Your Daily Phil: Israeli nonprofits getting shellacked by strong shekel
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the fresh struggles facing Israeli nonprofits as a strengthening shekel makes their dollar donations worth less. We report on a new gift to expand the Orthodox Union’s Israeli campus programs, and on Shalom Hartman Institute President Yehuda Kurtzer’s recent call for American Jews to embrace their political homelessness. We feature an opinion piece by Harley Lippman about a leadership opportunity for Jewish philanthropy in guiding the trajectory of AI; Rabbi Esther L. Lederman shares how the Union for Reform Judaism is responding to changing communal demographics; and diversity, equity, inclusion and justice practitioner Whitney Weathers reflects on her evolving understanding of the Jewish experience of antisemitism. Also in this issue: Argentine President Javier Milei, Alex Soros and Nathan Disenhouse.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
The Paul E. Singer Foundation is kicking off its Countering Antisemitism conference in Miami today and tomorrow.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog will present the Presidential Medal of Honor to Argentine President Javier Milei today at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem.
Montgomery County, Md., leaders will announce $1.7 million in hate crimes prevention grants this afternoon for local nonprofits and faith-based organizations. Ron Halber, CEO of the JCRC of Greater Washington, who recently wrote in eJewishPhilanthropy about the need for local government support to combat antisemitism, will speak at the press conference.
Tonight marks the start of Israel’s Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron, which will feature services throughout the country and a siren at 8 p.m. local time.
Israel’s main national ceremony will take place this evening at the Western Wall, followed by back-to-back events at Jerusalem’s Mt. Herzl tomorrow morning, one honoring fallen soldiers and the other those who were killed in terror attacks.
What You Should Know
As Israeli nonprofits struggle to address the country’s urgent needs following yet another war and as the government devotes more resources to national defense and less to the social safety net, many organizations are finding themselves squeezed not only by the challenges of the security and budgetary situations but by a new financial foe: a strong shekel.
For many Israeli organizations, support from foreign donors — particularly American Jewish ones — is critical to their operations. But now, as the shekel is gaining strength against the dollar, those fundraising efforts are not going nearly as far. This currency crunch also comes as many donors are feeling the pain of nearly three years of intense giving through terror attacks, wars and ceasefires, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.
“As the shekel strengthens, every dollar raised in the U.S. translates into less impact on the ground in Israel,” David Metzler, director of international relations at the IDF Widows & Orphans Organization, told eJP.
With the NIS/USD exchange rate plummeting to 2.96 this past Friday, after weeks of hovering above 3.00, the sector is facing a nearly 19% drop from the 3.68 shekels-to-the-dollar level seen just one year ago.
Metzler noted that the shift requires a total rethink of how costs are presented to partners. “In the past, we would fundraise in the donor’s currency. Today, we lead with the actual cost in new Israeli shekels. That helps anchor expectations in the real cost of delivering programs in Israel, rather than a moving target tied to currency markets,” he said.
This strengthening of the shekel — driven by what some are calling a “ceasefire dividend,” surging tech exports and foreign investment — acts as a hidden tax for the overwhelming majority of Israeli nonprofits that fundraise in dollars. This currency shift has effectively gutted the sector’s purchasing power by nearly a fifth while domestic costs remain high.
One potential antidote to this dollar-dependency is a more aggressive focus on domestic Israeli corporate giving — a strategy that centers on building a shekel-based operational floor. Joseph Gitler, founder and chairman of Leket Israel, has long been a proponent of weaving the nonprofit mission into Israel’s corporate fabric. “It’s a wake-up call that everyone has to be diversified and put in the effort in Israel as well. We can’t just count on overseas support, even if it’s growing,” Gitler told eJP.
MAJOR GIFTS
OU to expand Jewish learning at Tel Aviv and Bar-Ilan universities with donation from Katz family
As more Modern Orthodox American students choose to attend Israeli universities, the Orthodox Union is expanding its Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC) initiatives at Tel Aviv University and Bar-Ilan University, buoyed by a new major donation from longtime Yeshiva University donor Dr. Monique Katz and her family, an OU representative told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.
Pivot to Israel: The $6 million donation and the growing focus on Israeli universities more generally comes amid a broader trend of American Jewish donors shifting contributions from U.S. institutions of higher learning to Israeli ones, following the 2024 Gaza war protest movement and heightened concerns about campus antisemitism after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks on Israel. “Modern, centrist Orthodox day school students are now going to college in Israel,” Rabbi Josh Joseph, the Orthodox Union’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, told eJP. “So that’s more and more students, right? That’s more and more people to engage with. The more they’re there, the more we need to be there.”
IDENTITY CRISIS
Yehuda Kurtzer calls on American Jews to embrace reality of ‘political homelessness’
Amid a surge in antisemitism across the political spectrum, many American Jews have described feeling a growing sense of isolation. But for Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, being “politically homeless” is not a crisis to be solved, but rather a position to be embraced, reports Matthew Shea for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
A different perspective: “I don’t think some measure of political homelessness is a fundamentally bad thing,” Kurtzer said on Thursday while speaking alongside Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. “I think Americans have become hyper-partisan in ways that reflect that partisan political identity has become part of our identities in ways that are not healthy for Americans.” Kurtzer and Goldberg sat in conversation at an event focused on American Jewry ahead of the upcoming 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
CHART THE COURSE
Jewish philanthropy can’t miss the AI revolution
“I am not a technologist who dismisses legitimate concerns about AI. Nor am I a Luddite who fears all change. I am a businessman who has spent his career at the intersection of technology and human potential,” writes philanthropist Harley Lippman, founder and CEO of Genesis10, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “What I know is this: Technology does not have values. People do. Institutions do. And the philanthropic sector is how we express collective values across generations.”
Call to action: “Jewish philanthropy has both an obligation and an opportunity to lead in this moment. We must not treat AI as someone else’s concern. … The opportunity before us is not merely defensive. It is generative. We can bring the depth of Jewish ethical reasoning to conversations that desperately need it. We can ensure the institutions we fund are equipped to thrive, not scramble. But we must start now.”
A PEOPLE BECOMING
‘I Will Be What I Will Be’: A futuring stance
“When God approaches Moses at the burning bush, asking him to go to Pharaoh and free the Israelites, Moses rightfully asks, ‘Who shall I say is sending me? What name should I use?’” writes Rabbi Esther L. Lederman, the newly announced vice president of Jewish Life & Leadership at the Union for Reform Judaism, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
What’s in a name: “For the first and only time, God says, ‘Eheyeh Asher Eheyeh, I Will Be What I Will Be.’ But almost immediately, God gives him an additional answer to offer: ‘YHVH, the God of your fathers — the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob — has sent me to you; this shall be My name forever.’ What are we to make of this? What does any of this have to teach us about our purpose as Jews?”
LEARNING CURVE
Even when hate goes viral, Jews still don’t count
“When a post from our podcast about Black-Jewish dialogue, ‘Bringing It to the Table with Whit & Flo,’ went viral in March, my co-host Flo Lo and I were initially thrilled,” writes organizational consultant Whitney Weathers in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “It all started when I posted a short about Flo’s experience as a recipient of reparations — as a descendant of a Holocaust survivor, she’s received Austrian citizenship — and the significance of her grandfather’s experience as a survivor. I had no idea the post would spread the way it did. But it spread for all the wrong reasons.”
Moments of reckoning: “What broke something open in me was not the volume of the hate or even its speed. It was Flo’s response… Anti-Black racism still undoes me every time it finds me. The vertigo of being targeted does not get easier. What I am realizing is that Flo has developed something I have not, and it did not come free.”
Worthy Reads
What Are We Really Fighting?: In his Substack “Moneyball Judaism,” Rabbi Joshua Rabin probes the roots of the “embeddedness” of antisemitism, referencing, among other sources, David Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. “In Nirenberg’s epilogue, he notes that today we live in a moment where ‘millions of people are exposed daily to some variant of the argument that the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of “Israel,”’ and I would also add the term ‘Zionism.’ Just as earlier societies used ‘the Jew’ or ‘Judaism’ as shorthand for what they feared or opposed, ‘Israel’ can become a catch-all explanation for complex global issues. … The issues people are wrestling with are real. But when these ideas harden into slogans, they stop clarifying the world and start distorting it — and, as always, real Jews pay the price. Which leaves us with a difficult question. If anti-Semitism is not just hatred of Jews, but a way of thinking — an interpretive lens — then what does it mean to fight it?” [MoneyballJudaism]
A Fortress Alone: In a Times of Israel opinion piece, former Knesset member Alon Tal highlights the dual challenges that residents of northern Israel feel they are facing: threats from the Hezbollah terror group and indifference from their own government. “The kibbutz feels that nobody in the government really cares. Misgav Am, Menara, Metulah, Margaliot: these are towns too small to constitute a meaningful voter block… over six weeks after Hezbollah began pummeling the north yet again, not a single government minister had bothered to arrive… The intrepid Galilee citizens are not waiting for the government to save them. After all, their ideological DNA is based on self-reliance… [and] a recent crowdfunding campaign raised 1.5 million shekels to reopen the kibbutz infirmary. Asked whether he was embarrassed to seek donations, Omri Sofer, the head of community security, replied… ‘No. The government should be embarrassed.'” [TOI]
Word on the Street
U.K. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis decried the “sustained campaign of violence and intimidation” targeting British Jews amid a series of attacks on Jewish communities around the country…
Mirvis’ statement came shortly before the arrest of two teenagers in connection with an arson attack that caused minor damage to London’s Kenton United Synagogue; British authorities are investigating whether the recent spate of attacks targeting Jewish sites in the country is linked to Iran…
Canada’s Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, with the backing of more than 80 Jewish groups, is calling on the federal government in Ottawa to increase funding to address “rising security demands” as the country sees a sharp increase in antisemitism…
In a National Post opinion piece, Nathan Disenhouse, the president of JNF Canada, hailed the Canadian Federal Court of Appeal‘s recent ruling ordering the government release internal records to determine if the Canada Revenue Agency’s had acted out of bias when it revoked his organization’s tax-exempt status last year, which Disenhouse described as a “weaponization of charitable oversight”…
A range of Israel critics, from Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) to Israeli lawmaker Ahmed Tibi, were among those gathered in Barcelona, Spain, over the weekend for the inaugural Global Progressive Summit, backed by left-wing philanthropist Alex Soros. The conference brought together representatives from over 40 countries, offering, according to its website, “a necessary alternative to conservative and far-right forces,” Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports…
Birthright Israel CEO Gidi Mark told trip organizers at the organization’s preseason conference that the group expects nearly 20,000 summer participants for its 10-day trips, up from the 15,716 who took part in the summer 2023 trip…
Hebrew media outlets are reporting that party leaders in the Knesset’s opposition bloc have offered Benny Gantz, head of the Blue and White Party, the chairmanship of the Jewish Agency for Israel in return for his dropping out of the upcoming election…
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was spotted with Philadelphia 76ers owner Josh Harris as the 76ers took on the Boston Celtics in Massachusetts over the weekend…
On “Real Time with Bill Maher,” Rahm Emanuel called to cut U.S. military aid to Israel…
The New York Times reports that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has launched a campaign to raise $20 million from philanthropists to bankroll the new Child Care Action Fund, a public-private partnership designed to accelerate the city’s rollout of universal care for 2-year-olds…
More than 1,000 entertainment figures — including Helen Mirren, Gene Simmons and Amy Schumer — have signed a Creative Community for Peace open letter backing Israel’s Eurovision participation…
Israeli Olympic silver medalist Raz Hershko won gold in her weight class at the European Judo Championships in Tbilisi, Georgia…
Major Gifts
Nechama – Jewish Response was awarded a $500,000 grant from Lilly Endowment Inc. through the funder’s Hope After the Storm initiative, which focuses on capacity-building for faith-based disaster relief organizations…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy highlights MacKenzie Scott’s latest no-strings-attached gift — $70 million to Meals on Wheels…
Transitions
World Jewish Relief chief executive Paul Anticoni is leaving his role at the organization after 21 years…
Susie Baumohl is joining IDF Widows and Orphans as their global communications manager…
Rachel Jacoby Rosenfield is stepping down as chief executive officer of Shalom Hartman Institute…
EarlyJ hired Alisha Sela as its new Los Angeles director…
Pic of the Day
Argentine Foreign Minister Pablo Quirno (left) and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (right) hold up agreements that they signed yesterday, standing in front of Argentine President Javier Milei (second from left) and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (second from right), as part of the “Isaac Accords” — an initiative conceived by Milei last year to encourage closer cooperation between Israel and Latin American countries.
Yesterday, Israel also announced the launch of a twice-weekly direct El Al flight between Tel Aviv and Buenos Aires beginning this November, bolstered by a NIS 44 million ($14.6 million) government subsidy.
Birthdays
Chairman of the media networks division of Activision Blizzard, he previously held high-ranking roles at NFL Network, ESPN and ABC, Steve Bornstein turns 74…
Stanford University professor and 2020 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, Paul Robert Milgrom turns 78… Philadelphia-based development professional, currently at AJC after a long career for a number of organizations, Andrew Demchick turns 70… Immigrants rights activist and professor at Salem State University, she is the eldest daughter of Noam Chomsky, Aviva Chomsky turns 69… Television and radio host, syndicated columnist and political commentator, Steve Malzberg turns 67… Past president and executive director of the D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, now at the Center for AI and Digital Policy, Marc Rotenberg turns 66… Author, journalist and former co-host of The Femsplainers Podcast, Danielle Crittenden Frum turns 63… Semi-professional race car driver and restaurateur, he was previously CEO, president and chairman of the Trust Company of New Jersey, Alan Wilzig turns 61… Television producer and game show host, known professionally as J.D. Roth, James David Weinroth turns 58… Israeli jazz bassist, composer, singer and arranger, Avishai Cohen turns 56… British film director, Sarah Gavron turns 56… Member of the U.S. House of Representatives (R-FL), one of four Jewish Republican congressmen, Randy Fine turns 52… VP of government and public affairs at Cleveland-based GBX Group, a historic real estate development firm, Seth Foster Unger… Deputy associate administrator at the General Services Administration, Michael C. Frohlich… Chief philanthropy and leadership officer at the World Jewish Congress, Elliott G. Mendes… President and CEO at the Los Angeles-based Skirball Cultural Center, Jessie Kornberg turns 44… Former general manager of Bird in Israel, he is a nephew of Israel’s past president Reuven Rivlin, Yaniv Rivlin… ESPN sportscaster and former Fox Sports and NFL Network personality, Peter Schrager turns 44… New York-based national security and human rights lawyer, Irina Tsukerman… Co-founder of The Free Press and its head of strategy, Nellie Bowles turns 38… PM breaking news editor at CNN Politics, Kyle Feldscher… Policy advisor and counsel to U.S. Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Zachary L. Baum… Systems engineer at Google X, Joseph Gettinger turns 38… Facilitator, coach and workshop organizer, Daniela Kate Plattner… Research analyst at the U.S. Department of State during the Biden administration, David Mariutto… VP at Cedar Capital Partners, Alex Berman… CEO of Social Lite Creative and news anchor on ILTV, Emily K. Schrader… Israeli scientist, engineer and artificial intelligence researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. Maor Farid turns 34… Israeli model, swimwear designer and social media star, Neta Alchimister turns 32… Working on advertising platforms at Apple, McKenna Klein… Senior associate at LvlUp Ventures, Andrew J. Hirsh… R&B, soul, pop singer and teen actress, at 13 years old she was the runner-up on the second season of “The X Factor,” Carly Rose Sonenclar turns 27… Diane Kahan…
