Your Daily Phil: Jewish groups increasingly support aid efforts in Gaza
Good Tuesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a new Jewish Federations of North America initiative to subsidize volunteering trips to Israel this year. We feature an opinion piece by Julia Malkin Reger with insights into Gen Z’s preferred approach to Jewish engagement, and one by Dena Farber Schoenfeld on how to cultivate a strong shared leadership between an organization’s board and its executives. Also in this issue: John Paul Lederach, Ben and Felicia Horowitz and Scooter Braun. We’ll start with how Jewish nonprofits are increasingly supporting relief work for Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.
After Oct. 7, Jewish nonprofits around the world sprang into action, raising and allocating funds in response to the immediate and emerging needs of Israelis: supporting hostage awareness campaigns, helping children who lost one or both parents during that day’s acts of terror, creating mental health services for traumatized Israelis and other causes that emerged from the Hamas-led massacres.
In recent months, an increasing number of Jewish-led or -driven organizations and relief nonprofits have begun to expand their focus to include the Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip, asserting that it is a moral and Jewish imperative and, in some cases, an effort that actually assists Israel in its war against Hamas, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Esther D. Kustanowitz.
In the case of World Jewish Relief-USA, which raises funds for the U.K-based World Jewish Relief, the organization had asked supporters to donate to Israel-based charities, and donated from its own reserves to partners on the ground, after Oct. 7. But by June, in coordination with Israel’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) — the Israeli administrative body that oversees humanitarian aid efforts in Gaza — a small number of private donors stepped forward to provide targeted support to a local partner to set up a field hospital to provide maternal and infant health care for Gazans. (For security reasons, the local partner cannot be identified by name.)
The timing for the initiative hinged on a number of factors, according to the group’s executive director, Rabbi Dina Brawer. WJR was monitoring the humanitarian situation in Gaza on an ongoing basis and recognized the needs on the ground. In April, WJR notified its UK supporters that the organization was considering action; it then identified a partner and underwent a due diligence process. At the same time, the organization’s leadership held discussions with COGAT and set up a webinar for WJR supporters to hear from their head of civil affairs more about Israel’s approach to humanitarian aid in Gaza. The plan to fund the creation of a field hospital came after WJR received explicit encouragement from the Israeli authorities to maximize the humanitarian impact of the aid by focusing on mothers and children.
“Supporting Israel’s humanitarian approach in Gaza is a profound expression of our Jewish values, particularly those of tzedakah [justice], hesed [loving kindness] and tikkun olam [repairing the world],” Brawer told eJP.
The New Israel Fund (NIF), which has a long history of supporting Palestinian causes, also waited several months before entering the Gaza relief fray as it sought to assess the situation and determine how to best and most safely act, its CEO, Daniel Sokatch, told eJP.
“The past 10 months have been one evolving crisis,” Sokatch said. “It is important to NIF to stay limber so that we can focus our resources where it matters most,” he said, responding to eJP’s question about why NIF launched its campaign when it did. “Given that humanitarian relief in Gaza is not where our expertise lies, we took the time to find the partners we knew we could trust. We launched the campaign as soon as we were ready.”
In May, NIF raised $750,000 from 2,500 donors from the U.S., Israel, Canada, the U.K. and Germany “to help feed innocent people living in Gaza,” according to the organization’s website. As of press time, the organization has sent more than $1.3 million to aid organizations addressing the needs of the displaced Gazans — the first time that NIF has raised and distributed this level of funding for programs outside of Israel proper.
In July, the Arava Institute, with a coalition of 14 Israeli, Palestinian and international NGOs, private companies and academic institutions, launched its “Jumpstarting Hope in Gaza” campaign, to provide immediate relief to refugee camps and establish sustainable water and sanitation systems that run on renewable energy. The focus of the institute has always been on creating sustainable environmental solutions in the region, the executive director of the U.S.-based Friends of the Arava Institute, Rachel Kalikow, told eJP, but now that focus has shifted toward supporting refugee families, working with Damour for Community Development, a Palestinian NGO and five-year partner of the institute.
“Helping innocent Palestinians in Gaza who are victims of this war — as are many Israelis — and who had no part in the atrocities of Oct. 7, is an expression of the Jewish value of tikkun olam,” Kalikow said. “At one of the darkest moments in Israel’s history, while our own brothers and sisters are suffering, our humanity is tested by our ability to recognize human suffering in the faces of our neighbors.”
Kalikow added that Israel has its own reasons for wanting to address the growing environmental crisis in the neighboring Gaza Strip: Lack of sanitation and flow of untreated wastewater in Gaza presents a health hazard to Israel’s beaches and desalinated water supply, while the destruction of Gaza’s buildings is likely to cause long-term air pollution and spread disease throughout the region, including in Israel, she said. For the Arava Institute, such joint environmental work can also build trust and “serve as a model for constructive peacemaking,” she said
PITCHING IN
JFNA, Israel Educational Travel Alliance launch new grant program to subsidize Israel volunteering trips
The Jewish Federations of North America has put at least $800,000 toward a new grant program — Serve Israel — that it is launching with the Israel Educational Travel Alliance to subsidize volunteering trips to Israel for 1,000 people through the end of this year, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
Building bonds: “Over these past 10 difficult months, we have seen the critical role that Israel travel and North American volunteers have played in both helping Israelis confront the deep challenges they face and strengthening the bonds between North Americans and Israel,” Shira Hutt, executive vice president of JFNA, said in a statement.
DIY, or not: The grants are available to any Jewish federation or group that wants to organize its own trip — either seven-10-day ones or a more intensive four-week program — or they can instead partner with Birthright Israel or Masa Israel. The trips can offer a variety of volunteering options, from harvesting, packaging and distributing food to assisting displaced Israelis and families of deployed soldiers and tutoring children, according to JFNA. “These programs represent an essential tool for supporting Israel and Israelis at this critical time,” Hutt said.
SURVEY SAYS
The surprising way to engage Gen Z
“The Jewish community is at an inflection point, and if we hope to continue engaging younger generations in order to create tomorrow’s Jewish leaders, we will have to continue adapting to their needs,” writes Julia Malkin Reger, managing director of JFNA’s Jewish Changemakers, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Popular wisdom: “As the COVID-19 pandemic wound down in 2022, the world began grappling in earnest with returning to a new normal. After two years of working from home in a Zoom-centered universe, for instance, many executives, program directors and organizations urgently felt the need to get back to some type of in-person work environment. While most understood that our online world wasn’t going to disappear completely, it was taken as a given that live in-person interaction was still the preferred paradigm, an approach backed by plenty of research… But one demographic group in particular has pushed back: Gen Z, defined by the Pew Research Center as the generation born between 1997 and 2012.”
Straight from the source: “As a Gen Z-native initiative, we at Changemakers constantly strive to better understand our audience: who they are, what they need and how Changemakers, Jewish federations and the Jewish community overall can best support them. To deepen that understanding, we conducted a survey in June 2024 gathering insights from 763 Jewish young adults aged 22 to 30 on topics like career, leadership and community involvement. Some of the results mirrored or expanded on the findings of Jewish federations’ impact and growth research; but we also gained further insights into our respondents that we are eager to share more broadly, in the hope that other organizations and initiatives can benefit from what we learned.”
READER RESPONDS
Mind the gap: Preventing a divide between boards and executives in times of crisis
“Over and over, I have heard executive leaders and board leaders tell me that the most significant problems they’re facing aren’t the problems they would have predicted in the past. In a column last week in eJewishPhilanthropy, Barry Finestone summarized this state as VUCA: ‘volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity,’” writes Dena Farber Schoenfeld, chief program officer at Leading Edge, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
What we know: “At Leading Edge, we work to improve leadership, talent and culture across the Jewish nonprofit sector. In these last four years, we have seen countless shifts in how leaders responded to tumultuous times, but one leadership truth that I saw during the pandemic and am seeing again post-Oct. 7 is this: In organizations where shared leadership was strong before the crisis, organizations fare better during a crisis. When shared leadership wasn’t firmly grounded before the crisis, organizations struggled to weather the change and find their leadership posture.”
Advice and resources: “Shared leadership is about fostering a culture of trust and respect where executives and board members work together as true partners. Here are four ideas to help executive and board leaders strengthen their shared leadership.”
Worthy Reads
In the Eye of the Beholder: In Mosaic, Jacob Wisse delves into the history and impact of (mostly Christian) artists depicting Jewish subject matter in what ultimately became canonical works of art. “A number of years ago, in the course of teaching a survey of Western art from late antiquity to the modern era, I was struck by how many of the works we discussed in class were based on episodes from the Hebrew Bible. Considering this, I initially ascribed the frequency to my own predilection for these subjects… But the more I thought about it, the more this didn’t seem to explain the phenomenon. In surveys of Western art and art-historical textbooks — in which the greatest or most important art works and expressions of artistic patronage and culture are featured — there is really no avoiding subjects that come from the Hebrew Bible. They are an integral and constant part of the art-historical tradition and are linked to some of its greatest masterpieces, most significant stylistic developments, and richest forms of artistic expression… At the same time, the versions of Hebrew-biblical stories rendered for patrons and institutions of the majority Christian culture are dramatically different from how they are understood in Jewish interpretive tradition.” [Mosaic]
A Path Forward: In The Washington Post, veteran peacebuilding practitioner John Paul Lederach offers his insights into how we can de-escalate the polarization of American society. “With our current divides, many people feel forced into choosing sides. We pull back from relationships where even a hint of political difference exists. We consider who said something and whom they associate with to judge the merit of what they said. We talk a lot about those we don’t like. We rarely talk with them… First, we need to reach beyond our isolated bubbles. In other places, reaching out frequently started with a few people who had the imagination to take a small risk: They dared to open a conversation with their perceived enemies in their own community. This small step was the start of a meaningful journey. Second, we have to rehumanize our adversaries. We must have the courage to confront dehumanizing language and behavior, especially when it comes from within our closest circles… Finally, we need to stick with it. We can’t just pull away when difficult issues emerge. We must engage on policy but also acknowledge deep-seated fears, historic wrongs and identity differences. People who learn to stay the course know that politics without violence is possible only when we stay connected. It’s hard, but not nearly as difficult as stopping a war.” [WashingtonPost]
A Cause Abandoned?: After rising dramatically from 2018 to 2020, philanthropic support for criminal justice reform dropped by half in 2021 and has not recovered since, reports Dawn Wolfe in Inside Philanthropy. “It would be easy to blame a large part of the dropoff on the COVID-19 pandemic, but the numbers say this isn’t the case. Funder commitments hit their all-time high in 2020. This means that dollars were still being promised in droves while COVID was at its peak, much of that probably driven by interrelated commitments to racial and criminal justice reform following the murder of George Floyd. So why did so many funders take their metaphorical marbles and go home? Experts I consulted offered a wide range of reasons. One said the dropoff was a correction, following a time when almost anyone could get money for criminal justice reform. A few said that the movement hasn’t done the greatest job with communications. But a number of sources talked about two big reasons for the dropoff.” [InsidePhilanthropy]
Around the Web
The Israel Defense Forces recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages held in Gaza: Haim Perry, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Poplewell, Alexander Dancyg, Yagav Buchstab and Avraham Munder, the latter of whom was thought to have still been alive; 109 hostages remain in captivity…
Yeshiva University reported a 15-year high in the number of undergraduates matriculating to the private New York school in the upcoming academic year, which it attributed to the rise in antisemitism on other college campuses…
Yesterday, the university also announced plans to establish a new health care-focused campus in Herald Square, in midtown Manhattan…
Of the 125 Columbia University students who were suspended over the anti-Israel demonstrations at the school last year, all but 10 have returned to being in “good standing” ahead of the coming academic year…
The Jewish Federation of Orange County announced the appointment of Jodie Snyder as its new senior director of philanthropy…
Among those named to City & State NY‘s 2024 Manhattan Power 100: Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, JCCA CEO Ronald Richter, Sid Davidoff, Jeff Blau, James Tisch and Merryl Tisch, Suri Kasirer, Julie Greenberg, Steven Rubenstein, Steven Roth, Allen Roskoff, Larry Silverstein, Robert Grossman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Dan Biederman, Eva Moskowitz, Micah Lasher, Nancy Cantor, Seth Pinsky, Ruth Messinger, Scott Stringer, Reps. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), N.Y. state Sen. Liz Krueger, N.Y. state Assemblymembers Harvey Epstein, Deborah Glick, Linda Rosenthal and Rebecca Seawright and Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine…
A new Pew survey found that 20% of Jews have moved countries since 2020, far more than any other religious group…
A controversial effort to introduce a ballot measure in Pittsburgh that would require the city to cut ties with companies that do business with Israel was thrown out yesterday after a judge ruled that it lacked the required number of valid signatures…
Israel’s economy underperformed in the second quarter of this year, falling short of financial expert’s expectations, with gross domestic product per capita shrinking by 0.4%, which economists attributed to the effects of the ongoing war in Gaza and fighting on the northern border…
The San Francisco Standard profiles billionaires and one-time liberal donors Ben and Felicia Horowitz’s turn away from left-wing politics and support for former President Donald Trump…
The Anti-Defamation League will honor record executive and entrepreneur Scooter Braun at its 30th annual Concert Against Hate in November for, among other things, his role in creating a traveling memorial exhibition about the Nova Music Festival massacre…
Silvio Santos, a son of Sephardic Jewish immigrants who went from a street vendor to one of Brazil’s wealthiest men as the creator of a media empire, died on Saturday at 93…
Pic of the Day
A fundraising event held last Friday at the home of Dvora and Ben Corn, chairman of the medical nonprofit Life’s Door, in Caesarea, Israel, drew about 100 attendees and raised NIS 250,000 ($68,000) toward the implementation of a new partnership between between Life’s Door and the Northern Medical Center (NMC) outside Tiberias in northern Israel, also known as Poriya.
From right: Dvora Corn; featured guest speaker Shai Davidai, a Columbia University professor who has made waves in the past year as a critic of his school’s tolerance for anti-Israel and antisemitic protests; Dr. Noam Yehudai, director of NMC; Zohara Davidai, chair of the Friends of NMC (and mother of Shai Davidai); and Ben Corn, founder of Life’s Door.
At the event, NMC announced that it is partnering with Life’s Door, which focuses on quality of life through illness, aging and death. “Medical services cannot succeed without patient rehabilitation,” Yehudai said at the gathering. “Physical rehabilitation is only part of that. There is also mental rehabilitation and community rehabilitation for northern Israel. To achieve this, we need hope, and that’s why we have utilized the best in the field.”
Birthdays
Wilmington, Del., resident and treasurer of the Jewish Federations of North America, Suzanne Barton Grant…
Laguna Hills, Calif., resident, Phoebe Bryan… News anchor and reporter, Connie Chung… Director of the National Economic Council during the Trump administration, now a commentator for Fox Business, Larry Kudlow… Former secretary of labor for the State of Kansas, Lana Goodman Gordon… Chair of the Golda Och Academy in West Orange, N.J., Steven H. Klinghoffer… Mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 2004 until 2014 and the owner of minor league baseball’s Winnipeg Goldeyes, Samuel Michael “Sam” Katz… Managing director of equity derivatives at Rice Financial Products, Jay A. Knopf… U.S. representative (D-IL), Brad Schneider… President of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was the U.S. trade representative during the Obama administration, Ambassador Michael Froman… U.S. senator (R-MT), Steve Daines… Founder and controlling shareholder of the Altice Group, he acquired Sotheby’s in 2019, Patrick Drahi… Executive director of A Wider Bridge, Ethan Felson… Israeli writer known for his short stories and graphic novels, Etgar Keret… Film director and screenwriter, Mark Levin… British ambassador to Israel from 2010 to 2015, the first Jewish U.K. ambassador to be posted to Tel Aviv, he is now the CEO of the Zoological Society of London, Matthew Gould… Ethiopian-born, former member of the Knesset for Kulanu, Asher Fentahun Seyoum… Director of communications at Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, Ari Goldberg… Executive director of Lisa Stone Pritzker’s LSP Family Foundation, Abigail Michelson Porth… Chief strategy officer and one of the founders of the Jerusalem Season of Culture, a summer music festival that showcases Jerusalem, Karen Brunwasser… Co-founder of Boundless Israel, Rachel Lea Fish, Ph.D…. Partner in the Iowa office of Cornerstone Government Affairs and foundation president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines, David Ryan Adelman… Canadian television and film actress, Meghan Ory Reardon… Real estate agent, author and television personality as an original cast member on the show “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” Josh Flagg… Stand-up comedian, actor, podcaster and internet personality, Gianmarco Vincent Soresi… Triathlete and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Israel 2019, Sella Sharlin…
