Your Daily Phil: Israeli nonprofits gear up as fighting escalates in north
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we interview Charles Bronfman to mark the 20th anniversary of his eponymous prize and report on a Keren Kayemet Le’Israel-Jewish National Fund gathering in Jerusalem. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Uri Pilichowski addressing the debate in the Jewish community over how to appropriately respond to Israeli military victories that come at a human cost; and one by Rachel Shamash Schneider, Aaron Saxe and Josh Miller offering insights from a decade of research and practice in the field of Jewish engagement and education for teens. Also in this newsletter: Zechariah Haber, Ari Schulman and Ana Robbins. We’ll start with how Yad Sarah is responding as fighting escalates between Israel and Hezbollah.
Demand for home medical equipment and home/telehealth services in Israel’s north has increased fourfold as hospitals shift into emergency mode, postponing non-essential surgeries and medical treatment and sending patients home following the escalation of hostilities along the Lebanon border last week, Moshe Cohen, CEO of the medical nonprofit Yad Sarah, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky.
“Patients who went home need our equipment. That is where our field teams come in. There are thousands of people who need medical equipment. Until now it has been people from the Galilee, the Golan Heights or Kiryat Shmona who were impacted. But now there are many more evacuees, almost reaching Hadera,” Cohen said. “The most critical area is Haifa and the surrounding towns. We are trying to manage our stocks, and are making efforts to transport medical equipment.”
Medical and emergency response nonprofits throughout the country have gone on high alert in recent days as fighting between Israel and the Lebanese terrorist militia Hezbollah has ramped up, following more than 11 months of Hezbollah attacks that have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in northern Israel. The Israeli military declared a “special security situation” across the country on Monday as it launched more extensive and deeper airstrikes in Lebanon against the Iran-backed group in what it has dubbed “Operation Arrows of the North.” Hezbollah has in turn fired larger barrages of missiles and drones deeper into Israel.
Following the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in the south, when demand for medical equipment also swelled, Yad Sarah put emergency protocols into place, which are again being used now, he said.
“They were implemented repeatedly, and we essentially divided the branches that operate in emergencies into those that can operate because they are in protected areas and those that cannot operate because it’s not safe for volunteers,” said Cohen. “So we have a distribution network [in the northern region]. We have branches in all the hospitals across Israel, and of course, in the northern region… So, we’re able to provide services because we prepared ahead of time.”
Providing those services — both collecting stock and distributing it — is complicated by the regular threat of missile attack in parts of the country, which puts Yad Sarah’s volunteer staff at risk.
“Physically getting to places is difficult,” he said. “There are times when areas are closed, other times when they’re open. Yad Sarah’s field teams are working almost around the clock to reach everywhere at any time, as long as we’re allowed by the Home Front Command. Everything is more complex now. The equipment is getting pricier, and logistics are becoming more complicated.”
Yad Sarah made emergency purchases of NIS 15 million ($3.96 million) worth of equipment in the early weeks of the war but much of it has already run out, he said. They recently purchased another NIS 5 million ($1.32 million) worth of equipment and are now waiting for delivery, he said.
In addition to the unexpected war situation, the Rosh Hashanah holiday period and approaching winter flu season have historically seen an increase in demand for equipment as well. “So we basically have three events coming one after the other,” he said. “We are facing a very critical three months.”
Q&A
Charles Bronfman: ‘There’s no doubt that we’re under threat. And there’s no doubt that we’ll come through it’
No recipient has been chosen yet for this year’s Charles Bronfman Prize, as the selection process was postponed following the Oct. 7 terror attacks. Nevertheless, to mark its 20th anniversary, the prize is hosting a series of events in New York from Sept. 22-25, bringing in past laureates to discuss their ongoing work and the challenges facing Israel, the Jewish people and the world at large. Bronfman spoke with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross ahead of the events.
JAG: In terms of your philanthropic priorities these days, are there any new areas that you’re looking to support or new organizations that you’re partnering with post-Oct. 7, both in Israel and in North America?
CB: Well, I have increased my contribution to the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach, [Fla.], which is where I call home. Aside from that, I did give a gift to the [American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee] for its work in psychological health. I figure that Israel is going to have psychological problems for years to come, and that might be one area that may be forgotten.
I feel so badly for the families, not only of the hostages. I feel so badly for the families of the people who have been on the front lines, and for everybody who’s suffered emotionally during this terrible year.
JAG: I’m interested to hear your overall perspective on the state of the Jewish people, having been involved in so much in the Jewish philanthropic space.
CB: There’s no doubt that we’re under threat. And there’s no doubt in my own mind that we’ll come through it. Now, will it be like the halcyon days of how it was a few years ago? I don’t know. But the trips to Israel will never be the same. Our community here will have to look to its morals when all of this nonsense is over — And I shouldn’t call it nonsense. I should say, ‘when all of these threats are over.’ But more than that, I can’t say.
SHOWS OF SOLIDARITY
Despite rising security threats, hundreds of KKL-JNF donors arrive in Jerusalem to review group’s projects, show solidarity
Some 300 Keren Kayemet Le’Israel-Jewish National Fund donors from 33 countries converged on Jerusalem on Sunday in a show of solidarity during the opening ceremony of a five-day mission in which they will review the projects — mostly in the Gaza border region — that have received significant funding from the organization over the past year, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky from the event. The donors will also meet with local leaders to understand their post-conflict needs and challenges.
See for themselves: The primary objective of the conference is to show the delegation what KKL-JNF is doing and to invite them “to join in this very important national mission of rebuilding the south” and of resettling the families of the south in different kibbutzim around the country, Ronnie Vinnikov, the organization’s deputy director general for resource development and external affairs, told eJP. He noted that the solidarity mission was the initiative of KKL-JNF leaders who wanted to come to see the situation in Israel for themselves despite the complex situation including the war in the south, escalating hostilities in the north and the resulting travel problems.
Still going on: KKL-JNF Germany board member Ayala Nagel told eJP that at the moment one of the challenges is to keep the issue of the hostages in Gaza active in the discourse about the continuing war. “This is the challenge…to explain that this has not changed, and to keep the steady level of understanding that there are still people who have disappeared under the earth and you don’t know what has happened [to them]. There are 101 hostages,” she said.
VALUE JUDGEMENTS
A debate as old as the Bible itself
“Jewish people shouldn’t be ashamed of their strength or feel that it is immoral. They shouldn’t be arrogant and boastful about their power, either,” writes Zionist educator Rabbi Uri Pilichowski in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Multiple questions: “[I]n a departure from Israel’s usual approach to Hezbollah — a massive bombardment of Hezbollah positions that the terrorist group, the Israeli population and the rest of the world were expecting — Israel recently shocked the world with an innovative and precise attack on Hezbollah operatives… The debate over the appropriate reaction to the Israeli success over Hezbollah has centered around three areas: morality, strategy and Jewish power.”
All God’s creations: “The first subject of debate is whether it is moral to celebrate the death or suffering of other human beings. This debate first appeared in Jewish teachings in a Midrash about God chastising the angels when they celebrate the drowning of the Egyptians after the splitting of the sea. ‘My creations sink to the bottom of the sea, and you sing praise?’ God asks rhetorically. It doesn’t escape notice that at that same moment, the Jews were singing praise to God on the shores of the very same sea. Echoing a teaching from the Talmud about Mordechai kicking Haman during the Purim story, many scholars conclude that while there is little reason to celebrate death, it isn’t immoral to celebrate Jewish salvation — even, and maybe especially, if it comes by way of the elimination of enemies of the Jewish people.”
The method matters: “As Rabbi Efrem Goldberg wrote yesterday, expanding on a conversation he started on the social media platform X, ‘I think all would agree handing out candies at the local mall to celebrate would be a mistake and inappropriate. They could and would easily be perceived (and gleefully covered by the media) as Jews celebrating and glorifying death, as being no different than our enemies.’ Rabbi Goldberg and those who agree with him see nothing immoral about celebrating Israel’s victory, but the method matters. ‘Prayers of gratitude and appreciation in the community are appropriate and warranted,’ he wrote.”
BEST PRACTICES
10 lessons over 10 years: Jewish teen education and engagement, forever changed
“Over a decade ago, the Jim Joseph Foundation convened more than a dozen local and national funders of Jewish teen programming for a series of discussions on expanding teen involvement in Jewish life… These early conversations, which included teens themselves, taught us a lot — namely, how much more we still needed to learn,” write Rachel Shamash Schneider, Aaron Saxe and Josh Miller of the Jim Joseph Foundation in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
How it started: “As a result, we commissioned groundbreaking research to identify and unpack strategies from both the non-Jewish and Jewish worlds that are most effective in educating and engaging teens. This research ultimately gave us the knowledge to design responsive local teen initiatives in 10 communities across the country, under the banner of the Jewish Teen Education & Engagement Funder Collaborative. United by the shared aspiration of creating and nurturing contemporary approaches to Jewish teen education, engagement and growth, this new network of national and local funders and practitioners worked side by side with teens.”
How it’s going: “The Funder Collaborative, now powered by Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), created an environment that fosters risk-taking, experimentation and ongoing reflection. Since becoming nested at JFNA, the Funder Collaborative has offered six scaling masterclasses where Jewish professionals from more than 70 organizations learned about best practices and strategies for scaling, many with innovations successfully scaling across the country. As the foundation’s grants to these communities conclude, we are eager to advance this work in different ways. While our local partners on the ground continue to cultivate important relationships with an eye on sustainability, we want to share learnings for the benefit of the field at large.”
Worthy Reads
Celebrating a Life: In The Times of Israel, Miriam Haber writes about grieving the loss of her son, Zechariah — a wheat scientist, liturgical poet, religious scholar and all-around autodidact — who was killed in January while serving as a reservist in Gaza, while simultaneously not letting his death erase all that was good about his 32 years of life. “As part of our efforts to cope with our loss, we have been actively engaged in memorializing Zechariah, working with [his widow] Talia to ensure that as many people as possible can learn about him… Our own efforts at memorializing Zechariah are varied, since Zechariah’s life reflected a wide range of interests and passions — Torah, agricultural science, Hebrew poetry, hiking his beloved land of Israel, and showing concern for residents of Israel’s southern region by celebrating part of every Yom HaAtzmaut down south… [W]e are adamant on focusing on projects that celebrate Zechariah’s extraordinary, optimistic, happy life and not on his tragic death. We believe strongly that this war is justified and necessary, but we do not want it to eclipse the beauty of the way Zechariah lived his life — with such purpose, passion, and kindness. We are very proud of his heroism in this war, but it is far from the sum total of his life.” [TOI]
Long-Term Impacts: In Jewish Action, Rachel Schwartzberg interviews college students and Jewish outreach professionals about the increased interest in Jewish learning and observance in the wake of Oct. 7 and the subsequent outpouring of antisemitism on campuses across the U.S. “The big question on the minds of outreach professionals and informal educators is whether the post-Oct. 7 religious awakening will have staying power or not. And it might be too soon to know. [Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, co-director of OU-JLIC at the University of California-LA] is hopeful that ‘people who have made real changes in their lives will stick with them.’ However, he points out that sometimes, though signs of outward growth may not all be sustained, people’s experiences now can still have a long-term effect. ‘For example, maybe these students will make a commitment to send their kids to Jewish schools when the time comes,’ he notes… Although [recent NYU grad Grant] Ghaemi doesn’t know where his journey will take him now that he has graduated college and is working full-time, ‘the amount I’ve learned about my values and grown as a person has been remarkable,’ he says. ‘Judaism has taught me to seek to be better every day and has given me concrete ways to do that. Until I met Orthodox Jews, I had never known the concept of devotion and sacrifice for higher ideals. I’ve seen the beauty of Shabbos, and families coming together to connect. I want to take that into my life.’” [JewishAction]
The Value of the Subjective: In The New Atlantis, Ari Schulman highlights the good and sensible aspects of effective altruism’s approach to philanthropy before delving into what he sees as the weaknesses of its bloodless ideal of rationality. “If you really want to be a moderate effective altruist — drawing, say, a little from the EA garden, a little from the do-unto-others garden, tossed together into an easy-to-chew do-gooder salad — you can. But you can do so only by drawing on ethical resources that are outside the ideology and that it is committed to condemning as irrational… Empathy, guilt, the fact that I happen to notice a problem with my own eyes, a felt tug to act: none of these cognitive inputs are universal in scope, but that actually makes them quite useful, because they give me real information about the world that other people don’t have… If we believe that our ethical aim is to maximize value in a world of scarcity, then we must grant the subjective, the parochial, our gut senses, and the happenstance of what is close to us as useful mechanisms for efficiently allocating ethical action, just as they are in commerce.” [TheNewAtlantis]
Around the Web
Ana Robbins was selected as the inaugural recipient of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life’s Rose Lubin Jewish Pride Award; the prize was created in honor of Lubin, a U.S.-born “lone soldier” who defended an Israeli community on Oct. 7 and was killed in a terror attack in Jerusalem weeks later…
Antisemitic hate crimes in 2023 in the U.S. have increased 63% from 2022, hitting record-high levels, the FBI reported in its 2023 Hate Crime Statistics Report on Monday. The Anti-Defamation League said the record-high number is consistent with the experience of the Jewish community and its own tracking of such attacks, but the American Jewish Committee warned that the number is likely higher due to under-reporting of antisemitic attacks…
A More Perfect Union announced the 77 Jewish organizations that will receive a total of over $112,000 in Ignition Grants toward their efforts to ensure free, fair, safe and accessible elections in 2024…
Chabad of Poland is mobilizing to provide over 5,000 meals and food packages for both local and displaced Ukrainian Jews for Rosh Hashanah…
By a voice vote, the House of Representatives passed a bill to start the process to move the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History into the Smithsonian system…
Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign has hired two new staffers for its Jewish outreach team with Eva Wyner joining this week as director of Jewish outreach in Pennsylvania and Hilary Brandenburg as national deputy director of Jewish outreach …
The Met Council has begun its annual effort to assist 181,000 food-insecure Jewish New Yorkers with food and other supplies for the High Holy Days…
The Wall Street Journal examines the effectiveness of billionaire Michael Bloomberg’s $140 million effort to get more talented low-income students into top universities…
A federal judge sentenced Elliot Resnick, a former editor at the Jewish Press, to four months home detention and 24 months of supervised release on a felony charge for joining attackers during the Jan. 6 Capitol assault…
The Columbia Spectator speaks to six Jewish students who declined admission offers to Columbia University or Barnard College over concerns of antisemitism following last year’s encampments…
The Times of Israel looks at the damage caused by the war to agriculture in northern Israel…
Rabbi Marc Schneier hosted a dinner bringing together Jewish leaders and Abdulla bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s undersecretary for international affairs, who was in the U.S. for the United Nations General Assembly this week; the Jewish participants included William Daroff, Cheryl Fishbein, Daniel Mariaschin and Edward Mermelstein…
Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a Yiddish culture advocate, died in Vilnius on Sunday at 102…
Pic of the Day
At its annual benefit in New York City on Sunday, Americans for Ben-Gurion University (A4BGU) raised $1 million to support Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) students and faculty in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks. Many of the university’s students, faculty and staff were killed, wounded or kidnapped by Hamas and many others were called up for IDF reserve duty The event, “One Day,” featured a special performance from acclaimed Jewish reggae artist Matisyahu (pictured right). The event was the first of many annual benefits in New York for A4BGU, said Doug Seserman, the group’s CEO. “The attacks and their aftermath have made it clearer than ever that the future of Israel is in the south, with BGU leading the way as the Negev’s anchor institution and engine for growth,” he said.
Birthdays
Screenwriter, television producer, comic book writer and novelist, Marc Guggenheim…
Author of 26 books, best known for the semi-autobiographical novel I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Joanne Greenberg… Artist Judith Margolis… Retired Israeli diplomat who served as Israel’s ambassador to Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Chile, Rafael Eldad… Former CEO of American Media, David Pecker… Feature writer for Sports Illustrated for 27 years, he is a 2015 inductee into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame, Franz Lidz… Attorney and former judge advocate, Michael Alan Weiss… Founder, executive chairman and CEO of Hilco Global, Jeffrey Hecktman… Associate director of emergency services at FirstNet by AT&T, William Gross… President of Princeton University since 2013, in his mid-40s he discovered that his mother was Jewish, Christopher L. Eisgruber… Co-founder and principal at DC-based PRG Hospitality, Alan Popovsky… Executive vice president of governmental affairs at the Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, Chanina Sperlin… Economist, best-selling author and a great-granddaughter of former British Chief Rabbi Joseph Hertz, Noreena Hertz… Israeli television host, actress and model, Yael Goldman-Pfeffer… Senior policy manager at Amazon, Jessica Schumer… Former White House reporter at The Associated Press, Alexandra Jaffe… Actor, singer and songwriter, Ben Platt… Rap musician, known professionally as Token, Benjamin David Goldberg…
