Your Daily Phil: Jewish camp world rocked as major for-profit owner declares bankruptcy
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine the fallout after the owners of dozens of for-profit Jewish camps declared bankruptcy last week. We cover the Youth Renewal Fund’s New York City gala to raise money for Israel’s Darca schools, and report on a push to add another $40 million to the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program. For the first time since 2021, eight executives from across the field of Jewish education team up for an opinion piece on the state of their sectors, and an opinion piece by Stan Shaw, Bernard Pinsky and Ezra Shanken highlights a model and resources for addressing communal cybersecurity concerns. Also in this issue: Ghila Amati, Shahar Gamla and Galia Messika Greenberg.
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
A bipartisan group of lawmakers will introduce the Jewish American Security Act this morning in the House of Representatives — a bill to improve security for Jewish institutions and crack down on online antisemitism that is backed by many national Jewish groups.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations is holding a daylong convening on antisemitism today in New York City.
Also in New York, the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation will present New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin with its Fighting Hatred Award tonight.
Chabad Loft will host its Summer Cocktail Benefit this evening at Chelsea Hall in New York City. Sheina Gutnick, who was the first witness to testify before Australia’s Royal Commission into Antisemitism and was the daughter of Bondi Beach hero Reuven Morrison, will be the guest of honor.
The Simon Wiesenthal Center is hosting a gala this evening in Chicago, where it will present its 2026 Humanitarian Award and Medal of Valor and debut Illinois’ newest Mobile Museum of Tolerance. If you’re there, say hi to eJP’s Rachel Kohn!
What You Should Know
A major player in Jewish American camping — brothers Michael and David Shabsels, who own more than two dozen overnight and day camps across the East Coast — declared bankruptcy last week, a move that could affect thousands of Jewish campers just as the summer season is getting underway.
While representatives of some of the for-profit camps involved have told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher that they will run this summer, camp insiders say their long-term futures could be vulnerable if the brothers are forced to sell off the camp properties.
“I really don’t know anything,” a representative from Camp Achim, a Jewish camp in Catskill, N.Y., told eJP yesterday. “I just know camp is moving forward as planned.”
News
ON THE SCENE
Youth Renewal Fund raises nearly $1M for Israel’s Darca school network at NYC gala
The Maxim Levy Darca High School, located in one of Israel’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods in the central Israeli city of Lod, once sent just 23% of its students to graduation. Today, it’s 94%. That’s one of the statistics Gil Pereg, CEO of The Youth Renewal Fund, offered Monday night at the organization’s annual gala at The New York Historical, which raised nearly $1 million for the group, the U.S. nonprofit behind Israel’s Darca school network, reports Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Honorable mention: Monday’s gala honored siblings Jacquie Greyserman Ptalis and professional golfer Max Greyserman for their philanthropic contributions to YRF, with Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan — vice chair of Darca schools and a founding member of YRF — among those in attendance.
BUDGET BOOST
House Appropriations Committee recommends additional $40M for NSGP
The House Appropriations Committee approved a $40 million increase in its funding proposal for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program for 2027, boosting its recommendation to $355 million, in a Tuesday night session that stretched into this morning, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Modern-day necessity: A source familiar with the situation credited Reps. Juan Ciscomani (R-AZ), Celeste Maloy (R-UT), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Lois Frankel (D-FL) with securing the increase. “Nonprofit security grants are absolutely critical to combat surging antisemitism and hate crimes,” Wasserman Schultz told JI. “I proudly fought for an increase in NSGP funding and I’m grateful it was included, but we must do more on the floor and in conference to make sure everybody in America can worship safely.”
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
Opinion
STATUS UPDATE
The state of Jewish education: Insights from leaders across the field
“It’s been a few years since leaders in different sectors of Jewish education shared a state of the field. Much has changed since many of us first participated in these updates during the pandemic,” write executives Orna Siegel of ElevatEd; Rabbi Rachel Bovitz of the Florence Melton School of Adult Jewish Learning; Rabbi Dena Klein of The Jewish Education Project; Jaime Simon of the Foundation for Jewish Camp; Paul Bernstein of Prizmah; Rabbi Ben Berger and Adam Lehman of Hillel International; and Miriam Heller Stern of Builders of Jewish Education in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Triumphs, challenges and opportunities: “As the school and programmatic year concludes, we wanted to share updates and our perspectives on Jewish education at this moment, with a focus on important advancements in our sectors since 2021 and the most significant challenges and opportunities each sector faces.”
READERS RESPOND
Cybersecurity is community security
“The recent eJewishPhilanthropy article exploring cybersecurity and the accelerating impact of artificial intelligence on online crime is both timely and unsettling (“Security experts warn philanthropic, Jewish worlds at risk as AI supercharges cyber attacks,” April 27). It highlights a reality many Jewish organizations are only beginning to fully absorb,” write Stan Shaw, chair of the cybersecurity committee at the Jewish Federation of British Columbia; Bernard Pinsky, chair of the Ronald S. Roadburg Foundation; and Ezra Shanken, CEO of JFBC, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Follow our lead: “Synagogues, schools, social service agencies and federations are being targeted not because they are large or wealthy, but because they are mission-critical, data-rich and often under-resourced when it comes to technology protection. In British Columbia, Jewish communal leadership recognized this risk years ago.”
Major Gifts
Following the death of 23-year-old IDF Capt. Shahar Gamla from combat injuries, his family’s decision to donate his organs led to successful life-saving transplant operations for six patients across several Israeli hospitals…
Jewish Care’s annual London gala raised a record £5.6 million ($4.2 million) to fund its care services and the new Sugar & Ronson Campus…
London’s learning disability charity, Kisharon Langdon, secured over £1.09 million ($814,000) during a 36-hour matched-funding drive to support its independent living and educational programs…
Transitions
Leora Goldfarb joined the Jewish Community Foundation San Diego as its new senior communications specialist…
Rabbi A.D. Motzen was named as Agudath Israel of America’s new Washington director; he succeeds longtime Washington director Rabbi Abba Cohen…
Adir Yolkut has been hired as the next vice president of Jewish Learning at Leading Edge…
Worthy Reads
The Battle Within: In Tablet, Yair Golan, leader of the Israeli Democrats party, argues that Israel’s true existential threat is internal. “Zionism was never merely a project of survival. Israel’s founders sought to create something far more ambitious: a Jewish national home grounded in justice, mutual responsibility, and freedom. A Jewish and democratic state — not Jewish instead of democratic. That, in my view, is the heart of Israel’s debate today. There are those who believe that the trauma of Oct. 7 requires Israel to retreat inward, abandon the possibility of political agreements, and live forever by the sword. I reject that vision completely. We must not confuse sobriety with despair.” [Tablet]
The AI Commandments: In the Jewish Journal, Ghila Amati argues that Jewish institutions must proactively shape AI to deepen text study and bridge Israel-Diaspora communication. “The Jewish conversation about AI cannot remain abstract. Jewish communal institutions, universities, rabbinical schools, educational networks, philanthropies and research centers should begin convening this conversation now. We need working groups that bring together rabbis, educators, technologists, ethicists, scholars of Jewish thought and communal leaders to ask how AI should be used in schools, synagogues, yeshivot, Hillels, JCCs and Jewish learning platforms.” [JewishJournal]
Word on the Street
A new Israel Democracy Institute survey found that Israeli public confidence in President Donald Trump’s commitment to Israel’s security has dropped to a record low of 44%, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Shea reports…
Israeli Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu made a covert trip to Moscow last week — the first by an Israeli official in three years as Russia’s diplomatic standing has fallen in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine — to drum up support and partnerships for a planned Soviet Jewry heritage center set to be built in Rishon LeZion…
Ynet spotlights a project by the Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art in which fashion students created personalized clothing for wounded IDF soldiers, highlighting — not hiding — their injuries…
President Donald Trump met with former Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski in the Oval Office yesterday; Braslavski, who was released from Palestinian Islamic Jihad captivity in Gaza last October, had been unable to join a group of hostages who met with the president late last year, soon after the release of the remaining living hostages…
Variety published the guest list for Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley retreat, including Sam Altman, David Ellison, Bari Weiss, Thomas Friedman, Bill Gates, Jared and Josh Kushner and many others…
The Washington Jewish Week interviews Galia Messika Greenberg, who will become the first Israeli-born president of the JCRC of Greater Washington…
Natalie Portman, Justine Triet and Jacques Audiner joined over 350 French cinema figures in an open letter to condemn the cultural boycott of Israeli director Nadav Lapid as “an intellectual failure” after pressure forced him off a festival jury…
Academy Award-winner Gwyneth Paltrow has been named the face of a new marketing campaign for a new luxury Herzliya residential building by Israeli real estate firm Aviv Melisron…
In an opinion piece in The Forward, psychologist Joshua Simmons highlights how the aftermath of Oct. 7 has fractured LGBtQ+ spaces for queer Jews…
Jewish California praised the introduction of California Assembly Bill 1853, authored by Democratic Assemblymembers Gail Pellerin and Marc Berman, to prevent state-issued publications from distributing hate speech or targeting minority groups, after a candidate used election pamphlets to spread antisemitic conspiracy theories this year…
Chabad of Wellington West in Ottawa, Canada, has relocated into a historic, 111-year-old heritage property in Ottawa following a $1.7 million capital campaign, effectively restoring and housing the 15,000-volume Jewish Youth Library collection after nearly a decade in storage…
Pic of the Day
Dozens of representatives from Jewish museums across Europe gather yesterday at the Muzeum Historii ?ydów Polskich POLIN (Museum of the History of Polish Jews) in Warsaw for the Association of European Jewish Museums’ annual conference.
The three-day gathering, which concluded yesterday, focused on persistent questions, such as how to secure funding or organize exhibitions, as well as contemporary issues, such as navigating the role of Jewish museums in the face of “terror, war and growing hostilities,” as was discussed in a plenary session yesterday.
Birthdays
Film, television and stage actor, Gina Gershon turns 64…
Author of award-winning books about her experiences before, during and after the Holocaust, Aranka Davidowitz Siegal turns 96… Emmy Award-winning TV journalist who has worked for CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and PBS, he is the author of 14 books, Jeff Greenfield turns 83… Musician, producer, composer and conductor for film and television, Randy Edelman turns 79… Physical therapist at the University of Pennsylvania Health System, Andrea Sachs… Cathy Farbstein Miller… Senior director of communications for CoGenerate, Stefanie Weiss… Former attorney general and then governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer turns 67… Director of strategic accounts at Pharmacy Management Solutions, Avi H. Goldfeder… Blogger and columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, Neil Steinberg turns 66… President and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), Michael Makovsky… Actor and the older sister of comedian Sarah Silverman, Laura Silverman turns 60… Israeli film and TV Actor, Avital Abergel turns 49… Veteran of nine NFL seasons as an offensive tackle, he is now the athletic director of Mira Costa High School in Manhattan Beach, Calif., Mike Rosenthal turns 49… VP of strategic partnerships at the Birthright Israel Foundation and director of community education at NYC’s Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, Rabbi Daniel Kraus… Professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, Yascha Mounk turns 44… Economic commentator on Israel’s Channel 13, Matan Hodorov turns 41… Publisher of The New York Sun, he is also honorary chairman of The Algemeiner, Dovid Efune… Actor, producer, writer and director, Joseph Paul “Joey” Zimmerman turns 40… CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, Tyler Gregory… Singer, composer and entertainer in the contemporary Jewish religious music industry, Simcha Leiner turns 37… CEO of NYC-based Encounter Programs, designed to transform communal engagement with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Yona Shem-Tov… Belgian singer and songwriter, known as “Blanche,” Ellie Noa Blanche Delvaux turns 27… Artist and piano player, S.E. Taylor…
