Good Friday morning!

Ed. note: In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the next Your Daily Phil will arrive on Tuesday.

Big Duck, the New York-based PR firm that came under fire this week for its refusal to work with the Shalom Hartman Institute over what Hartman said was its stance on Israel, reversed course in a statement Thursday night posted on the company’s website addressing the controversy.

“We did not issue a response right away, because we wanted to take time to reflect and discuss with our team and clients,” the company’s co-directors, Farra Trompeter and Elizabeth Ricca, wrote. “While we felt the article mischaracterized our position, we also acknowledge that the comments we provided, written in haste, didn’t accurately represent our policies and practices and caused concern.”

“Big Duck’s decision to decline to work with the Hartman Institute was due to multiple reasons, one of which was our perception at the time that they would not be open to working with a company whose employees and clients hold a range of views on the Israeli government’s policies and practices,” they added. “We have since learned that our perception of the Hartman Institute’s position was mistaken, and we regret that the way we raised the topic caused harm.”

MENDING RELATIONS

Now is the time to fix Israel-Diaspora ties, says JFNA’s Fingerhut

GIL COHEN MAGEN/XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES

As Israel’s border reopens following the latest COVID-19-related closures, the president and CEO of The Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), Eric Fingerhut, told eJewishPhilanthropy‘s Ruth Marks Eglash on Thursday that it is critical for Israel and Jewish communities in North America to now begin fixing what has been lost due to the travel disruptions and “to develop a set of protocols and approaches that can be utilized in the future.”

New protocols: “We would be crazy to think this could not happen again,” said Fingerhut, who was in Israel this week to attend the funeral and shiva of Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s mother, Aura Herzog, who died on Monday. “This may not have been in our imagination two years ago, but now is the time for us to put arrangements and protocols in place.”

Jewish identity: “I cannot overestimate that Israel travel is a cornerstone of our Jewish and Zionist education and identity,” he continued. “It is the most effective educational tool we have, and we have to invest in it.” Fingerhut, who leads the umbrella organization of some 146 federations across the U.S., said that despite the pandemic disruptions to Israel travel, including the cancellation of short-term group programs, community missions and independent personal trips, the pandemic had actually brought American supporters of Israel closer together. 

Working together: “There is a sense of collaboration between Jewish organizations that did not exist before,” he said, explaining that while in the past the various programs competed and operated separately, “they now understand that we have to work together.” “We are looking at how to help the industry and the sector as a whole to quickly rebound and get back to full strength,” said Fingerhut. “This is not like a light switch; you can’t just turn it off and turn it back on. We can’t just go back to the way it was.”

Read more here.

Constitutional principles

The Undoing: Church-state separation in America

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“We are experiencing a rapid and radical shift in governmental policy and practice in connection with American religious life and the undoing of the First Amendment’s prohibitions concerning the state’s engagement with religion,” writes Steven Windmueller, professor emeritus at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Changing equation: “No doubt, a significant impetus for these changes can be directly linked to the rise of both global and domestic terrorism, with Jews often being identified as targets, the 2008 economic crisis and its impact on all sectors of society and the economic fallout of the 2020 pandemic… also contributed to this changing equation of church-state relationships. Responding to each of these situations, the federal government has accelerated its financial connections with the religious sector.”

Security concerns: “In response to both international and domestic threats to Jews and Jewish institutions, the federal government, in cooperation with national Jewish organizations, developed a Department of Homeland Security program to assist religious institutions with security measures. In 2009 the DHS initiative provided security enhancement grants. Sixty-three% of nonprofit grant recipients were ‘affiliated with Jewish organizations.’ In 2010, 94% of the department’s nonprofit security funding went to Jewish groups that are, in the words of the Department of Homeland Security, ‘at high risk of terrorist attack.’ The following year, more than 80% of the program’s $20 million were earmarked for Jewish nonprofits across the country. In response to the creation of this federal program, the Orthodox Union formed a security office, as have numerous federations and other agencies.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

‘Wonder’ful Bar Mitzvah: Religion, race and inclusion were the focus of a bar mitzvah-themed episode of the rebooted TV show “The Wonder Years,” writes JTA’s Philissa Cramer. The revamped series showcases the experience of a different tween as he comes of age in 1968 Montgomery, Ala. The original series featured a bar mitzvah-themed episode in 1989: “The main character of the reboot, Dean Williams, is Black, and much of the show focuses on his experience as one of just a few Black students at his junior high school at a time of great turmoil over integration in the United States. That gives him insight into the psyche of his best friend, a Jewish boy named Brad. ‘Even though he looked white, people saw him differently, too,’ Williams says early in the episode that aired Wednesday night, as a classmate throws a penny at Brad in an antisemitic gesture. ‘At 12 I didn’t understand the complexity and hate behind the joke,’ Williams continues. ‘I just knew they were targeting Brad because he was Jewish.’” [JTA]

As Seen on TV: Deadline’s Diana Lodderhose spotlights Arik Kneller, founder of Israeli talent agency The Kneller Agency. Kneller’s company was the first agency in Israel to focus solely on representation of writers and creative professionals, and its client list include those behind series such as “Fauda,” “In Treatment” and “Shtisel”: “He notes that what makes Israeli writers and directors special is their history and the limitations that the country’s entertainment sector has historically faced due to a lack of funding and limited financing options. ‘I think sometimes limitations in art make you very creative,’ he says. ‘Budgets here are small so people have historically had to be very, very creative and invent things themselves. Also, there is no Writers’ Room here – it’s usually just a single writer and a director on a show and there is a lot of freedom to the creators here in the television market.’” [Deadline]

Pic of the Day

Jurij Kodrun – International Skating Union/International Skating Union via Getty Images

Israeli figure skater Taylor Morris performs during the ISU European Figure Skating Championships in Tallinn, Estonia, yesterday.