Your Daily Phil: Ogen looks to expand loan fund for Israeli reservists
Good Wednesday morning.
Ed. note: The next edition of Your Daily Phil will arrive on Monday, Dec. 2. Happy Thanksgiving and Shabbat shalom!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on Occidental College’s settlement to resolve a federal antisemitism complaint. We feature an opinion piece by Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath about Jewish vulnerability and Jewish pride, and one by Stacie Cherner and Yonah Schiller exploring a model for understanding how we learn. Also in this newsletter: Julie Tilson Stanley, Rabbi Mordechai Soskil and Jay Leno. We’ll start with the Israeli social lender Ogen expanding its loan programs for reservists.
The Israeli social lender Ogen is expanding its loan program for Israel Defense Forces reservists — the Yuval Fund, named in honor of Yuval Silber, a reservist who was killed in battle in November 2023 — as the organization has been “swamped” by more and more requests, Eldan Kaye, Ogen’s vice president of development and partnerships, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
The Yuval Fund launched earlier this year as a collaboration between Ogen and the family of one of Silber’s close friends, Tomer Peled, who provided NIS 500,000 ($137,000) to kick-start it. The fund initially intended to offer no-interest loans of NIS 50,000 ($13,700) to people who had done at least 30 days of reserve duty. But as the number of requests grew, Ogen scaled back the loans to NIS 40,000 ($11,000) in order to help more people, Kaye said.
For Peled, the fund reflects his friend’s spirit and dedication to the country and to supporting those who serve it. Silber, a lieutenant in the Nahal Brigade, had been released from the military in mid-2023, and like many new Israeli veterans, he traveled to Asia for several months after his service. He was still there on Oct. 7.
“The moment he heard about it, he immediately decided to come back to Israel,” Peled said. “He got to Israel about three days after [the attacks], which was not an easy task.” Silber also effectively forfeited his rank as an officer in order to join a reserve unit whose command positions were already filled. “That’s the kind of guy we’re dealing with,” Peled said.
In late October 2023, Silber’s unit was part of a reserve force that was tasked with conquering a Hamas training base. They came under fire by Hamas terrorists, and Silber was killed.
“Yuval was a true hero, and we wanted to create a memorial that reflected this,” Silber’s sister, Shira, said in a statement. “We wanted something that truly made a positive impact.”
From the initial NIS 500,000 that was provided by Tomer Peled’s mother, Efrat, who serves as CEO of the Arison family’s investment arm, the fund grew considerably when an anonymous donor contributed NIS 9 million ($2.5 million) to the cause. An additional NIS 300,000 ($82,000) was raised through crowdfunding.
But this additional funding, which has allowed Ogen to provide no-interest loans to some 400 reservists, is also starting to run out, Kaye said, and yet the requests for additional loans continue to pour in. “We’ve had to raise more and more funds for it… and we’re continuously getting more and more requests, and the capital has run out,” Kaye said.
Nearly 300,000 Israelis were called into the reservists after the Oct. 7 attacks, with roughly a third of them serving more than 150 days, according to data from the IDF Manpower Directorate. Six percent have served more than 300 days. In most cases, this comes at a significant financial cost, particularly for independent business owners, who are not compensated as easily as salaried workers.
In recent weeks, Ogen said it has raised roughly an additional $2 million for the fund — with donations coming from Robert and Trudy Gottesman and the Seed the Dream Foundation, as well as “many, many others that prefer not to be named,” Kaye said. And yet he said that this will only last Ogen a few more weeks if requests continue at their current pace. “At any given moment, there’s probably around 200 requests that are live,” he said.
The Yuval Fund specifically offers “family loans” to the reservists, which are approved in roughly 24 hours, as opposed to the business loans that Ogen offers, which are normally for larger amounts, require longer wait times and also are low-interest, not no-interest, as these are.
Peled said his family and Silber’s appreciated that commemorating him through a loan program made this a long-term initiative, which can last into the future as the loans are repaid.
“The main thing was bringing it to Zionist Israelis, the people who served the country and deserve a loan like this,” said Peled, who has served more than 250 days in the reserves out of the past 417 days since Oct. 7, 2023. “That was the starting point, and it’s blown up into something — honestly, I couldn’t imagine the scale. And it really warms our hearts, my family’s and the Silber family’s.”
CAMPUS BEAT
Occidental College reaches agreement with Dept. of Education over Title VI complaint
In response to a federal Title VI complaint filed against Occidental College in April alleging a “hostile environment” for Jewish and Israeli students, the Los Angeles-based private liberal arts college agreed on Tuesday to implement a series of initiatives to mend the campus climate, including the adoption of the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, reports Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Complaint’s content: The complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) by the Anti-Defamation League and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law on behalf of four Occidental students, stated that since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, the university enforced policies against Jewish students while ignoring antisemitic declarations and violations on campus. Examples provided in the complaint include Jewish and Israeli students being accosted and harassed by demonstrators on campus, being “unable to carry out” their jobs on campus as a result of antisemitic behavior and an allegation that that Occidental faculty “engaged in hateful rhetoric that emboldened the student protestors.”
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
A MATTER OF TIME
We didn’t want to become experts
“In his 2008 book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the idea of the ‘10,000 Hour Rule’: the concept that achieving world-class expertise in any skill is, to a great extent, a matter of practicing for 10,000 hours. While Gladwell breaks 10,000 hours into the theoretically digestible increments of 20 intentional hours of work a week for 10 years, after jumping in with both feet the Jewish people as a whole are about to reach 10,000 hours of things no one wants to be good at,” writes Samantha Vinokor-Meinrath, senior director of knowledge, ideas and learning at The Jewish Education Project, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Doing the math: “On Nov. 29, we will arrive at the milestone of 10,000 hours since the Oct. 7 massacre: 10,000 hours of living with the existential loneliness of having witnessed and felt the pain of the worst attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust — an attack on the foundation of the modern State of Israel — and reeling from the silence of so many who we thought would be allies… 10,000 hours of missing people we have never met and crying for people we will never meet… 10,000 hours of questions swirling around, answers changing with every new headline, and uncertainty being our constant companion.”
Still a believer: “I chose the path of Jewish education because I believe in the power of the inherited wisdom and tradition of Judaism, and the value that Jewish joy can bring to each of us… I continue to believe everything that I believed on Oct. 6, 2023, about Jewish joy and wisdom and the beauty of the legacy that we have inherited. But after 10,000 hours makes me — makes all of us — reluctant experts on Jewish vulnerability and pain, and on antisemitism, I am ready to call on the field of Jewish education and the families and communities who we serve to channel our expertise into the work that we and our world need: Jewish pride.”
SYSTEM UPDATE
Educating by understanding our learners
“The science of learning is a rich and established field of academic study that has a lot to teach us when we think about our vision for Jewish learning,” write Stacie Cherner and Yonah Schiller, director of research and learning and chief R&D officer at the Jim Joseph Foundation, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
A ‘foundational’ model: “As part of our Emergent Strategy at the Jim Joseph Foundation, we have a desire to explore new and more effective pathways in understanding and practicing Jewish education. To this end, we looked to familiarize ourselves with landmark research and learning theory. We turned to Ari Y. Kelman, the Jim Joseph Professor of Education and Jewish Studies at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education. Kelman shares a model for how people learn that we think is foundational for understanding more about how people learn to be Jewish.”
Worthy Reads
Standing Tall: In The Columbus Dispatch, Julie Tilson Stanley, the CEO of JewishColumbus, writes about how her Ohio community is responding to a neo-Nazi march through the city earlier this month. “We are not afraid of cowards who are scared to show their faces. A week after neo-Nazis marched through the streets of Columbus, Jewish people throughout our city returned to their synagogues with perhaps a little more fear but no less Jewish pride. Even with the rise of antisemitism over the past year and the increased threats to Jewish institutions. Jewish life is more vibrant than ever… At JewishColumbus — the city’s largest funder of Jewish programs — we work closely with synagogues, Jewish schools, the Jewish Community Center and other local partners to ensure their security needs are met. It’s part of our defense against antisemitism. Yet the struggle against antisemitism cannot fall solely on the Jewish community. It is a disease that undermines communities, fuels racism and other forms of hate, and leads to violence… My hope is that the current events in Columbus that have drawn national attention will spur our city and our state into action alongside Jewish Ohioans.” [ColumbusDispatch]
Attitude of Gratitude: In The Times of Israel, Rabbi Mordechai Soskil shares his enthusiasm for Thanksgiving — which includes trading in his black hat for one featuring a turkey, allegedly much to his wife’s chagrin — along with a list of what he’s thankful for this year. “When our sages instituted the reciting of a blessing before we eat, they gave us a whole section of law to help decide which exact and specific blessing is appropriate. And while for our purposes you need not be concerned about the giant controversy in our family regarding the blessing on malawach or fish sticks (please don’t get me started on fish sticks!), what you do need to know is that they guided us towards making specific brachot on specific categories of food because thanks is more meaningful when it’s specific. And it’s with that in mind I offer this reflection on extremely specific things I’m grateful for.” [TOI]
Around the Web
Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies awarded a $300,000 grant to Adamah; this is the first donation to an environmental group by the Schustermans, whose family wealth comes from its oil business…
Chabad-Lubavitch’s Kinus Hashluchim (gathering of emissaries) kicks off today in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The annual conference will this year be dedicated to Rabbi Zvi Kogan, who was killed last week in the United Arab Emirates…
A cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah went into effect today at 4 a.m. (Israel time); the deal, which is meant to end the active hostilities between the two sides, is being viewed skeptically by many northern Israelis, who are now being told they can return to their homes…
Gideon Orion and Yossi Reinstein began their two-year terms as co-presidents of The Guardians, a philanthropic volunteer group that supports the Los Angeles Jewish Health nonprofit…
A new survey by Vanguard Charitable found that the majority of American adults believes that philanthropy in the future will focus on local initiatives and on addressing “large societal and environmental issues”…
USA Swimming spotlights the work of the Asheville, N.C., Jewish Community Center in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, including providing its pool water to local residents who didn’t have running water so they could flush their toilets…
Canadian businessman Henry Wolfond wore a yellow hostage pin during his first trip on a Blue Origin New Shepard rocket…
A civil commission of inquiry founded by Oct. 7 survivors and families of the remaining hostages faulted Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for a series of decisions and practices the commission suggested led to last year’s Hamas attacks…
TechAir, a new Israeli airline backed by leaders of Israel’s tech movement, released registration forms and ticket prices for its three-times-a-week nonstop flights between Israel and New York…
Arthur Adler, a former sports executive and Boca Raton, Fla.-based philanthropist, died on Sunday at 82…
Shalom Nagar, the executioner who carried out the death sentence of Adolf Eichmann, died at 86…
Pic of the Day
Jay Leno (in an eye patch after an injury from a fall) performs at The Koby Mandell Foundation’s debut Los Angeles event last week, raising money for the organization, which provides therapeutic services for bereaved Israeli families and children.
Birthdays
Founder, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, Barry Stuart Sternlicht…
Attorney, insurance executive and real estate investor, Brian J. Strum… Founding partner of TPG Capital and its Asian affiliate, Newbridge Capital, he is a co-majority owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken, David Bonderman… Jewish Electorate Institute board member and secretary, Corrine Parver … Prize-winning longtime business writer, Allan Sloan … Literary journalist, literary critic and author of six books, Ronald Rosenbaum… Principal at ESL Catalyst, Lawrence Greenberg… Economist and university professor at Northwestern University, Charles Frederick Manski… Treasurer of JCC MetroWest in West Orange, N.J., Joyce Goldstein… Former collegiate and professional (Maccabi Tel Aviv) basketball player, he then practiced corporate law at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan in NYC, Louis Grant Silver… Founder and host of “This Magic Life” podcast, Andrea Koppel… Academy Award-winning documentary producer, actor and director, known professionally as Fisher Stevens, Stephen Fisher… Mayor of Englewood, N.J., and immigration attorney, Michael Jay Wildes… Film director, producer, writer, dancer, author and choreographer, Adam Michael Shankman… Executive chairman of Hudson’s Bay Company, Canada’s oldest corporation (chartered in 1670) and owner of Saks, Richard Alan Baker… Film and television actor, known for his 95 episodes as Michael Vaughn on ABC’s “Alias,” Michael S. Vartan… Dentist practicing in Stevenson, Md., Joshua P. Weintraub, DDS… Co-host of Seasons 2 through 9 of “Dancing with the Stars” and then a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, Samantha Harris Shapiro… Former NFL player who appeared in 143 games over 10 seasons for the 49ers, Lions and Cowboys, Kyle Kosier turns 46… Israeli model and beauty pageant winner, she represented Israel in the 2005 Miss Universe pageant, Elena Ralph… Managing director at S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, Joel Braunold… Multilingual singer, songwriter and actress, she is the national anthem singer for the NHL’s New York Islanders, Nicole Raviv… DJ Levy…
