Your Daily Phil: Inside KKL-JNF’s wartime budget
Add EJP on GoogleGood Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the recent approval of the Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund budget for 2026, along with a number of war-related emergency allocations. We report on the Nazarian Family Foundation moving its endowment at the University of Southern California from its arts school to Judaic studies for an antisemitism-related program, and on Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s Department of Homeland Security confirmation hearing, where he promised to streamline the process for nonprofit security grants. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi David Singer about moving beyond “the bumper-sticker version” of pluralism and one by Joshua Avedon reflecting on the trajectory of Jewish communal innovation in a post-Oct. 7 world. Also in this issue: Gershom Gorenberg, Jordan Hirsch and Rabbi Dimitry Ekshtut.
What We’re Watching
At least five people were killed in overnight strikes from Iran, including a foreign worker in Moshav Adanim in central Israel and four Palestinian women in the West Bank village of Beit Awwa.
Stardust Fertility, a nonprofit helping subsidize Jewish couples’ fertility costs, is holding its fourth-annual gala tonight in New York City. If you’re there, say hi to eJP’s Nira Dayanim!
Also in New York, The Altneu Synagogue is hosting a gift-wrapping event this evening for children from single-parent families.
What You Should Know
As Eyal Ostrinsky, chair of Keren Kayemet LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund, discussed the organization’s allocations in recent weeks, in a conversation this week with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross, he repeatedly realized that there was something else he wanted to share, peppering the conversation with “oh, and one more thing,” “I nearly forgot” and “I also have to mention” — a sign of both the recent flurry of activity by the KKL-JNF board and the growing needs of the country, as the war with Iran and Hezbollah drags on, exacting a growing toll.
Most significantly, last week, the KKL-JNF board unanimously approved the organization’s NIS 1.87 billion ($598 million) budget for 2026, which includes increases for land management and education, a highly unusual allocation for the Druze community of southern Syria and — in a rare move for the organization — a decrease in overhead costs. The passage itself was a point of pride for Ostrinsky, who said he hoped to get the budget approved within two months after he was appointed to the role in early January. “We are doing things through dialogue. We are working with everyone, even with [the religious Zionists], the Likud, the Haredim,” he said on Tuesday.
But in addition to the overall budget, the KKL-JNF board has also approved a number of emergency allocations in recent weeks, directly connected to the ongoing war with Iran and Hezbollah, the latter of which is again pummeling Israel’s hard-hit northernmost communities.
In light of major missile strikes in the central Israeli city of Beit Shemesh and southern city of Beersheva, KKL-JNF allocated NIS 2.5 million ($800,000) last week in emergency aid to each municipality. A portion of that will go to funding emergency support on the ground, while another NIS 1.5 million ($480,000) will go to fortification-related initiatives, based on the needs of the city. In Beersheva, Ostrinsky said, the funds will go toward improving public bomb shelters, where residents who do not have fortified rooms in their homes or buildings have been taking cover from Iranian attacks. In Beit Shemesh, the city found that there was a need to install small portable bomb shelters in parts of the city that did not have sufficient fortifications.
Earlier this week, KKL-JNF also allocated NIS 7 million ($2.3 million) for northern communities. Unlike in Israel’s fall 2024 war against Hezbollah, in this conflict, the northern kibbutzim, moshavim and villages along the border with Lebanon have not been evacuated. “We spoke with local mayors to understand their needs,” Ostrinsky said. “There’s no evacuation this time, so they need respite.” The bulk of the funding — NIS 5.5 million ($1.8 million) — will therefore go toward funding vacations for roughly 5,000 of northern residents, providing them with a few days of relaxation in hotels in less-targeted parts of the country over the Passover holiday. The remaining NIS 1.5 million ($480,000) is allocated for “humanitarian cases,” those who need to temporarily leave because of the Hezbollah attacks, Ostrinsky said.
In addition, the organization, in partnership with the Jewish Agency, is providing NIS 2.5 million ($800,000) to Masa Israel as some 900 participants of its programs are unable to leave the country due to airspace closures in light of ongoing Iranian attacks. The amount is being matched by the Israeli government in order to cover the unexpected costs of having those participants stay in the country at least through the Passover holiday. “As soon as we appreciated the extent of the crisis where hundreds of students will remain in Israel during a time when they would typically be on vacation and not in a supervised structure, we knew we needed to find a solution,” Roi Abecassis, deputy chair of KKL-JNF and the top representative of the religious Zionist World Mizrachi movement in the so-called National Institutions. “We are deeply grateful that KKL, together with our partners, recognized the nature of the challenge and are providing this critical funding to continue to operate during these difficult times.”
CAMPUS BEAT
Squeezed by BDS, Nazarians shift USC endowment to Judaic studies, with HUC antisemitism program
Shortly before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel, Sharon Nazarian ensured that her new UCLA course on global antisemitism would be housed in the global studies department, deliberately choosing a diverse student body over the more niche Jewish or Israel studies departments. But in response to rising Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activity on campuses since Oct. 7, Nazarian and her family’s philanthropic organization, the Younes & Soroya Nazarian Family Foundation, announced a pivot this week, partnering with Hebrew Union College for a new initiative at University of Southern California’s Louchheim School for Judaic Studies, reports Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Renewed purpose: Initially, the family’s gift was earmarked for USC’s school of fine arts, established as an annual endowment for a guest lecturer from Israel, but “deans of that school refused to host Israeli scholars and academics within the arts and humanities,” Nazarian, a USC alum, told eJP. “So this is a repurposing of that endowment, and we’re thankful to USC for agreeing and honoring our wishes as donors to put the endowment towards something even more critically important today, which is the study of contemporary antisemitism in the U.S. and around the world.”
HEARING SPOTLIGHT
Markwayne Mullin vows to improve security grant program in DHS nomination hearing
In his nomination hearing to be secretary of homeland security, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he will aim to “streamline the process” for grants, including the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP) aimed at helping harden religious institutions, amid heightened antisemitism and increased threats during the ongoing war in Iran, Matthew Shea and Marc Rod report for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
‘Laser focused’: When pressed by senators on the need to unlock NSGP funding in the wake of the violent attack at Temple Israel in suburban Detroit last week, Mullin agreed that the process should be streamlined and said he would aim to “cut out the redundancies” and “amount of paperwork.” Mullin said that while he may have political differences with some of the lawmakers on the committee, this issue “isn’t one” of them and that he would be “laser focused and get this resolved.”
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
COMMUNAL CONVERSATIONS
Pluralism is a Jewish survival skill
“Spend enough time in Jewish spaces, and you will hear both narratives repeated as fact: Liberal Jews are distancing themselves from Israel, and Reform Jews are uncomfortable with Zionism,” writes Rabbi Tracy Kaplowitz, director of Amplify Israel at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “There is truth here, but only partial truth — and partial truths, when left unexamined, harden into assumptions that distort our decision-making and weaken our communal future.”
Ready and willing: “What liberal Jews want is honest engagement. They want moral seriousness, complexity and relationship — not slogans or litmus tests. They want to encounter an Israel that reflects their values as well as their questions. And when that Israel is made visible, they show up. … Over time, the movement’s absence [as a Birthright trip provider] reinforced a false binary: that one must choose between being pro-Israel or progressive, committed or critical, engaged or ethical. But in the intervening years, we at Stephen Wise Free Synagogue believed that there was still a hunger for Israel experiences among liberal Jews. So, we decided to test our theory.”
INNOVATION’S ARC
The vision persists
“I think we are seeing a new phase of the Jewish innovation arc, one where the investment made by funders over the past three decades is paying dividends: there is a capable Jewish workforce with a baked-in innovation instinct,” writes Joshua Avedon, an executive coach and co-founder of Jumpstart Labs, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “To understand that we need to understand the very real differences between the context that permitted the innovation boom and the environment we now find ourselves in.”
Whole new world: “For the past 30 years, Jewish social innovators, community builders and entrepreneurial rabbis have been instantiating a vibrant Jewish future, one that arose out of a belief that 20th-century concerns of the Jewish community were in the rear-view mirror. Now that metastatic antisemitism, Zionism-in-crisis, and even democracy-imperiled America dominate the discourse, we need to look differently at Jewish innovation — where it lives now and how it moves.”
Worthy Reads
Stuck on Repeat: In The Atlantic, Gershom Gorenberg offers a window into the internal state of Israelis under fire today. “In our lives, the current war has gone on for two and a half years, with intermissions just long enough to raise hope of normalcy that is shattered when fighting resumes. This morning’s siren is a replay of June’s siren, and the siren of autumn 2024, and that of autumn 2023. This is not a new war. It is the same war on a loop of exhaustion, adrenaline, and worry for your children. To those feelings I must add despair and frustration with the apparent determination of my government to maintain the loop endlessly.” [TheAtlantic]
Jordan’s Ark: In The Baltimore Jewish Times, Andrew Guckes examines the Ark Initiative, a program launched by Jordan Hirsch aimed at strengthening the local Jewish day school, inspired by Dan Senor’s State of World Jewry address last year. “‘There was a line in his speech where he applauded a major financier for giving an incredible amount of money to Tel Aviv University. He said, “this is wonderful, but who’s going to do that for us in the United States?”’ Hirsch thought about it, and realized that it would take mobilization from everyday people like himself to step up. ‘It kind of hit me all of a sudden that we can’t wait for a savior to come out of the sky. We need to build it ourselves. And that’s really the genesis of the Ark Initiative, which is really giving us a stake in our own future and giving us a sense of empowerment and agency over that future,’ Hirsch said. … It is garnering funds to invest in more teachers, stronger security, connections to and work with Israel, an expanded alumni network and increased scholarship opportunities.” [JewishTimes]
Word on the Street
San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum announced yesterday that it is selling its building in the city’s downtown; this comes just over a year after the cash-strapped institution closed its doors to restructure…
Hackers took over the religious publication Yeshiva World News yesterday in a cyber attack that appears to have been directed by Iran…
The Kennedy Center board voted to shut down the institution for two years for renovations and to install Matt Floca as CEO and executive director, succeeding Richard Grenell…
The Special Children Center of Brooklyn held a ribbon-cutting ceremony as it opened its doors yesterday…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy examines the sudden increase in donations to donor-advised funds at the end of 2025 in light of changes to the tax code that went into effect this year; read eJP’s report on how the Jewish Federation Bay Area capitalized on this to significantly increase its DAF holdings…
The IRS and FBI are partnering on an effort to investigate links between nonprofit groups and domestic terrorism, following a December directive from the Justice Department instructing federal agencies to look into alleged “tax crimes” of extremist groups…
Argentina assumed the presidency of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance for a one-year term…
Belgian lawmakers said the government would begin deploying military troops to protect Jewish sites in the country following an explosion last week at a synagogue in Liège…
The Boulder, Colo., Jewish Community Center completed the installation of a new solar power system on its roof, which is expected to save the building $1.8 million in energy costs…
Tel Aviv University is creating a new admissions framework for IDF veterans with disabilities for the upcoming academic year, similar to the one in place for active reservists, allowing them to be admitted for undergraduate programs without the need for a psychometric exam…
Bloomberg reports that the Wexner Foundation donated $185,000 to the Interlochen Center for the Arts, in a gift that was apparently directed by disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who allegedly sexually abused a summer camper at the center; the revelation raises fresh questions about the role he played in Leslie Wexner’s foundation, which has repeatedly denied that Epstein had control over its funds…
Major Gifts
The Los Angeles Times spotlights the installation of Francis Bacon’s “Three Studies of Lucian Freud” triptych, worth $142.4 million, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the paintings were donated to the museum by Elaine Wynn upon her death last year…
The religious Zionist World Mizrachi movement is distributing more than NIS 800,000 ($256,000) in grants to some 400 married students who are enrolled in a hesder yeshiva, a program that combines military service with religious study; the funding for the grants was provided by the Lamm family of Melbourne, Australia, “and a dedicated circle of friends”…
Montgomery County, Md., announced $500,000 in supplemental funding for the nonprofit security grant program for faith-based and nonprofit organizations in the wake of last week’s attack at Temple Israel outside Detroit…
Transitions
Rabbi Dimitry Ekshtut has been named the next head of Mem Global’s Base Manhattan…
American Jewish University added Robert Richman, a former Zappos culture strategist and best-selling author, to its 2050 Institute…
Pic of the Day
Senior figures from Yeshiva University present Rabbi Yaakov Neuburger, the school’s Segals Chair in Talmud (second from right), with the Amud HaTorah v’HaMesorah Award on Monday night at its annual dinner, which was attended by some 700 students, alumni and faculty.
The university also honored philanthropist Elliot Gibber, vice chair of the YU board of trustees and a trustee of the school’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS), and Rabbi Dovid Miller, the rosh kollel of the rabbinical seminary’s Israel Kollel.
“Our honorees have dedicated their lives to shaping generations of talmidei chachamim [learned scholars] and Torah leaders,” said Rabbi Yosef Kalinsky, the administrative dean at RIETS and dean of undergraduate Torah studies, at the event. “We are deeply grateful to them and to the many supporters who came out in such inspiring numbers to celebrate and strengthen the mission of our Yeshiva.”ractice, a pipeline and leadership. This will impact the lives of tens of thousands of Jewish students.”
Birthdays
Brazilian-born entrepreneur and angel investor, he is one of the co-founders of Facebook, Eduardo Luiz Saverin turns 44…
Chairman of the board of Americans for Democracy in the Middle-East, he is the rabbi of Temple Israel of the Poconos, in Stroudsburg, Pa., Daniel M. Zucker turns 77… Israeli politician, the daughter of slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Dalia Rabin-Pelossof turns 76… Former executive editor of The New York Times, the first woman to ever hold that post, Jill Abramson turns 72… NYC-based real estate investor, he is one of three co-founders of the Tribeca Film Festival, Craig Hatkoff turns 72… Musician, composer, singer and songwriter, he was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and now lives in Jerusalem, Yehuda Julio Glantz turns 68… Actor, stand-up comedian and author, Fred Stoller turns 68… Executive vice president of merchandising at American Signature Furniture, a Schottenstein company, Steven D. Rabe turns 66… Writer, critic and author, he writes often about klezmer, Jewish music and Bob Dylan, Seth Rogovoy… Retired partner at Latham & Watkins, Jonathan R. Rod turns 66… Neurologist in Naples, Fla., Brian D. Wolff, MD… Member of the New York state Assembly, Stacey Pheffer Amato turns 60… Former collegiate and professional tennis player, now first vice chair of Camp Ramah Darom, Stacey Schefflin Slomka turns 58… Dean of students at Reichman University (formerly known as IDC Herzliya), she was previously a member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Dr. Adi Koll turns 50… Online producer, writer and director, who together with his brother Rafi, are best known for their React video series, Benny Fine turns 45… Former director of North American staff at Taglit-Birthright Israel, Aaron Bock… Member of the New York City Council, Lincoln P. Restler turns 42… Founder of two lines of jewelry, the Brave Collection in 2012, and Zahava (Golden, in Hebrew) in 2018, Jessica Hendricks Yee… Line producer at NBCUniversal in NYC, Emma Gottlieb… Discus thrower, he represented the USA at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, Samuel Harrison Mattis turns 32…
