The day before Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas’ funeral late last month, a delegation from the nonprofit Toys for Hospitalized Children visited Schneider Children’s Medical Center in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, delivering toys to patients and touring the facilities, including a proposed playroom. Later that day, the group traveled to Rachel’s Tomb — the  burial place of the biblical matriarch — in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. “I went in and prayed, and when I came out, I got in the van and I said to [Rabbi JJ Hecht II, the president of Toys for Hospitalized Children] that I want to donate to the playroom at Schneider. And I wanted it to be in memory of the Bibas family, the children and the mother,” Michelle Domb, one of the two primary funders of the project and a member of the organization’s board, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. “Bringing good feelings to sick children — there’s nothing more fitting than that.”

Family approval: But first, Domb and Toys for Hospitalized Children wanted to ensure that the Bibas family signed off on their plan. They approached Shiri Bibas’ uncle, Maurice Shnaider, who spoke to Shiri’s sister, Dana Silberman-Sitton, and husband, Yarden. “They were so happy about it when they heard,” Shnaider told eJP. “They gave their blessing and they were happy about it. And they will always know that [Shiri, Ariel and Kfir’s] memory will be there forever.” The playroom, which is decorated with orange in an homage to the red-haired Bibas children, is expected to open this summer.”

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There is a saying in Israel that if you turn off all the lights in the country except for those of the kibbutzim, you will see the outline of the borders of the country. “It’s not by accident that 100 of the [259] kibbutzim in Israel are located on the borders, because that is the Zionist way, to [protect] the borders. We are Zionists and we believe in the Zionist state,” Neri Shotan, CEO of the Kibbutz Movement Rehabilitation Fund, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky. The day after the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah joined the fray, firing rockets and artillery at northern Israel for more than a year until a cease-fire deal was reached late last year. The rehabilitation of the kibbutzim in northern Israel — not only through their physical reconstruction but by restoring their inhabitants’ faith in their security — presents significant challenges and costs, according to Shotan, and the only way to face the bumpy road ahead is to take a “leap of faith,” he said, referring to the Bruce Springsteen song of the same name.

Needing a hand: “We found out that the Jewish communities around the world and also the Israeli society — unlike the government — was with us,” said Shotan, noting that philanthropy had never before been a part of the Kibbutz Movement’s budget, and the need for it created a “crisis of belief” for the movement, which long prided itself on independence and self-reliance. “Jewish communities around the world, especially in North America, were with us hand in hand.” However, as the crisis has extended to nearly 18 months and major federations have begun working on strategic planning for the future, the funding has started slowing down as the challenges facing the kibbutzim remain daunting, Shotan said.

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Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin was welcomed to the White House on Wednesday by President Donald Trump. But among Jewish leaders, the prime minister’s annual St. Patrick’s Day trip, which comes at an already tense time between Ireland and Israel over the war in Gaza, stirred controversy — including a canceled meeting and accusations from an Israeli government official that the taoiseach is an “antisemite” who has promoted “a blood libel towards the State of Israel,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen and Kraushaar report.

Nixed meeting: A meeting scheduled for Friday between the Irish leader and four Jewish groups — the Anti-Defamation League, American Jewish Committee, B’nai Brith International and AIPAC — was canceled earlier this week. While the reasons for the cancellation have not been publicly disclosed, Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter told JI that “if any Jewish leader canceled the meeting, they should be commended. It would show leadership. The battle for antisemitism starts with shunning antisemites,” Leiter said. 

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“In a foundational essay on the holiday of Purim, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook points out that Haman, in his description of the Jewish people, calls us ‘one nation, scattered and dispersed among the other nations, in all the provinces of your land,’” writes Rabba Yaffa Epstein, senior scholar and educator in residence at The Jewish Education Project, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “There appears to be a contradiction here. On the one hand, the Jewish People are spread out and divided across the 127 lands of the king’s empire. On the other hand, they are called ‘am echad,’ one people.”

Esther’s moment: “Rav Kook points out that although it may feel like we are a divided people, splintered and rife with infighting, our true nature as a nation is to be united, to be one. He identifies a critical moment in the Megillah where this takes place… Esther fundamentally understands that this moment of fighting for the Jewish people is not an issue only for the leaders; this is on each one of us. She asks the Jew to step up, to identify, to proudly proclaim that they are with her and with one another in this fight for our survival. Esther’s gathering of the Jews in that moment is how the Jews go from being disparate and divided, to being an am echad. Rav Kook adds that this call of Esther’s was not a singular call in her generation but rather a continuous charge to the Jewish people in every generation. Go – gather – be one. Fight the urge to splinter off, refuse to give into polarities, divisiveness and baseless hatred for one another.”

Read the full piece here.

“In their recent article in eJewishPhilanthropy calling out the need for the Jewish nonprofit sector to invest more strategically and consistently in their professionals (“A talent investment mindset: The next frontier for Jewish communal innovation,” March 7), Joshua Margolis and Gali Cooks share a simple truth,” writes David Farbman, director of the DEEP Consortium, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “We believe that, as Margolis and Cooks emphasize, investing in the ongoing professional growth of faculty and leaders is the engine that drives educational excellence and long-term impact on today’s young people. Indeed, research on Jewish educational spaces confirms what the authors suggest: Teachers who engage consistently in professional development are, in fact, more likely to stay at their school and in education.”

Detrimental misconceptions: “Unfortunately, these aspirations and the practical benefits they can achieve face pushback on three fronts. For starters, too many school leaders fear that ‘admitting’ that faculty engage in professional development is akin to a concession that the current teachers are not good enough at their jobs and thus need extra help to meet expectations. Likewise, parents frequently subscribe to the same perception that professional development amounts to addressing weaknesses in instruction, and that continuous training and coaching of teachers automatically means the faculty are inadequate. Finally, donors to day schools, as Margolis and Cooks point out, too often operate from the mental model that money spent on staff is ‘overhead’ rather than the most significant investment possible. Even when school administration and faculty are committed to professional development — as many of the school partners that DEEP members work with are — donors shy away from directing funding toward this purpose, not appreciating how [high-quality professional development] is core to their school’s success.” 

Read the full piece here.

“Debate is not just something we tolerate as Jews. It is woven into the very fabric of how we learn, understand and explore the world,” writes Oded Revivi, CEO of Anu – Museum of the Jewish People, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “We have long embraced argument and discussion as an essential educational tool, sharpening perspectives, strengthening minds and opening hearts to different ways of thinking. In Jewish education, we do not merely teach conclusions; rather, we teach the debates themselves — the back-and-forth, the reasoning, the process — because the value lies not just in the answers but in engaging with multiple perspectives. This tradition of discourse has allowed us to thrive as a diverse yet united people, constantly evolving while remaining rooted in shared values.”

Our superpower: “Like America’s founding ideals, our unity is not rooted in uniformity but in a shared set of values. One of those values is machloket l’shem shamayim, disagreement for the sake of Heaven… At the same time, this cherished tradition of dispute must be conducted with respect and with an eye toward strengthening, not fracturing, our people… Today, as anti-Jewish sentiment rises worldwide, it is more important than ever to understand and uphold the values that have kept us together. The strength of the Jewish People has never come from sameness but from our ability to transform diversity into a source of resilience. Our differences are not a burden — they are our greatest asset.”

Read the full piece here.