Your Daily Phil: Iran be damned: Maccabiah officials ‘100%’ believe games will go on
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the Maccabiah Games’ — and other Israel trips’ — plans to open this summer despite the ongoing war with Iran, and spotlight an Israeli initiative helping women overcome the “broken rung” in the tech sector and advanced to senior roles. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Joshua Rabin on measuring institutional success, and one by Orit Mizner about mentoring Israeli nonprofit leaders. Also in this issue: Boaz Shalgi, Ben Judah and Jeff and Mei Sze Greene.
What We’re Watching
eJewishPhilanthropy is hosting a panel discussion today at 2 p.m. ET on Israel-Diaspora ties in light of the current war with Iran, featuring Tova Dorfman, Masua Sagiv and Barak Sella, moderated by eJP’s Judah Ari Gross. Register here.
Tikkun Olam Makers is opening a new innovation center this evening at the Shefa School in New York City, with support from UJA-Federation of New York.
What You Should Know
Even as the wars against Iran and Hezbollah grind on and Israeli airspace remains largely closed due to ongoing ballistic missile attacks, in the coming days, Israel trip providers will have to decide whether or not they will forge ahead with plans for this summer — including staging the already postponed Maccabiah Games — report eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim and Judah Ari Gross.
“The window to be able to cancel with the opportunity for a complete refund is closing for most trips that happen early in the summer — let’s say beginning around June — which is many of them,” Anna Langer, the acting executive director of the Israel Educational Travel Alliance, told eJP. “That question is upon us right now, and that is why we are offering day-to-day, one-on-one support to organizations, for them to think about these decisions and for us to help to guide them through thinking about those processes, as well as community spaces for folks to hear from others.”
One of the largest trips this summer will be the Maccabiah Games, which were scheduled to take place last year but were postponed because of that summer’s war between Israel and Iran. While organizers of the event told eJP that they do have a few more weeks before having to make a final decision, they are currently operating under the assumption that the games will open on June 30 as planned. “After Passover… we’re going to have to assess alternatives, but our 100% belief at this moment is the games will take place this summer,” Mike Siegel, president of the Maccabi World Union, told eJP, noting that the games were “already on Plan B,” after being postponed last summer.
Siegel, a former board chair of the Jewish Agency, said that the games hold immense symbolic significance, demonstrating the connection between Diaspora Jews and Israelis. “[I am most looking forward to] having the opportunity to show the people of Israel that the Diaspora is not only talking about solidarity, but we’re going to show up in solidarity,” Siegel said. “That’s probably the best thing that we can do: show up in solidarity for the people who have had to live under these awful conditions. It’s just good to have something normal.”
Last summer’s games were slated to be the largest yet, with some 10,000 athletes from 80 countries due to compete. Roy Hessing, CEO of the Maccabi World Union, told eJP that more than 8,000 athletes are expected to participate in this summer’s games, with roughly 6,000 of them coming from abroad. Hessing noted that this figure does not include the adults who will be accompanying the athletes.
According to Langer, not only has there not been mass cancellations for the Maccabiah Games, but additional athletes have registered to participate in them since the current war with Iran broke out. “The U.S. delegation to the Maccabiah Games had seen an increase in the number of participants signed up at the onset of the war, actually. Very soon after, there was sort of a spike in participation, and that’s a really good indicator of where things are,” Langer said, noting that the same was true with other programs as well.
WOMEN’S WORK
FemForward aims to fix tech sector’s ‘broken rung,’ help Israeli women rise to senior roles
The outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023 not only put a hold on a promised raise for Rose Schwartz, a young Israeli mother working in the high-tech field, but it also turned her life upside down as her husband was called to reserve duty. A week after completing the three-month FemForward program — which helps women in junior roles advance to first-level management — Schwartz successfully secured her significant raise. Less than two years later, Schwartz pivoted into a tech- and data-focused role at a new company with a substantial pay increase — approximately double her previous salary, reports Judith Sudilovsky for eJewishPhilanthropy.
If not me, who?: Established in 2020, the FemForward program addresses the “broken rung” phenomenon in tech, where women struggle to advance from junior to first-level management positions, limiting their presence in senior leadership, co-founder and CEO Rachel Wagner Rosenzweig told eJP. “[We build] this mindset and the idea of [women] taking [their] career into [their] own hands, not waiting for someone else to offer a promotion or a raise,” she said.
VITAL SIGNS
Choosing simplicity over sophistication: the ‘Moneyball Judaism Scorecard’
“If your organization spends endless time in abstract, theoretical conversations while declining on every key metric, the desire for a patina of sophistication may be doing more harm than good,” writes Rabbi Joshua Rabin, author of the Substack “Moneyball Judaism” and rabbi of the Astoria Center of Israel in Queens, N.Y., in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Keep it simple: “I believe that we can learn a lot about the strength of Jewish organizations using relatively simple metrics that are easy to understand, simple to produce and essentially free. … None of these metrics is my creation; all were developed by leaders far more talented than I am. Each takes a cue from Leidy Klotz’s playbook, Subtract: The Untapped Science of Less, recognizing the power of subtracting the pieces of information we need to decipher to get to the heart of the matter.”
HUMAN CAPITAL
Strengthening Israel means strengthening its leaders
“In times of prolonged crisis, the most vulnerable part of any organization is not its funding or its programming. It is the person at the helm,” writes Orit Mizner, COO of Momentum, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “There is a persistent myth in the nonprofit world that leadership is a solitary act of will. We often imagine executives as lone figures making choices in a vacuum. Too often, leaders internalize this, leading to unnecessary isolation.”
How we can help: “In North America, we often relate to Israel through the lens of philanthropy and programming, writing checks to close funding gaps or organizing missions to deepen connection. This support is vital: it is the ‘hardware’ of partnership. But I increasingly believe that executive mentorship is the ‘software’ of Israeli resilience. … Strengthening a leader’s strategic capacity is therefore not an auxiliary investment; it is an investment in the endurance of the entire social fabric.”
Worthy Reads
Rolling With It: In The Times of Israel, Boaz Shalgi, the chief psychologist of the Israeli mental health nonprofit NATAL, describes the struggles facing Israelis from the “rolling trauma” of two-plus years of continuous conflict. “Each new escalation puts a strain on a society already physically and emotionally depleted. Israelis are entering a next phase without the time needed to truly process what they have already endured. At NATAL, Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center, we call this condition ‘rolling trauma.’ It is not a single traumatic event with a beginning and an end, but a continuous process where new threats repeatedly reactivate layers of unresolved stress and fear. … Uncertainty is one of the heaviest burdens during wartime, especially after months of being pushed to our limits. Yet resilience is not the absence of fear. Resilience is the act of continuing to function and care for one another, maintaining our daily lives even as the conflict continues around us.” [TOI]
The Damage is Done: In UnHerd, Ben Judah posits that even when the latest wars with Hamas and Iran are behind us, the enervation of the taboo against antisemitism during this period will have long-term effects. “The effusion of Jew-hatred has reversed decades’ worth of declining antisemitism, as memories of the Holocaust fade, with large numbers of young Brits and Americans now dabbling in the taboo-busting ‘JQ.’ This is online slang for asking the ‘Jewish Question’ and exploring its florid antisemitic answers.” [UnHerd]
Cash in Hand: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Gabriela Aoun Angueira spotlights a Maui nonprofit exploring the effectiveness of monthly cash payments to aid disaster survivors — in this case, people impacted by the 2023 Hawaii wildfires. “Proponents of cash assistance for disasters say it gives people agency over their recovery and flexibility to meet their specific needs. ‘When we let them choose, it unwinds the trauma and gets them out of survival mode faster,’ said Nicole Huguenin, executive director of Maui Rapid Response, the mutual aid nonprofit behind the program. … By the pilot’s end, 80% of recipients reported feeling less anxious or stressed, attributing their improvement to an increased sense of control, being able to help others or spend more time with family.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]
Word on the Street
The Jewish Federation of Detroit has allocated an additional $1 million to local Jewish institutions following the attack on the local Temple Israel earlier this month…
Touro University in New York City opened a new Antisemitism Institute specifically dedicated to combating antisemitism in higher education…
In a photo essay, the Associated Press explores the lives of Israelis as they are forced to repeatedly take cover in bomb shelters, with some even moving into them full-time…
The New York Times looks at the rollout of a new initiative in dozens of New York City public schools to teach Jewish and Muslim American history…
David Simon, known as the “mall king” for leading his family’s real estate companies through three decades that saw the firm acquire more than 200 retail properties, died on Sunday at 64…
Major Gifts
Real estate developer Jeff Greene and his wife, Mei Sze Greene, have donated more than an acre of land to Vanderbilt University for its West Palm Beach, Fla., campus…
A family anonymously donated $10 million to Sheba Medical Center, outside of Tel Aviv, for artificial intelligence-related health care projects…
The British Jewish emergency service Hatzola, whose four ambulances were burned in an apparent antisemitic arson attack, has so far raised more than $1.3 million as part of an emergency response campaign…
After the Shiva, a program of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces , is distributing more than $430,000 to 118 bereaved families of Israel’s fallen soldiers ahead of Passover; the program is also providing the families with gift cards, personalized gifts and other items to help them prepare for the holiday…
Transitions
Pic of the Day
Yad Vashem Chairman Dani Dayan met on Monday at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV. Dayan presented the pontiff with a reproduction of Belgian-Jewish artist Carol Deutsch’s “Where Art Thou?”
Deutsch was murdered in Buchenwald in 1944, and dozens of his pieces were donated by his daughter to Yad Vashem. The decision to give Pope Leo “Where Art Thou?” stemmed from a speech given at Yad Vashem in 2014, in which the late pontiff quoted the biblical passage that inspired the title of the artwork.
Birthdays
Actress, she appeared in every film of the “American Pie” film series from 1999-2012, Alyson Hannigan turns 52…
Beverly Hills-based estate planning attorney, Ronald M. Kabrins turns 88… Co-owner of Baltimore-based Bond Distributing Company until 2022, Rochelle “Ronnie” Footlick… Member of the House of Lords and star of the U.K.’s version of “The Apprentice,” he was the chairman of Tottenham Hotspur, Baron Alan Sugar turns 79… Film and television actress and director, Donna Gail Pescow turns 72… Attorney in Tarzana, Calif., Paul Marshall Leven… AIPAC and Jewish community activist in Austin, Deborah E. Rudy… Owner of Joslynda Capital, Michael Weiss… Former CEO of Microsoft, he is the owner of the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, Steve Ballmer turns 70… Veteran of four NASA space shuttle missions, he had a mezuzah on his bunk in the space shuttle, Scott Jay “Doc” Horowitz turns 69… Professor emerita of art history at Hofstra University and widely published poet, Martha Hollander turns 67… Professional wrestler under a series of ring names, including “The Star of David,” his wrestling career spanned from 1979-2000, Barry Horowitz turns 66… Former president of American Jewish University, the Newseum and Colgate University, Jeffrey Herbst turns 65… CEO of The Female Quotient, Shelley Zalis… Former official at UJA-Federation of New York and JDC, now at 92NY, Laura Spitzer… Actor who is best known for his roles on the Fox medical drama series “House” and the USA Network’s science fiction drama “Colony,” Peter Jacobson turns 61… Founding partner and chief strategy officer at The Quiet Co., Fred Menachem… Veteran Israel-based journalist, now working for The Jerusalem Report, Ruth Marks Eglash… Special counsel at Sullivan & Cromwell, Aharon Friedman… Chairman and CEO of Dorshei Torah v’Tzion and senior rabbi of the Hudson Yards Synagogue, Rabbi Jason Herman turns 49…Actor best known for his role as FBI Special Agent Aram Mojtabai in NBC’s “The Blacklist,” Amir Arison turns 48… Director of marketing at Window Nation, Eric Goldscher… Executive editor at Bloomberg Green, a vertical and print magazine focused on climate change, Aaron Rutkoff… NYC photographer now working for the MTA, he is known for wearing vintage suits and hats daily, Marc A. Hermann turns 44… Pitching coach at San Jacinto College, he pitched for Team Israel in the 2017 World Baseball Classic and in the 2020 Olympics, Josh Zeid turns 39… Director of communications at the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, Joshua D. Cohen… Venezuelan-born featured celebrity chef, she is a caterer and a private chef in Los Angeles, Deborah Benaim turns 38… Growth strategist at Fun and Function, Jenna Nelson Beltser… Three-time all-star hockey player, most recently with PWHL Boston of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Kaleigh Fratkin turns 34… Former COO at Bnai Zion Media, Justin B. Hayet… Competitive pair skater for Israel at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, now a software development engineer for Amazon Web Services, Andrea “Anya” Davidovich turns 29…
