Your Daily Phil: Israel’s long-suffering tour guides reach their breaking point
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the toll that yesterday’s battle between Israel and Iran — and the past six years of war and pandemic — has taken on Israeli tour guides. We report on a new report advocating for an alliance-focused strategy to combat global antisemitism, and speak with friends and colleagues of the philanthropist Billie Tisch, who died on Sunday. We feature an opinion piece by Pia Eisenberg challenging assumptions about donor fatigue and share David Bryfman’s address to The Jewish Education Project’s Spring Benefit, which took place last night in Manhattan. Also in this issue: Ezra Shanken, Barry S. Friedberg and Angelica Berrie.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
The House Judiciary Committee is holding a hearing on the Southern Poverty Law Center. The hearing comes two months after the Department of Justice charged the group with fraud for paying informants in extremist groups, which the government alleges goes against donor intent.
Also in Washington, Chabad-Lubavitch’s Living Legacy International Conference, which kicked off last night, resumes this morning with a congressional leadership breakfast followed by events at the Library of Congress, a luncheon at the State Department, a roundtable with Jewish leaders from around the world this afternoon and a gala dinner in the evening.
Agudath Israel of America is holding a dinner tonight to dedicate its new Washington office and pay tribute to Rabbi Abba Cohen, the longtime head of the group’s D.C. operations.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM EJP’S JUSTIN HAYET
One Israeli tour operator doesn’t go out for coffee anymore. Another has an application for nursing school sitting on her desk, waiting to be submitted. Still another pivoted to virtual tours. With the Israel travel field decimated over the last six years by a crippling pandemic followed by the Oct. 7 terror attacks and nearly three years of constant war, tour operators — the unsung and often unsupported heroes of the field — are hurting.
This week’s one-day battle between Israel and Iran, coming just as tour guides are beginning to gear up for the prime summer season, has further flung the already battered field into a state of deep uncertainty.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
BUILDING BRIDGES
Jewish Interfaith Center calls to rethink efforts to fight antisemitism, build an ‘alliance machine’
For Rabbi Aharon Ariel Lavi, who lives on the Gaza border with his wife and five children, the events of Oct. 7, 2023, are deeply personal. But, professionally, Lavi, CEO of the Jerusalem Interfaith Center, is particularly concerned by how the Jewish community responded after the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war in Gaza— spending hundreds of millions of dollars to combat antisemitism, with precious little to show for it. After eight months of research, he has a blueprint for fixing it, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.
Strategic planning: “Antisemitism is the result of a machine,” warned Lavi at a webinar yesterday that was co-hosted by Lavi’s Jerusalem Interfaith Center, the Tisch Center for Jewish Dialogue, Anu – Museum of the Jewish People and the Jewish Peoplehood Coalition. “A combination of political Islam and radical Marxism whose purpose is to take down the West. This machine cannot be fought with videos on TikTok. It’s not in the same field. We need to build a machine of allies in a strategic manner.”
BARUCH DAYAN EMET
‘Smartest, nicest person in the room’: Colleagues mourn philanthropist Billie Tisch
When Louise Greilsheimer thinks about Billie Tisch, she thinks about the way a room felt after she left it. “When you walked in a room, she didn’t strike you,” Greilsheimer, the former president of UJA-Federation of New York, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayaim, “but when you left, you knew that she was probably the smartest and nicest person in the room.” Tisch — matriarch of one of New York’s most prominent Jewish families and the first woman ever elected president of the Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York — died on Sunday at her Manhattan home. She was 98.
Dignity and respect: “Billie Tisch was unique in bringing cognitive and emotional intelligence as a leader and a fierce commitment to caring for all in Jewish life,” John Ruskay, the former longtime CEO of the New York federation, who regularly crossed paths with Tisch, told eJP. “She always related to everyone — whether it was a senior volunteer, a professional or a client at a human service agency — with respect, with dignity, interested to understand how they viewed the world.”
Opinion
REALITY CHECK
Donor fatigue isn’t about generosity. It’s about us.
“As development professionals, we’ve all encountered it: the exhausted donor, the increasingly crowded event calendar, the same faces showing up year after year, looking a little more tired while being asked to do more — all against a backdrop of crisis after crisis, with no playbook in sight,” writes Pia Eisenberg, chief business and resource development officer at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of Greater Philadelphia, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
What we discovered: “Fatigue isn’t about generosity running out. It’s about a lack of true engagement, and organizations treating donors like ATMs with a loyalty program. And the worst offender? Event-driven fundraising.”
ICYMI
How to build a future that is wiser than our present
“One of the things that worries me most right now is not what is happening outside the Jewish community, but what is happening inside it: The name-calling. The purity tests. The obsession with deciding who is in and who should be out,” said David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project, in his address at TJEP’s 2026 Spring Benefit last night in New York City, shared exclusively in eJewishPhilanthropy.
How we educate is key: “Education is not about creating replicas of ourselves. … None of us became who we are simply because someone instructed us what to believe. So, our task is not to control the next generation. Our task is to create the kinds of experiences that allow them to become the people they are meant to become.”
Worthy Reads
The Name and Shame Game: In Chronicle of Philanthropy, Ben Gose details why colleges and universities are slow to remove the names of wealthy donors from campus buildings, despite escalating pressure from students and alumni over the donors’ past ties to Jeffrey Epstein. “The risk of removing a name, [Jeffrey Tenenbaum, a lawyer who counsels nonprofits,] says, is not only a potential lawsuit from an aggrieved donor — and the possible reclaiming of the donation — but also the message that the removal sends to future donors… who might say, ‘Well, I’m not going to give to this institution because they have a history of taking people’s names down from buildings.’” [ChroniclesofPhilanthropy]
Backseat Builder: In the Times of Israel, Jewish Vancouver’s Ezra Shanken applauds how a decade-in-the-making land transfer in Vancouver, British Columbia, serves as a blueprint for humility and collaboration. “Trust is easy to speak about in communal life, but much harder to practice. In this case, it meant creating space for one another to lead, challenging each other honestly, and believing that together we could aim higher than either of us could alone, and that trust shaped not only the project, but how we led it. Leading a Federation carries a particular responsibility. We convene, support, and catalyze collective action. But often, our most important role is less visible. It is to walk beside our partners… This project required exactly that.” [TOI]
The Silicon Gilded Age: In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Priya Shanker argues that incoming tech billionaires must eschew top-down philanthropy for legacy-foundation strategies that prioritize community trust and democratic infrastructure. “The defining challenge for this new generation of billionaire philanthropists is therefore not simply determining what to fund but how to exercise influence in a society where trust is fragile and legitimacy cannot be bought. They will need to envision a broader role for themselves, one that casts them not merely as investors and orchestrators of social outcomes but as stewards of the civic conditions that build trust, participation, and shared purpose.” [SSIR]
Major Gifts
The Stacy and Keith Palagye Foundation has awarded a $3 million grant to the American Friends of the Hebrew University to launch a specialized academic and skill-building facility at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem…
The Zimmer Family Foundation has secured the naming rights for Harvard University’s primary undergraduate science facility — now called Zimmer Hall — through a $100 million contribution that also expands campus kosher dining…
Longtime board member Barry S. Friedberg has committed a $1 million gift to the Glaucoma Foundation to help advance scientific initiatives aimed at eradicating blindness…
Transitions
Margarita Korol joined Nechama – Jewish Response to Disaster as its new director of communications…
Word on the Street
In The Wall Street Journal, Meta President Dina Powell McCormick and “Dirty Jobs” host Mike Rowe unveil America’s Workforce Academy, a multimillion-dollar initiative pairing tech capital with blue-collar advocacy to pay trade trainees and guarantee them jobs building AI infrastructure…
A British Museum lecture on the archaeology of ancient Israel and Judah has been rescheduled for Thursday alongside a new livestream option following an initial postponement due to the threat of anti-Israel protest…
The Wall Street Journal follows how American university endowments — particularly the University of North Carolina and Washington University in St. Louis — anticipate billions in gains from SpaceX‘s upcoming IPO…
The sale of the late philanthropist Harold Matzner‘s historic Spencer’s Restaurant in Palm Springs, Calif., to business magnate Nachhattar Singh Chandi has sparked a local backlash and boycott threats over Chandi’s Republican affiliations…
404 Media examines how a Texas farmer’s land donation for a public park is instead being used to build a massive data center next to the families he tried to help…
The J7 Task Force urged Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to launch a comprehensive federal strategy to combat antisemitism through strict legal enforcement and equal protections for Jewish citizens.
The Wall Street Journal profiles OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his transformation from a heads-down programmer to a prominent executive guiding product strategy and political philanthropy ahead of the company’s IPO…
Pamela Platt, a healthcare professional, Baltimore Jewish community leader and sister-in-law of Julie Platt, died on Monday at 68…
Rabbi Gustav Buchdahl, emeritus rabbi of Baltimore Hebrew Congregation and social justice activist, died on Sunday at 91…
Pic of the Day
Angelica Berrie, president of the Russell Berrie Foundation, presents a copy of Studying Judaism, Strengthening Dialogue, a book examining the two decades of work by the foundation’s John Paul II Center for Interreligious Dialogue Fellowship Program to Pope Leo XIV during a private meeting with the Holy See last Wednesday.
The two met on the sidelines of the annual conference of the interfaith program, which was held at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Rome, featuring leading Jewish and Christian scholars, which was led by Tel Aviv University professor Adam Afterman.
Birthdays
Former executive director of the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas, Walter Julius Levy turns 104…
Journalist for 30 years at CBS and NBC who then became the founding director of Harvard’s Shorenstein Center, then a fellow at GWU, Marvin Kalb turns 96… Retired Israeli diplomat who served as ambassador to Italy and France and world chairman of Keren Hayesod – United Israel Appeal, Aviezer “Avi” Pazner turns 89… Author of 12 books, journalist, lecturer and social activist, founding editor of Ms. Magazine, Letty Cottin Pogrebin turns 87… British businessman, co-founder with his brother Maurice of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi which became the largest in the world, noted for his art collection and for founding Saatchi Gallery, Charles Saatchi turns 83… Diplomat and Shakespeare historian, he was the longtime national editor of Washingtonian magazine, Kenneth Adelman turns 80… Founder of Commonwealth Financial Network (a broker/dealer network) and former chairman of Southworth Development (a golf and leisure business), Joseph Deitch turns 76… Professional mediator, for years she was a syndicated advice columnist in Jewish newspapers, Wendy J. Belzberg… Israel’s former minister of defense and deputy prime minister, Benny Gantz turns 67… Canadian journalist, author, documentary film producer and television personality, Steven Hillel Paikin turns 66… Producer, director, playwright and screenwriter, he has won an Academy Award, five Primetime Emmy Awards and three Golden Globes, Aaron Benjamin Sorkin turns 65… Former lead singer of the Israeli pop rock band Mashina, Yuval Banay turns 64… CEO of Jewish Women’s International, Meredith Jacobs… Managing director at Major, Lindsey & Africa, Craig Appelbaum… Executive vice president of Jewish Funders Network, Rabbi Rebecca Sirbu… Screenwriter, director and producer, Hayden Schlossberg turns 48… Founder and CEO of Delve, an AI platform for public affairs, he was previously a Bush 43 White House Jewish liaison, Jeff Berkowitz… NYC-based writer, actor and entrepreneur, he is a co-founder of Swish Beverages, David Oliver Cohen turns 46… Jerusalem-born Academy Award-winning actor, producer and director, Natalie Portman turns 45… Online producer, writer and director, who together with his brother Benny founded the “React” video series, Rafi Fine turns 43… Multimedia artist known for her work in photography, makeup, hairstyling and textile crafts, Anna Marie Tendler turns 41… Composer and lyricist, in 2024 he became the 20th person to complete the EGOT, an acronym for the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Awards, Benj Pasek turns 41… Israeli tech entrepreneur, he is the founder and CEO of A.Team, Raphael Ouzan turns 39… Director of the Yale Journalism Initiative, her book, A Flower Traveled In My Blood, was published last year, Haley Cohen Gilliland… Deputy assistant secretary for strategic communications at the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration, Jeff Solnet… Ice hockey player for the NHL’s Edmonton Oilers and bestselling author of children’s books, Zachary Martin Hyman turns 34… Serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Setscale, Daniel Fine…
