Your Daily Phil: Israel’s Taub Center offers ‘Picture of the Nation’ at war
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the 40th anniversary of Operation Moses, which brought 8,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel, and on the plans to open Israel’s seventh medical school at the University of Haifa. We feature an opinion piece by Yaakov Malomet and Alex Pomson about the effects that trips to Israel are having on Jewish educators. Also in this newsletter: Elliot Brandt, Justin Cohen and Jonny Greenwood. We’ll start with the Israeli think tank Taub Center’s annual “Picture of the Nation” survey.
The Israeli social policy think tank Taub Center released its annual “Picture of the Nation” analysis of the State of Israel yesterday, breaking down its economy, demography, education and health-care system. This year’s review focuses on the effects of the Oct. 7 attacks and the ensuing war, as well as the domestic turmoil that preceded it, finding that some of them will likely be long-lasting while others were short-term issues that have since resolved themselves, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
“For the past nine years I have dedicated countless hours preparing our annual publication, A Picture of the Nation, to make it encompassing and revealing, lucid and enlightening, and geared towards disseminating information while raising interest in the wide variety of topics the Taub Center studies throughout the year,” Avi Weiss, the think tank’s president, wrote in the opening. “This year was harder. Israel is at war, a war forced upon it by an evil terror group, Hamas, which attacked Israel on October 7, 2023 (on the holiday of Simchat Torah), brutally killed, raped, and tortured 1,266 Israelis in their homes, including 364 victims at the Nova dance festival and 352 soldiers, and kidnapped 256 Israelis… We pray that this war will soon end with all the hostages returned to their homes and able to begin healing.”
Weiss said he hoped that the report will “help inform decision-makers and the general public” about the state of the State of Israel.
In the report, the Taub Center generally describes the Israeli economy as resilient, bouncing back after a major blow in the final quarter of 2023 because of the war, which shut down businesses and schools, forced entire swaths of the country to evacuate and saw hundreds of thousands of people called up to the reserves. “With that, the Israeli economy continues to demonstrate resilience, as it has in previous wars and military operations,” the authors wrote.
One area of lingering concern on a macroeconomic level, however, is the country’s debt-to-GDP ratio in light of the government’s need to borrow more money in order to fund the current war and prepare the military for future conflicts. This comes as the country had its credit rating reduced, with rating agencies warning that it could be lowered further.
“The rise in the debt-to-GDP ratio may further endanger Israel’s credit rating and lead to an additional rise in interest payments,” according to the center.
Looking at data from the Central Bureau of Statistics, the researchers found a consistent rise in employment among Arab and Haredi men over the past two years, though they caution that the gains among Haredi men — which are not seen to the same extent in data from the National Economic Council — may be due to differences in how “Haredi” is defined. They add that much of the increase is among Haredi men in the 55-64 age group, meaning they will not be employed for very long before retiring.
The researchers found that while unemployment rose dramatically at the end of 2023, it has since nearly returned to pre-Oct. 7 levels.
Food insecurity remains a significant issue for many Israelis, with 16.2% of Israeli families living in food insecurity, roughly half of them in “serious food insecurity.”
An existing problem that has become more acute in the aftermath of Oct. 7 is local governments’ inability to hire social workers, at a time when their services are often desperately needed. As of last month, there are 895 unfilled positions across the country, according to figures from the Ministry of Welfare and Social Affairs. “The difficulty in filling positions is typical of the past decade, and, in particular, the past few years. It is linked to employment conditions, heavy caseloads, pay and the low status of social workers,” the authors wrote.
The homicide rate among Israel’s Arab population has tripled in the past four years, according to Israel Police data. There is also a growing disparity between the homicide rate among Arab and Jewish Israelis; until 2015, there were four murders in the Arab community for every one in the Jewish community, while last year there were 13. “The ratio of Arab to Jewish homicide rates is about 60% greater than the ratio of Black to White homicide rates in the U.S., which is around 8:1,” the researchers noted.
In a section on the environment, the authors found that Israel relies on landfills to dispose of garbage more than any other “high-income” country, which contributes to greenhouse gas production and may cause “dire sanitation crisis” as the country struggles to find alternative solutions for waste disposal.
The researchers also found that Israeli cities are sorely lacking trees, which they said “have an important influence on health and feelings of thermal comfort and quality of urban life.” This arboreal shortage is not universal, however, with wealthier inhabitants of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa enjoying more shade than their lower socioeconomic neighbors. “The World Health Organization has determined that the most vulnerable populations to climate change, and, in particular, to increased heat burden, are those of low socioeconomic status. It is particularly important to enhance the areas where these populations are concentrated,” they said.
Israel is in serious need of more locally trained doctors, sporting both the lowest number of medical school graduates relative to the population in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the highest percentage of physicians trained outside of the country in the OECD.
On a potentially positive note, the researchers found that the number of prescriptions for opioids has fallen “drastically” in recent years, particularly for fentanyl. (Read eJP’s report about this issue here.) Though the study’s authors warned against early celebrations: “More research is required to uncover whether patients switched to an alternative pain medication or bought drugs illegally, particularly given reports of widespread forgeries of prescriptions and smuggled medicines,” they said.
IN MEMORIAM
Israel commemorates deaths of thousands of Ethiopian Jews who died trying to make aliyah 40 years ago during Operation Moses
Today, on the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar, the State of Israel marks two national holidays: Jerusalem Day and the memorial day for the 4,000 Ethiopian Jews who died en route to Israel 40 years ago during Operation Moses. This year, Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry added 30 names to the national monument in their honor, which were determined following additional investigations and research, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
Disproportionate service: At the memorial ceremony at Israel’s national cemetery Mount Herzl, Israeli Immigration Minister Ofir Sofer noted that Israelis of Ethiopian descent have played an outsized role in the current war against Hamas in Gaza. “We are now in the midst of a difficult and long campaign,” Sofer said. “The number of fallen soldiers from the [Ethiopian] community is dramatically larger than their share of the population.”
Nearly doubled: Ahead of the memorial day, the Immigration Ministry released statistics about the approximately 8,000 people who made it to Israel as part of Operation Moses, 6,617 of whom are still alive. According to the ministry, the 8,000 Operation Moses olim, or Jewish immigrants to Israel, have had 7,645 children in the past 40 years. (The most common names given to the children were: Yisrael, Avraham, Moshe and Mazal.)
MAJOR GIFTS
With $53.9 million donation, University of Haifa launches its own medical school
The University of Haifa will open a new medical school in a bid to address the shortage of locally trained doctors (see story above on the Taub Center report), as well as a 1,200-bed “first-of-its-kind university teaching hospital” that the university said was made possible by a NIS 200 million ($53.9 million) gift from the its top donors, Herta and Paul Amir, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
A vision for the north: “Over the years, Paul and I have had the goal to support the State of Israel, particularly its northern region,” Herta Amir said at the ceremony. “Establishing [the] University of Haifa’s School of Medicine fulfills our vision. Providing the country with another medical school is critical, especially during this challenging time, when Israel’s medical system is under much stress. I’m proud to be part of such an exciting project.” A University of Haifa spokesperson told eJP that Herta Amir, whose husband died in 2020, had previously pledged to support the creation of the medical school, but that the exact amount of the donation was only finalized on Sunday.
New generation: The medical school, which will be named for the Amirs, will be Israel’s seventh. It will be led by Dr. Haim Bitterman, who has served in a number of top roles in Israel’s health-care system and taught at the Technion’s medical school. “The doctors of the 21st century must have a certain set of skills beyond, of course, understanding classical medical concepts,” Bitterman said at the cornerstone laying ceremony for the new medical school. “They need to master new technologies, know how to treat people remotely through a computer screen or a phone, and understand the needs of their community.”
Two birds: The teaching hospital, which is also meant to improve medical care in northern Israel, will be run in partnership with Haifa’s Carmel Medical Center and the Clalit health-care provider. In addition to the NIS 200 million gift from the Amirs, the university has raised NIS 50 million ($13.5 million) toward the construction of the new medical school.
SYSTEM REBOOT
Educators are experiencing a second coming-of-age during post-Oct. 7 visits to Israel
“In a field where professional role and personal identity are deeply fused — where Jewish educators teach who they are and are what they teach — a deeply rooted sense of Jewish self is vital in the desire to continue doing the work. And yet, the past eight months have seen a seismic shake-up,” write Yaakov Malomet and Alex Pomson of Rosov Consulting in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Many Jews — including those with deeply held beliefs and long, decorated careers in Jewish communal service — feel as though they have lost their bearings or sense of what’s what in the Jewish world. Enter the Israel trip.”
Back to the beginning: “Most of the Jewish professionals, rabbis, community leaders and educators our team has accompanied recently are well-acquainted with Israeli history, society and culture. Some may even have close family and friends living in Israel and serving in the IDF. However, many express a sense of arriving in a ‘new Israel,’ one they are encountering for the first time. It is as if they have stepped through a doorway to a different reality, an unfamiliar or uncanny version of Israel, and they must use every moment in the country to puzzle out what it means or to give expression to their connection and concern. ”
Why it matters: “Over the last 15 years, our team has studied and often evaluated Israel experience programs for both younger and somewhat older visitors… In a notable shift, we have noticed that now, without need for special facilitation, the most common conclusion reached by Jewish visitors to Israel has been how much Israelis and Diaspora Jews have in common… With a new sense of their own bearings and their responsibilities, they can begin to help others find a way through this challenging moment.”
Worthy Reads
I Did Tell You: A new study by Benji Davis and Hanan Alexander recently published in Contemporary Jewryexplores how teachers in Jewish high schools teach their students about the complexity of Israel to avoid the claims of “you never told me” heard by anti-Zionist groups like IfNotNow, who accuse their educators of hiding Israel’s flaws from them. “Our findings discredit the ‘you never told me’ claim that Israel education in Jewish high schools fails to expose students to Palestinian narratives or criticisms of Israel, at least as to the exemplary teachers we interviewed, who all emphasized conflicting narratives and learning more about the challenging aspects of Israeli history and contemporary Israel. Perhaps the real complaint of those claiming ‘you never told me’ is political, not educational; they are irked by the Zionist identity of their teachers and schools. If this is the case, their claims are correct. The teachers of Israel education who were our participants and the schools they represented outwardly and proudly identified as Zionist. But this identification does not preclude teaching about perspectives that challenge and contradict one’s position… The insights of this study can also help the broader Jewish community navigate a conversation many find difficult to even start, let alone participate in or lead… If the wisdom of practice of exemplary Israel educators provides a blueprint for empowering Jewish high school students to participate in the Israel conversation on campus, there is no reason why such a model could not be applied for the broader community as well.” [ContemporaryJewry]
Around the Web
AIPAC’s Board of Directors chose Elliot Brandt, currently the organization’s vice CEO, to serve as its next CEO. He will succeed Howard Kohr when he retires at the end of 2024…
The Ohio attorney general is seeking a temporary restraining order to stop Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati from selling rare items from its Klau Library unless proceeds are guaranteed to be reinvested into the library. The filing claims HUC-JIR has violated Ohio state law by continuing to solicit donations for the library while cutting budgets and moving to sell its assets…
Jewish Insider examines the Biden administration’s often difficult to parse rhetoric on Israel, which some White House watchers credit to a desire to please everybody…
Recent Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks have burned some 3,500 acres of forests in northern Israel in recent days, according to the Jewish National Fund-Keren Kayemet LeYisrael; this is nearly twice as much as were destroyed in the 2006 Second Lebanon War…
The Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan in New York City raised over $1.8 million at its annual benefit on Sunday, making it the institution’s most successful fundraising event ever. The funds will, in part, go toward the JCC’s annual Tikkun Leil Shavuot event…
The Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Legacy Trust released two new resource guides based on the former British chief rabbi’s teachings for Shavuot; Rabbi Joshua Spodek created one of the collections, about the concept of chosenness, which is made up of sources and “guiding questions,” and Simon Lawrence wrote a study guide for teens about the nature of freedom…
Justin Cohen, co-publisher of the British Jewish News, received his Member of the British Empire, which is awarded for outstanding achievement or service to the community, for services to Holocaust remembrance and the Jewish community from the Prince of Wales yesterday…
The British Board of Deputies officially opened its new offices with a mezuzah-hanging ceremony this morning…
Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is reportedly behind a $2 million influence campaign targeting U.S. lawmakers and voters in an effort to grow support for Israel in its war against Hamas…
Allison A. Atterberry was hired as the next executive director of Neshama: Association of Jewish Chaplains, beginning next month…
Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz, creators of the hit Israeli television series “Fauda,” have been enlisted by Leviathan Productions to write the script for “October 7th,” a narrative feature telling the story of Noam Tibon, a grandfather and retired Israeli general who rescued his family — and others — from Hamas terrorists who had invaded their kibbutz near the Gaza border…
NYU Langone medical center has renamed its Bridgehampton, Long Island, location the J. Ira and Nicki Harris Family Ambulatory Care, in honor of a $10 million donation on Saturday from Nicki Harris and her family. The donation aims to expand access to the health system’s care on the East End…
Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood slammed anti-Israel activists who criticized his recent collaboration with Israeli musician Dudu Tassa, saying that those calling for him to end their partnership are “unprogressive”…
CBS News spotlights a Holocaust Survivor Day event that was held yesterday in Elkins Park, Pa., after the commonwealth and the neighboring city of Philadelphia officially recognized the day last year…
Larry Greenspon donated another $3.35 million to the Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee, Fla., to redevelop its campus, which will be renamed in his honor; in 2018, Greenspon made a donation of the same amount for the cause…
Under the terms of a settlement reached with a Jewish student, Columbia University will increase safety measures at the school, including the creation of a position to help students coordinate safe passage on campus and academic accommodations for students who couldn’t attend classes in person over safety issues…
A school district superintendent in British Columbia, Canada, apologized after a class of middle schoolers in the Burnaby School District was asked to debate whether Israel should exist…
The Times of Israel profiles a delegation of Chabad emissaries at American college campuses who visited Israel…
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, the vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, died yesterday after a lengthy illness at age 74…
Seymour Holtzman, a longtime business executive who was quick to invest in Eastern Europe during the fall of the Soviet Union and a donor to Jewish causes, died last week at 88…
Michael Livni, one of the most influential thinkers on Reform Zionism and the first shaliach (emissary) to the Reform movement in North America on behalf of the Kibbutz Movement and the World Zionist Organization, died yesterday at 89…
Pic of the Day
Ohr Torah Stone, a network of Modern Orthodox educational and social institutions, held the first rabbinic gathering in Barcelona, Spain, in 700 years this week.
The conference, which took place Sunday through Tuesday in the historical epicenter of the Jewish expulsion from Spain, brought together over 100 rabbis and rebbetzins working as emissaries in European countries and beyond to discuss pressing issues affecting European Jewry. It was hosted by Ohr Torah Stone’s Straus-Amiel and Beren-Amiel Emissary Training Institutes.
Birthdays
Lithuanian-born Holocaust survivor, co-founder of the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond, Va., known for his ever-present cowboy hat, Jay M. Ipson…
Training director and broker associate of the Santa Monica, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services branch, Saul Bubis… Owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots and founder of the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, Robert Kraft… Former project manager at CSA Group, now an ESG consultant, Dan Yurman… Israeli politician, diplomat and businessperson, he served as consul general of Israel in Philadelphia from 1988 to 1992, Israel Peleg… VP of new business development at Maresco & Partners, Linda Greenfield… Author of 11 personal finance books, financial adviser, motivational speaker and television host, Susan Lynn “Suze” Orman… Staff member at Temple Emanu El in Burbank, Calif., Audrey Freedman-Habush… Portrait photographer and visual anthropologist, she is the author of The Jews of Wyoming: Fringe of the Diaspora, Penny Diane Wolin… Former commissioner on the U.S. International Trade Commission, Dean A. Pinkert… Best-selling instrumental musician, the saxophonist “Kenny G,” Kenneth Bruce Gorelick… Columnist for the New York Post, Andrea Peyser… Head of legal at Compass real estate, Sam Kraemer… Executive vice president and managing director at DC’s Burson Cohn & Wolfe (BCW), Michael Heimowitz… Member of the Ontario Provincial Parliament for eight years until 2022, Gila Deborah Martow… Vice president of government affairs at Invenergy, Mark S. Weprin… First-ever Jewish speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates when she was elected in 2020, now running for Congress, Eileen R. Filler-Corn… Beth A. Freeman… Member of Congress (D-PA), her father is a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland, Christina Jampoler Houlahan… Member of the British House of Commons for 15 years, now a member of the House of Lords, Baron Ed Vaizey… Entrepreneur, venture capitalist and author, he holds more than 100 granted and pending patents, Nova Spivack… Professor of Israel studies at UCLA, Dov Morris Waxman… Film and television actress, she has a recurring role in the Fox series “The Cleaning Lady,” Liza Rebecca Weil… Actor, voice actor, comedian, writer and producer, Nicholas Kroll… Co-founder of BlueLabs and director of analytics for the campaigns of both Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012, his father and grandfather were both rabbis, Elan Alter Kriegel… Research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, he was previously a member of the New Hampshire state legislature, Jason Bedrick… Partner relationship manager at Voyant, Arielle Levy Marschark… Account director on the corporate PR team at M Booth, Maya Bronstein… Clara Moskowitz… Susan Stein…
