Your Daily Phil: KKL-JNF announces major investments in southern Israel
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund‘s new major investments in southern Israel, a Birthright Israel volunteer project in Majdal Shams and the Sephardic Rabbinic Conference, which wrapped up yesterday in New York City. We feature an opinion piece by Andrew Levy about how investing in Jewish experiences today can resonate in someone’s life decades later, and a piece by Rabbi Ari Perten that looks at what and whom we exclude when we crank up the “Jewish joy” messaging. Also in this issue: Dominique McCaughey, Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen and Shmuel Harlap.
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
The Nashville Jewish Film Festival, created as a forum to help the wider local community understand the complexity of issues surrounding contemporary Jewish life, will host its opening night celebrations this evening.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S JUSTIN HAYET
In its second large investment in less than a month, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund announced today the allocation of NIS 284 million ($95.1 million) for southern Israel plus an additional NIS 110 million ($37.2 million) earmarked for rebuilding Gaza border communities devastated in the Oct. 7 attacks.
The KKL-JNF board approved the spending package earlier this week, presenting it as a single push to develop the Lakhish region, the Western Negev, the Beersheva metropolitan area and the Arava while continuing to rebuild communities affected by the Hamas assault, among them Nir Oz, Be’eri, Kfar Aza and Holit.
“Today, KKL-JNF is telling the residents of southern Israel: We are here by your side, and we will continue to stand with you in the years ahead,” Eyal Ostrinsky, the organization’s chairman, said in a statement shared with eJewishPhilanthropy.
The new investment in southern Israel follows KKL-JNF’s recent NIS 859 million ($287.7 million) investment in the North, reported in eJP earlier this month.
Yet even as KKL-JNF moves over a billion shekels throughout southern and northern Israel, its inner workings and larger strategy remain opaque to some of the philanthropic professionals operating alongside it.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
GROWING TOGETHER
Birthright Israel volunteers construct rooftop gardens for the children of Majdal Shams
It’s not easy being green, it turns out, in a rugged place like Majdal Shams, located on the slopes of Mount Hermon on the Golan Heights near the border with Syria. Birthright Israel volunteers are learning that the hard way this summer: Since the beginning of July, they have been hauling soil, wood and irrigation lines onto school rooftops to build a network of therapeutic and educational gardens for the children of this Druze village, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.
Higher ground: Since Oct. 7, 2023, and particularly after the Hezbollah rocket strike on the community that killed 12 and left dozens wounded, the bond between Druze and Jewish citizens of Israel — and Jews in the Diaspora — has grown more pronounced. At the start of the project, during a meeting with a group of volunteers, Dolan Abu Saleh, head of Majdal Shams municipality, talked about when Golan Druze realized that their security was intertwined with Israel’s. “The turning point for the Golan Druze began on Oct. 8, 2023,” Abu Saleh said. “On Oct. 8, we accepted the Jews and Israelis as our home. Now, the Jews finally accepted us. We arrived first; you met us there.”
SEPHARDIC SPOTLIGHT
Sephardic leaders argue their tradition serves as a model for the future of Diaspora Jewry
North America’s oldest Jewish congregation, Shearith Israel, endures not as an ethnic relic in need of preservation but as a guide for the future of Diaspora Jewry, Rabbi Emeritus Marc Angel told his audience at the Sephardic Rabbinic Conference on Monday, Haley Cohen reports for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Hold the preserves: “People speak of preserving the Sephardic heritage. I do not agree,” said Angel, who led the congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, also referred to as the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, from 1969 to 2007. “You preserve fish, you preserve fruit, you preserve things that are dead. Something alive grows and evolves. We don’t want to ‘preserve’ a Sephardic heritage; we want it to live.”
Opinion
THE LONG GAME
Are we creating enough defining moments?
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Andrew Levy, CEO of the Schwartz Reisman Centre and Prosserman JCC in Toronto, describes an image he keeps coming back to since the JCC Maccabi Games wrapped in Toronto earlier this month — but the image isn’t from 2026. It’s from a photograph taken 40 years ago during the 1986 Games, the last time Toronto hosted the event.
“There is enormous pressure across Jewish communal life right now to respond to immediate needs. Much of that pressure is justified. But while we address what is urgent, we cannot lose sight of what is generational. A teenager discovering that their Jewish world is larger than they imagined may not feel urgent today. Forty years from now, it might prove to have been one of the most consequential investments we made.”
MESSAGE MISFIRE
I’m not jumping for ‘Jewish joy.’ Here’s why.
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Ari Peren, vice president of Jewish Learning at Mem Global, writes that while “Jewish joy” is a phrase “that has become nearly ubiquitous across the Jewish communal landscape in recent years,” Jewish programming must be spacious enough to hold more than joy alone.
“As a concept and as an experience, Jewish joy is valuable. However, in too many instances, Jewish joy has become both the dominant goal and tool through which we build Jewish life. This unintentionally narrows what Judaism is, who it is for and what counts as meaningful Jewish participation.”
Worthy Reads
Term Limits Needed: In Alliance Magazine, philanthropy historian Tim Mueller argues that the Hewlett Foundation’s decades-old policy of imposing term limits on program staff strengthens the sector by seeding expertise across other organizations, guarding against “omniscient funder syndrome” and keeping perpetual foundations adaptive. “By maintaining relationships with former programme staff, some of whom now hold important roles with organisations on the other side of the funder-grantee divide, foundations can help guard against both the realities and perceptions of omniscient funder syndrome.”
Cognitive Dissonance: In Haaretz, Ben Samuels writes that when American Jewish groups such as AJC dismiss Itamar Ben-Gvir’s rhetoric as unrepresentative of Israel, they are dodging a reckoning with what the country has become. “The AJC’s farcical distinction captures an instinct and a pattern that is not unique to the American Jewish establishment’s usual timid and milquetoast responses to the harm Israel wreaks. Whenever senior Israeli officials do something indefensible, the establishment’s first move is not to ask what it says about Israel in 2026, but to explain why it is supposedly the exception to the rule.”
Transitions
Dominique McCaughey, currently the chief operating officer at the Azrieli Foundation, will also assume the role of vice president of grants at the foundation…
Brittany Stevens has been promoted to chief advancement officer at the Jewish Federation of Greater Dallas…
Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch and The Forward’s Talia Zax are joining The Atlantic as a staff writer and senior editor, respectively…
Word on the Street
In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee stood by his description of violent West Bank settlers as “terrorists” while denying that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Jared Kushner clashed over the next phase of President Donald Trump’s Gaza plan…
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) branded the Trump administration’s campus antisemitism probes a “pre-baked frame-up operation thoroughly political in nature” and opened an investigation into alleged Department of Justice misconduct over claimed manufactured findings against Harvard, Columbia and Brown, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy‘s sister publication Jewish Insider…
Israeli Opposition Leader Yair Lapid pledged to rebuild ties with Diaspora Jewry by repairing Israel’s partnerships with the Reform and Conservative movements, merging the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, reappointing an antisemitism envoy and building a network of young Jewish “ambassadors” abroad…
OLAM, SID Israel and Nura Global Innovation Lab are launching a two-year effort to support Jewish and Israeli practitioners at major global development conferences through delegations, briefings, curated meetings and subsidized travel…
Ynet interviews Eric Fingerhut, the Jewish Federations of North America‘s president and CEO, who said New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s rhetoric on Israel and Zionism is fueling antisemitic violence as federations ramp up security spending…
According to Candid’s 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report, female CEOs continued to face persistent gender pay gaps in 2024, especially at the largest organizations…
The man who confessed to egging a Saskatoon, Canada, synagogue on Aug. 1 faces three mischief counts and wants to make reparations to the Jewish community…
Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a pioneer of integrative medicine and whole-person care who created the widely adopted “The Healer’s Art” curriculum, died Aug. 8 at 88…
Shmuel Harlap, an Israeli businessman and philanthropist who chaired auto importer Colmobil and donated $180 million to Beilinson Hospital in the largest donation ever made to Israel’s healthcare system at the time, died at 82…
Pic of the Day
A mother and child at the IDF Widows & Orphans Organization’s four-day Otzmama summer retreat this week, which brought together 92 widowed mothers and more than 160 young children who have lost a parent. The retreat, supported by IDF Widows & Orphans Canada, provided therapeutic and recreational activities for children up to age 6 alongside dedicated programming and support for their mothers.
Birthdays
Marc J. Rowan, chairman and CEO of Apollo Global Management, he is the board chairman of the UJA-Federation of New York, turns 64
Arthur Rock, one of the earliest Silicon Valley venture capital investors with positions in firms like Intel and Apple, turns 100
Gabriela Shalev, retired as president of Ono Academic College in Israel, she was Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations from 2008 to 2010, turns 85
Neal Slavin, photographer and director of television programs and movies
David Novak, professor emeritus of religion and philosophy at the University of Toronto, he is the author of over a dozen books, turns 85
Miriam Baum Benkoe, retired reading teacher for the NYC Department of Education, she co-founded the kosher pantry at Bethesda Hospital in Boynton Beach, Fla.
Mark C. Rifkin, managing partner at Wolf Haldenstein Adler Freeman & Herz
Adam Arkin, actor and director, turns 70
Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC in the Obama administration, he is now a senior advisor at the Carlyle Group, turns 64
Joseph Kahn, executive editor of The New York Times, turns 62
Dan Aloni, managing partner and talent agent at William Morris Endeavor, he is active in the contemporary art world as a collector, turns 62
Omri Sharon, former member of Knesset, he is the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, turns 62
Carolynn Wotman, executive administrator of Ventura, Calif., accounting firm, Morgan, Daggett & Wotman
Kyra Sedgwick, actor and producer, known for her role as Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on the TNT crime drama “The Closer,” turns 61
Melinda R. Katz, district attorney of Queens, turns 61
Ezra Friedlander, founder and CEO of NYC-based government advocacy firm The Friedlander Group
Eric Louis Zinterhofer, private equity financier and a founding partner of Searchlight Capital Partners, he is on the board of Estee Lauder, turns 55
Yehuda Neuberger, chair of the Orthodox Union and past chair of The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore
Molly Jong-Fast, writer and MS NOW commentator, turns 48
Brett Icahn, businessman and investor, he and a partner successfully managed a hedge fund for his father, Carl Icahn, turns 47
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