Your Daily Phil: Israel invests in U.S. Jewish day schools
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Israeli government’s $4 million investment in American Jewish day schools and on Project 24’s initiative bringing members of civilian response teams who defended their towns during the Oct. 7 attacks to the United States. We also feature an opinion piece by Barak Sella exploring how indifference to Israel among young American Jews is a bigger issue than opposition to it. Also in this newsletter: Zev Hurwitz, Jessica Grose and Ivan Berkowitz.
What We’re Watching
- The Rome Jewish community is celebrating the 120th anniversary of its Great Synagogue today. A commemoration event is being held at the synagogue, which is being presided over by the community’s president, Victor Fadlun, and Roman Chief Rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, and attended by Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
- The Friends of the IDF Young Leadership‘s New York chapter is holding its annual gala in Manhattan this evening.
What You Should Know
The Israeli government is investing $4 million through an initiative dubbed Project Aleph Bet to boost Jewish day schools in the United States, seeing them as a key element in maintaining and improving the relationship between Israel and American Jewry, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
The investment, which comes from the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism’s education initiative UnitEd, is being run through the Jewish Federations of North America and Prizmah: Center for Jewish Day Schools, and will go toward seven day school-related projects across the country. It was first announced at the JFNA General Assembly earlier this month.
All of the parties involved described the $4 million donation as being less of a major financial investment and more of a symbolic gesture, albeit a powerful one, signifying a seal of approval by the Israeli government and a call for the philanthropic community to follow suit.
“The funding from Aleph Bet enables important projects to move forward,” Paul Bernstein, the founding CEO of Prizmah, told eJP. “But it also encourages American philanthropists and gives them confidence when the State of Israel is standing in support.”
Assaf Gamzou, UnitEd’s director of education, told eJP that Project Aleph Bet, which was first conceived some two years ago, was meant to be a far larger investment in Jewish education, but Israel’s budgetary strains in light of the past 14 months of war forced the initiative to be cut drastically.
“The initial dream was to put $40 million into initiatives to increase enrollment in Jewish day schools in North America,” Gamzou said. “Then Oct. 7 happened, and we put it on pause, of course. A few months later, the minister came back to us, to UnitEd, and said, ‘Listen, I want us to do this, even if not in the initial scope.’ And so we came back with a strategy on how to invest $4 million. And the idea is we are partnering with initiatives and organizations that are trying to address the issue of enrollment in innovative and new ways and that we hope we can learn from and replicate what they’re doing.”
The funding will be directed to seven initiatives, some local and some national, in the United States: Prizmah’s Jewish Day School Endowment Initiative, which is working to build endowment funds for schools; NorCal Jewish Day Schools, which supports institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area; the Zalik Foundation’s Jewish communal professional grants, which offers tuition subsidies for people who work in the Jewish community; the recently launched Lauder Impact Initiative, which is looking to boost day school enrollment; the Tikvah Fund’s Emet Classical Academy, a new traditional Jewish day school in New York; Tamim Academy, a franchise model for Jewish day schools that is meant to make them easier to open in small communities; and EarlyJ, a Bay Area Jewish early childhood education initiative.
Despite its more modest scope, Bernstein stressed that Project Aleph Bet still — or even more so — sends “an important message and statement that [Israel is] still prioritizing [Jewish education] despite the limited resources at the government’s disposal.”
According to Sarah Eisenman, the now-former chief community and Jewish life officer at JFNA, who has played an active role in the organization’s involvement with Project Aleph Bet, the initiative also comes as the American Jewish community is seeing a rise in interest in Jewish day schools.
“We believe that now is that moment to catalyze and launch that much larger initiative to grow enrollment. So for us, this investment is essential. But the beautiful element of it is what it communicates in terms of importance — that this is really important to invest in, particularly at this moment,” said Eisenman, who spoke to eJP days before she left her role at JFNA last Friday.
According to Bernstein, there is greater enrollment interest at non-Orthodox Jewish day schools because of “the dual crises with the war [in Israel] and the growth in antisemitism… So we think the time is right to invest deeply to grow Jewish day schools further.”
For JFNA, Eisenman said, this initiative is “one phase” of the organization’s “larger initiative to double [day school enrollment] over the next 10 years.”
THANKS FOR GIVING
U.S. trip builds ties between Israelis who defended towns on Oct. 7 and American Jews
Jewish communities across New York and Florida participated in Project 24’s Thanks4Giving Mega Mission last month to honor the volunteers who defended kibbutzim and moshavim in southern Israel during the Oct. 7 terror attacks by hosting 721 Israelis who were members of civilian emergency teams and their families. “We are trying to show that we are one, that we are brothers,” Daniel Gradus, Project 24’s co-founder and CEO told Jay Deitcher for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Everybody’s feeling alone. Everybody wants to do something besides post on Facebook or go to a rally. The biggest mitzvah I could do is enable other people to do mitzvahs.”
Something for everyone: This trip offered Americans the opportunity to do something tangible to help, Samra Vogel, who hosted two Israelis in Hollywood, Fla., told eJP. “It was this feeling we could do something here,” she said. “Because, largely, we feel pretty helpless.” Nadav Roth, who helped defend Kibbutz Magen against 60 terrorists, realized how much people outside of Israel cared about them. “It was very good to see that there are people far away that think about us and really want to help us,” he said.
SURVEY SAYS
American Jews adopting American views is not necessarily bad news for Israel
“A recent survey by Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs reveals what appears to be a striking inconsistency: While 42% of American Jewish youth believe Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, and 37% express sympathy with Hamas, an overwhelming 94% still maintain an emotional connection to Israel,” writes Barak Sella, a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “This seemingly conflicting data points to a deeper, more complex reality about the relationship between American Jews and Israel.”
Creating some distance: “What we’re witnessing is American Jews’ views becoming more… American. While Jewish youth remain more supportive of Israel than their non-Jewish peers, they increasingly align with broader American liberal positions. When half of all Americans aged 18-29 believe Israel is committing genocide, similar beliefs among American Jews of the same age group reflect their American identity as much as their Jewish one. The real concern isn’t that American Jews will become anti-Israel. It’s that many will simply disengage from Israel-related issues altogether… Many American Jews might choose to distance themselves from Israel simply because it’s become too complex, too tense and just too difficult to navigate. So what can we do about it?”
Worthy Reads
More Likely, More Affordable: In the Jewish News Service, Zev Hurwitz discusses how a recent California appellate ruling allowing for state funds to go to special education services in Jewish day schools affects his family directly. “Our oldest son had just turned 3 when we started getting calls from his Jewish day school about his behavior… Soon, he wasn’t allowed at school without a shadow and a game plan from a behavioral psychologist, both of which we had to pay for out-of-pocket… Eventually, we were asked not to return… [Being] in a Jewish school that matches our values wasn’t financially compatible with getting our son the support and resources he needs to learn in a classroom setting. Short of a lottery win, there wasn’t a way for us to keep him in a Jewish day school while servicing his behavioral and emotional needs… It was only last month that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled [in Loffman v. California Department of Education] that California state funds can be used to offer special-education services in religious private schools… Loffman, should it hold, clears a path for institutions to include in their budgets state funds for special education services, offering relief and minimizing or eliminating cost increases to families… When the stars align, we’d like to have our son return to Jewish day school to continue his education. The appellate court ruling makes that return more likely and, hopefully, more affordable.” [JNS]
What Are People For?: In The New York Times, Jessica Grose reflects on a new book by the sociologist Allison Pugh, The Last Human Job, about hospital chaplains’ personal role in an increasingly impersonal medical world. “We’re increasingly becoming a society in which very wealthy people get leisurely human care, like concierge medicine paid out of pocket, apothecaries with personal shoppers and private schools with tiny class sizes and dead-tree books. Everybody else might receive long waits for 15-minute appointments with harried doctors, a public school system with overworked teachers who are supplemented by unproven apps to ‘personalize’ learning and a pharmacy with self-checkout… I wondered if having to interact with an extremely stressed person who is being rated on how many customers she sees a day or, alternatively, talking to a malfunctioning robot that keeps asking us if we’re human is making many of us feel our institutions don’t care about us at all… Most of us still crave the spontaneity that comes from talking to human beings, especially at our most vulnerable. If we don’t value care work now, we might be paying the cost during our final moments, as the chaplain has to rush off from our bedside to mark down the time she spent holding our hands.” [NYTimes]
Let’s Hear It For the Boy: In Vox, Celia Ford examines the struggles that men and boys are facing and what can be done to help them (and women and girls too). “As a progressive person, it can feel uncool — problematic, even — to wonder whether men are doing all right…But the world does appear to be in the midst of a masculinity crisis: Today’s men and boys are lost, lonely, and dying by suicide at alarming rates. The increasingly toxic, polarized political landscape largely hinges on young men desperately seeking affirmation from whoever will give it to them… Shifting some focus — and charitable dollars — toward issues specifically affecting men’s health, education, and employment will benefit everyone… Because most men’s health initiatives are relatively small and underfunded, ‘a little bit of philanthropy could really go quite a long way,’ [Richard Reeves, president of the American Institute for Boys and Men,] said… The most important thing to remember: Acknowledging that men and boys are struggling does not take away from the fact that women and girls have struggled for generations. Charitable giving doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game. The cause of gender equality will only be enhanced by empowering men to lift up their own communities.” [Vox]
Word on the Street
Almost one-third of Jewish health-care professionals in Ontario, Canada, are thinking of leaving the country because of increasing antisemitism, according to a report released yesterday by the Jewish Medical Association of Ontario. The report also revealed concern about antisemitism among doctors nationwide…
The Senate unanimously passed a bill on Tuesday night aimed at advancing the transfer of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History to the Smithsonian Institution. The bill, which was passed by the House of Representatives in September, now awaits President Joe Biden’s signature…
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency examines the state of play in next year’s World Zionist Congress elections, particularly allegations of Christian Zionist interference and the growth of right-wing slates…
In J. The Jewish News of Northern California, Judy Maltz of Haaretz looks at how the Israel-Hamas war has pushed Israeli ex-pats living in Silicon Valley out of their Israeli bubble to confront antisemitism in the wider community for the first time…
Ivan Berkowitz, an American executive and philanthropist and the son of Holocaust survivors, withdrew a £315,000 ($401,000) donation to Cambridge University’s Trinity College over what he called an “infestation” of anti-Israel bias at the institution since the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel…
The Washington Post profiles Jared Isaacman, the aerospace entrepreneur, philanthropist and President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead NASA, and how he might influence the direction of the $25 billion government space agency…
Former U.S. ambassador to Belgium and prominent St. Louis businessman and civic leader Sam Fox died on Dec. 2 at 95…
Pic of the Day
Courtesy/Eshkol Regional Council/Facebook
Residents of the Eshkol region in southern Israel, one of the areas that was hardest hit in the Oct. 7 terror attacks, volunteer to pick lettuce for a local farmer, in a photograph released today to mark International Volunteer Day.
“In the past year, maybe more than in any other year, we discovered the extent to which volunteering is the beating heart of Eshkol,” the regional council wrote in a Facebook post.
Birthdays
Former U.S. ambassador to France and Monaco, she was a co-owner and CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jamie Luskin McCourt…
Nobel Prize-winning theoretical physicist, emeritus professor at Harvard and professor at Boston University, Sheldon Lee Glashow… St. Louis-based luxury senior living developer, Charles J. Deutsch… Professor in the school of journalism at the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Stuart Neil Brotman… Mediator and arbitrator for JAMS since 1989, Michael D. Young… Golfer on the PGA Tour and later a golf teaching professional, Anthony Irvin (Tony) Sills… Professor of Jewish history at Ben-Gurion University, she is focused on Sephardic heritage, Haviva Pedaya… Venture capitalist, speaker and investment advisor, Pascal Norman Levensohn… New York City-based author and clinical psychologist with specialties in aging and cancer, Mindy Greenstein, Ph.D…. Film, television and theater actress, Ilana Levine… Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, Eric A. Posner… Former manager of the Israel national baseball team including at the 2020 Olympics, Eric Holtz… Professor and Dean emeritus of Columbia Law School, he served as CEO of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and was once a law clerk for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David M. Schizer… Urologist in Westchester County, N.Y., Judd Boczko, M.D…. Ontario-born model and actress, Shalom Harlow… President of The LS Group, Lisa Spies… Co-founder and CEO of Axios, Roy Schwartz… Chief national correspondent for ABC News, Matthew A. Gutman… Acclaimed video game developer, Neil Druckmann… Musical songwriting and producing duo, identical twins Ryan and Dan Kowarsky turn 45… Communications and marketing consultant, Adam S. Rosenberg… Senior managing director at Liberty Strategic Capital, Eli H. Miller… Emmy Award-winning senior personal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, Joanna Stern… Media correspondent for The New York Times, Michael Mendel Grynbaum… Israeli film and television music composer based in Los Angeles, Naama “Nami” Melumad… Reporter on the obituary desk of The New York Times, Alexander E. Traub… Chess master and commentator, Levy Rozman… Associate director of government affairs at VNS Health, Jonathan Shabshaikhes… Israeli model, she represented Israel at the 2017 Miss Universe pageant where her selfie with Miss Iraq set off an international incident, Adar Gandelsman…
