and while that should not stop any institution from producing these samples, both are a good reminder that we should show more caution before we start reflexively saying that ‘the data shows X.’ … Consider reading Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There by our friends Tali Sharot and Cass Sunstein (S&S) for an excellent playbook on improving our mental muscle stretching. Look Again primarily focuses on what S&S calls ‘dishabituation,’ breaking the temptation to operate our minds on autopilot… I think that the Jewish Community makes decisions based on what appears to be visible when, in fact, we know that the future of Jewish future is always somewhat murky. Original thinkers can help us gently see what truths might change how we do our work by dishabituating our assumptions and developing better ways to see what might already be there.” [MoneyballJudaism]
Who Owns the Holocaust?: In The Wall Street Journal, David Mamet argues that ownership of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp should be given to Israel, citing the precedent set by France and Canada in World War I. “The true lesson of the Nazis’ depravity is that all of us have a proclivity for atrocity. Our human capacity for evil is neither limited nor expungeable. It surfaced, undeniably, in the massacre of Oct. 7, and continued in the world’s reaction: hatred of Israel and the Jews. Human depravity is universal. Approaching 80, I wonder less at its presence than at its absence. The Battle of Vimy Ridge took place over three days in April 1917. It was fought and won in France by Canadian troops, four divisions fighting together, with 3,598 killed and some 7,000 wounded. It was a signal victory of Canadian arms… Canadian forces were fighting in France, for France. In 1922 France ceded the site of the battlefield to Canada for use as a memorial park. The names of the Canadian fallen are carved on the Vimy Ridge Monument and it is maintained by Canada.” [WSJ]
Word on the Street
The Philadelphia Eagles, owned by businessman and philanthropist Jeffrey Lurie, defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl LIX last night in New Orleans…
The Eagles Autism Foundation, headed by Philadelphia Eagles CEO and Chair Jeffrey Lurie, has awarded grants totaling $8.1 million to support projects specializing in autism research and care. Recipients include A.J. Drexel Autism Institute, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Autism Research at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Special Olympics Pennsylvania…
Several of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s donors and associates joined him for Shabbat at Washington’s Willard InterContinental Hotel, including: Simon Falic and members of his family; Sonny Sassoon; Moshe Levy; and former WeWork CEO-turned-real estate investor Adam Neumann, who gave the dvar Torah at Shabbat morning services and led singing and dancing. (Netanyahu attended Friday night kiddush, but not Saturday morning services.) The Falic family prepared siddurs and tallit cases prepared with “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s Visit to Washington – Shvat 5785” printed on them in Hebrew, reports Jewish Insider‘s Lahav Harkov…
President Donald Trump has said he will dismiss several board members of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, including its longtime chairman, philanthropist, investor and presidential historian David Rubenstein, and make himself chairman. The Kennedy Center stated Friday evening that it had not been contacted by the White House about board changes but confirmed that some members had received termination notices…
A research paper in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, a peer-reviewed journal published by Nature Portfolio, presents its findings in a study of the educational beit midrash as a bridge between religious and secular Jewish identity…
The New York Jewish Week spotlights how a decline in synagogue affiliation among non-Orthodox Jews has sparked a trend of more stylish Shabbat celebrations for New York City’s 20-and-30-something Jews, with pickle martinis, challah in honeycomb edible centerpieces and popular Jewish comedian Modi Rosenfeld, who is also a cantor, leading guests in communal kiddush…
A Brandeis University Cohen Center finds that the Birthright Israel program fosters lasting connections to Judaism and Jewish life, including a 72% likelihood that participants would have a significant feeling of connection to Israel…
The Times of Israel highlights the donation model of Israeli nonprofit Tmura as it partners with early-stage startups obtaining stock options, which — if the company is acquired — it converts into funding for nonprofits especially those working with children in need. Israeli tech companies are now also contributing shares to aid national recovery…
In a New York Times opinion piece, Parents Circle-Family Forum member Meytal Ofer calls for a change in Palestinian and Israeli leadership to break the “cycle of loss and pain,” as her father’s killer is released as part of the agreement to free Israeli hostages kept captive by Hamas…
The Kyiv Independent spotlights Ukrainian Jewish efforts to translate the Torah and Jewish texts into Ukrainian (instead of Russian) for the first time, an endeavor that began before Moscow’s invasion of the country but has taken on newfound importance during the war…
Rebbetzin Sarah Proops has been appointed director of the Orthodox Union’s new Emerging Career Professionals department…
Kim Isaac was named vice president of advancement for Americans for Ben-Gurion University…
The New York Times spotlights Elizabeth Rand, an attorney and mother of a New York University freshman, and the nonprofit she founded two years ago, Mothers Against College Antisemitism, where she has advocated for deportation of foreign students who support Hamas…
In an opinion piece in The Jewish News of Northern California, University of California, Berkeley, professor Ron Hassner — who rose to prominence when he began sleeping in his office until the school took action against antisemitism — defends those efforts amid a new probe by the Department of Education, even as he criticizes the administrators leading them for having “deeply rooted” indifference to Jews and expressions of antisemitism…
The Anti-Defamation League has added five new members to its board of directors: Steven E. Fineman, Jonathan Kolber, Paula B. Pretlow, Oliver Weisberg and Max Neuberger, the publisher of eJewishPhilanthropy, Jewish Insider and The Circuit…
The Economist reviews how Guatemalan officials are grappling with the fringe ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect Lev Tahor, long accused of child abuse, which has taken up residency in the country. The police recently took 140 children from the sect into custody…
Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, posted dozens of antisemitic, racist and homophobic social media posts on X over the weekend; his account was eventually suspended…
Cryptocurrency venture funds are reporting an increase of capital from endowments and foundations as universities and charitable organizations rush in to build bitcoin portfolios spurred by President Donald Trump’s pledge to make the U.S. a digital currencies “superpower”…
Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) and Tim Burchett (R-TN) introduced a resolution to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Roddie Edmonds, a World War II soldier who saved hundreds of Jewish-American troops…
Columbia, S.C., philanthropist and business leader John David Baker died Feb. 2 at 69…
Amal Nasser el-Din, Israel Prize laureate, former Likud Knesset member and founder of the Druze Yad Labanim House memorial for fallen soldiers, died on Sunday at 96…
Pic of the Day
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets on Friday with 30 Jewish college students and recent graduates at the Willard InterContinental Hotel near the White House to discuss antisemitism on American college campuses.
“If you fight, you’ll be respected. If you bow your head, you’ll be despised and not respected. You’ve gotta fight. That’s the most important thing,” Netanyahu told the roundtable of students, who came from universities including Harvard, Georgetown Law School, George Washington University and University of Pennsylvania, report Gabby Deutch and Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Attendees included Julia Wax Vanderwiel, founder and president of Georgetown Law Zionists; Shabbos Kestenbaum, a recent Harvard graduate who is suing the university over its handling of antisemitism; and Sabrina Soffer, president of Chabad at GW. “[Netanyahu] spoke about working with [President Donald] Trump on the recent executive orders to combat antisemitism and the need for us to keep fighting and call out this hatred,” said Kestenbaum. Friday’s meeting came at the end of Netanyahu’s weeklong trip to Washington, where he met with Trump in the Oval Office, congressional leaders on Capitol Hill and evangelical leaders in his hotel, but his visit did not include a meeting with leaders of Jewish organizations.
Birthdays
Former NASA astronaut, famous for his mezuzah in the International Space Station, he is a consultant for SpaceX, Garrett Reisman…
Founder and owner of the River Island fashion brand and clothing chain, Bernard Lewis… CEO of Metromedia Company and a board member of cruise line operator Carnival Corporation, Stuart Subotnick… Rabbi in Vienna, Austria, in the 1980s, in Munich in the 1990s and in Berlin since 1997, Yitshak Ehrenberg… Swimmer who won seven gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Mark Spitz… CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Robert Allen “Bob” Iger… Miami-based philanthropist Jayne Harris Abess… Host of CNBC’s “Mad Money,” James J. “Jim” Cramer… CEO emerita of D.C.-based Jewish Women International, Loribeth Weinstein… Ethiopian-born, former member of Knesset for the Likud party, he is an activist for the Falash Mura community, Avraham Neguise… Syndicated newspaper columnist for the Boston Globe, Jeff Jacoby… U.S. senator (D-DE) since the beginning of this year, Lisa Blunt Rochester… Member of the Maryland House of Delegates since 2003, Anne R. Kaiser… Senior director of philanthropic engagement for the central division of the Anti-Defamation League, Matthew Feldman… Executive director of Ohio Jewish Communities, Howie Beigelman… Israeli pop star and part of the duo “TYP” also known as The Young Professionals, Ivri Lider… Co-founder and principal at the bipartisan public policy firm Klein/Johnson Group, Israel “Izzy” Klein… Israeli musician, David “Dudu” Tassa… CEO at Citizen Data, Mindy Finn… COO of Richmond-based Untangled Media Group, Michelle Levi Noe… Partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Venable where he leads the firm’s autonomous and connected mobility group, Ariel S. Wolf… Manager of global sales operations at Sygnia, Avital Mannis Eyal… Retired NFL quarterback, he was the tenth overall pick in the 2018 NFL Draft, now an MBA candidate at Wharton, Josh Rosen… Israeli singer, songwriter and dancer, Jonathan Ya’akov Mergui…
