Your Daily Phil: Pavas gift $10M to YU for women’s Torah scholarship
Add EJP on GoogleGood Monday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a $10 million donation by Ann and Jeremy Pava to Yeshiva University for female Torah scholarship. We spotlight JLens’ TOV exchange-traded fund as it surpasses $180 million, and report on the long-awaited approval of a World Zionist Congress power-sharing agreement. In the latest installment of eJP’s exclusive opinion column “The 501(C) Suite,” Barry Finestone highlights the importance of teaching Jewish tradition’s embrace of complexity; and we feature opinion pieces by Rabba Daphne Lazar Price and Rabbi Mark Goldfeder responding to New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s criticism of a Manhattan synagogue after it was targeted by protestors last week for hosting a Nefesh B’Nefesh event. Also in this issue: Gertrude Ehrlich, Rabbi Daniel A. Septimus and Jane Weitzman.
What We’re Watching
Former hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel are scheduled to speak tonight about their time in captivity and the fight for Keith’s release at Potomac (Md.)’s Congregation Beth Sholom.
We’re keeping an eye out following an Israeli strike on Sunday that killed Hezbollah’s chief of staff in Lebanon, amid indications that the Iran-backed terror group could attempt to retaliate against Jewish and Israeli targets abroad.
What You Should Know
Ann and Jeremy Pava donated $10 million to Yeshiva University to establish an eponymous Center for Women’s Torah Scholarship, which is set to open this fall, their foundation, Micah Philanthropies, exclusively told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross today.
The Pavas have long funded initiatives supporting religious women, as well as religious causes more generally. The new center, which will be part of Yeshiva University’s Stern College for Women, will be led by Jewish educator Raizi Chechik, the former head of Manhattan Day School. “Our dream has always been to help women pursue Torah learning at the highest levels — because their voices and scholarship are essential to the Jewish future,” Ann Pava, president of Micah Philanthropies, said in a statement.
The donation comes amid a growing push for female scholarship in Modern Orthodoxy, which in recent years has seen the creation and expansion of rabbinic and rabbinic-adjacent programs. The gift also joins several large donations to Yeshiva University over the past year, including a $36 million donation from the Wilf family, $15 million from the Morris Bailey and Joseph Jerome families, an $11 million donation from Moshael and Zahava Straus, a $6 million contribution from Chella Safra and her family and a $5 million endowment from hedge fund manager Bill Ackman.
Rabbi Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, hailed the donation, saying in a statement that the new program “reflects our commitment to cultivating women who bring wisdom, compassion and spiritual depth to every aspect of Jewish life.”
The flagship initiative of the new center will be the Pava Scholars Program, a three-year program for undergraduates. “Scholars will major in Jewish studies and take courses at the highest levels, enhanced by chavruta (study partner) learning, weekly colloquia and close faculty mentorship,” Micah Philanthropies said.
“This is a unique opportunity to strengthen our community by cultivating a talented and skilled cohort of women to serve as educators, scholars and leaders,” said Chechik. ”By drawing on the exceptional Torah learning opportunities, rich Jewish Studies curriculum and outstanding role models at Stern College and throughout the broader YU ecosystem — along with the specially designed programming and training offered through the Pava Center — we hope the Pava Scholars will be equipped to contribute their wisdom in ways that will enrich and uplift the Jewish future.”
TO LIFE!
JLens hits $180 million milestone with ‘good’ Jewish values-based ETF
In less than a year since Jewish impact investing organization JLens launched its TOV exchange-traded fund — “tov” meaning “good” in Hebrew — on the New York Stock Exchange, more than 1,000 individual and 20 institutions have invested in the fund, which now tops $180 million in assets, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. The milestone comes as JLens, an affiliate of the Anti-Defamation League, welcomes four high-profile board members as they continue to push for Jewish values-based investment products, platforms and workplaces at a time when antisemitism is skyrocketing globally and BDS is pushing companies in the opposite direction.
Money talks: “There’s a tremendous amount of economic diversity in the Jewish community, and you should not have to be super wealthy to be able to invest your values,” Ari Hoffnung, managing director of JLens, told eJP. “The Jewish community has been involved in lobbying and government relations for over 3,000 years. Prince Moses, an Egyptian Prince, 3,300 years ago, went to register as a lobbyist in the Cairo authorities. And he had a great campaign slogan, ‘Let my people go.’… We live at a time when CEOs are akin to heads of state, where the policies of some public companies like Meta, like Google, like Amazon, are arguably as important or even more important than some of the policies of countries that are members of the United Nations.”
DONE DEAL
World Zionist Congress approves left-right power split; no role for Israeli PM’s son
The executive body of the World Zionist Congress approved a power-sharing agreement between the left-wing and right-wing blocs for the so-called National Institutions on Sunday, following weeks of negotiations and controversies, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. Under the agreement, the details of which were revealed last Friday by eJP, the leadership of the World Zionist Organization and Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund will be split between the two blocs, with each having a representative serve as chair for half of the five-year term.
Musical chairs: Yaakov Hagoel, of World Likud, will serve the first half-term as chair of WZO, followed by an as-yet-unnamed representative of the center-left bloc. Rabbi Doron Perez, chair of the religious Zionist World Mizrachi party, will serve as president of the WZO for the full five-year term with expanded powers and budgets. WZO Vice Chair Yizhar Hess, who represents the Conservative movement’s Mercaz Olami party and who led the negotiations for the center-left bloc, will retain his position for the full five years and gain additional powers. Unresolved in the agreement is the leadership of KKL-JNF, which controls more than 10% of the land of Israel and has an accordingly large budget and political influence. The KKL-JNF position will be voted on in the coming weeks, Perez told eJP today.
THE 501(C) SUITE
Jewish literacy offers the key to holding more than one truth
“Wrestling with ideas isn’t a glitch in our tradition. It is the soul of it,” writes Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, in the latest installment of eJewishPhilanthropy’s exclusive opinion column, “The 501(C) Suite.”
More durable than certainty: “In a world sprinting toward quick answers, Judaism offers a harder path: hold the full picture, stay in the questions, honor multiple truths and refuse to flatten complexity. … A Judaism without learning becomes fragile, sentimental and easy to knock over. A Judaism built on text, tradition and curiosity becomes confident and generous, capable of facing hard questions without panic or defensiveness. We must teach our next generation that discomfort isn’t danger, nuance isn’t weakness and curiosity and learning beats certainty every time.”
NOT A PROP
The dangerous logic behind Mamdani’s synagogue critique
“As the executive director of the Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance, I have a vested interest in protecting the sacredness of synagogue spaces, and there is a fundamental error behind New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s response to the Nefesh B’Nefesh event at Park East Synagogue and the threatening protests last week,” writes Rabba Daphne Lazar Price in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Loaded words: “His press secretary, Dora Pekec, issued a statement insisting Mamdani ‘believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.’ … Invoking ‘violations of international law’ in this context is not a neutral caution. It is a smear dressed up as legal discourse and an accusation in search of a crime. It casts suspicion on a synagogue for offering information about aliyah, suggesting outright that a core expression of Jewish peoplehood is a criminal act… When an elected official treats synagogues as venues that must conform to his political preferences, he is not protecting sacred space. He is violating it.”
KEEP CALM
How the law protects Jewish New Yorkers, even under a Mamdani administration
“At the National Jewish Advocacy Center, we have spent the last two years building and refining a comprehensive civil-rights strategy to protect Jews across the country. Our message is simple: We are going to be fine. The law is on our side, and we know how to use it,” writes NJAC founder and CEO Rabbi Mark Goldfeder in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “The Park East incident provides a real-time example of how those protections can work, and how they will continue to work even under a hostile administration.”
FACE-off: “To begin, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act is widely known for its protection of reproductive-health clinics, but it also contains another provision prohibiting the use of force, threats or physical obstruction aimed at interfering with ‘the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.’ FACE was deliberately drafted to provide federal and private backstop remedies when local government cannot — or will not — protect targeted communities from coordinated intimidation. … [E]ducational or organizational events tied to religious commandments or observance — including those related to mitzvot such as aliyah — all fall squarely within FACE’s protection.”
Worthy Reads
A Ringing Silence: In Haaretz, Joshua Leifer proposes that the voices of a critical plurality or even majority of American Jews are presently silent — or at least not as loud as those on the extremes of the right and left. “These ‘conflictedly connected’ Jews despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the government he leads, and are ashamed by Israel’s destruction of Gaza and horrified by the brutality of the spiraling settler violence in the West Bank. They feel this way not despite but because they describe Israel as important, even central, to their Jewish identities. They do not deny Israel’s democratic deficit, but hold out hope that it can be repaired. At a time of ever-increasing polarization, strident partisans on the ultra-hawkish Jewish right and anti-Zionist left have drowned out the voice of the broad American Jewish middle, distorting the public impression of what American Jews actually believe.” [Haaretz]
Advice From ‘The Oracle’: The Free Press shares an excerpt from Warren Buffett’s annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, including reflections on key moments and relationships in his life, his hopes for his children as they continue his legacy of giving and some sage advice. “Don’t beat yourself up over past mistakes — learn at least a little from them and move on. It is never too late to improve. Get the right heroes and copy them. Remember Alfred Nobel, later of Nobel Prize fame, who — reportedly — read his own obituary that was mistakenly printed when his brother died and a newspaper got mixed up. He was horrified at what he read and realized he should change his behavior. Don’t count on a newsroom mix-up: Decide what you would like your obituary to say and live the life to deserve it.” [FreePress]
Greener Pastures: In Politico, Robin Bravender looks into the trials and tribulations of Greenpeace, which is facing bankruptcy and has already laid off a fifth of its staff. “The group is facing possible bankruptcy if a judgment holds up finding that Greenpeace owes hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to the oil pipeline company Energy Transfer. … Internally, the epic legal fight has already taken a toll. The group hasn’t had a permanent leader since its last one was sidelined in 2024. Senior lawyers exited the organization as litigation dragged on. And morale has slumped after the group cut about 20 percent of its staff in anticipation of a budget squeeze. Beyond the crisis facing Greenpeace — one of several big-name environmental groups struggling with leadership crises and policy setbacks in the second Trump era — the outcome of the litigation could have wide-ranging implications that stretch to other nonprofits in the United States and beyond.” [Politico]
Word on the Street
The Justice Department said that the department is investigating the protest outside a Nefesh B’Nefesh event at the Park East Synagogue in New York City last week in which demonstrators chanted “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the IDF”…
Meanwhile in the U.K., anti-Israel activists projected the text “Stolen lands sold here” on the outer wall of a North London synagogue…
An antisemitic art display at Washington Union Station on Thursday depicting U.S. and Israeli leaders drinking the blood of Gazans is drawing widespread condemnation for echoing the historic blood libel against Jews, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…
A new survey by the British bridge-building nonprofit More In Common shows that people have a considerably more negative view of the term “Zionists” than of its basic definition, people “who support the right of Jewish people to have a nation in Israel,” indicating more of an issue of branding than of substance…
The Orthodox Union’s kashrut department changed its rulings on beer, which once held that the beverage did not require kosher certification unless certain flavors were added; the new ruling now requires all beers to have religious supervision in order to be considered kosher by the organization…
The Washington Post examines the growing number of Israelis leaving the country following two years of war and ongoing political turmoil…
Similarly, the Israel Democracy Institute found that roughly 1-in-4 Israelis are considering emigration…
Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) and Craig Goldman (R-TX) introduced a resolution to recognize Nov. 30 as “Yom Haplitim,” Jewish Refugee Day…
A pocket watch that had been worn by Macy’s co-owner Isidor Straus the night he died in the sinking of the Titanic, and rescued two weeks later when his body was found, fetched $2.3 million at auction; a letter penned by Straus’ wife, Ida, on the ship’s stationery was sold for $131,000…
Israel’s Cabinet approved a plan to bring the remaining 7,000 members of the Bnei Menashe community in India to Israel by 2030 as the group faces security threats and ethnic violence…
The Bank of Israel is expected to lower interest limits for the first time since January 2024, amid hopes that the ceasefire brokered last month will stabilize markets…
Jewish Journal spotlights last week’s Tikvah Fund conference in New York City…
Rabbi Saul Kassin, a leader in the Syrian American Jewish community, wrote a letter to the Helsinki Commission, which is evaluating the repeal of Caesar Act sanctions on Syria, distancing the community from Rabbi Yosef Hamra; Kassin said that Hamra “is not a representative of the American Syrian Jewish community” and “has never held any authority, mandate, or permission to speak or act on our behalf in any religious, political, or communal matter” as Hamra advocates for a repeal of the sanctions…
In a Jewish Telegraphic Agency opinion piece, attorney and human rights activist Menachem Rosensaft decries a recent speech by U.S. Ambassador to Poland Thomas Rose, in which he rejected any Polish involvement in the Holocaust…
A Canadian judge ordered a local Jewish organization, Tafsik, to pay CAD 3,500 in legal fees over a failed bid to block a Palestinian flag raising at Toronto’s City Hall…
A Haredi man convicted of child molestation 13 years ago and sentenced to 103 years in prison may go free as part of a new push to commute his punishment that is backed by the Brooklyn district attorney; the move is being fought by survivor groups…
Maj. Gen. (ret.) Eli Zeira, who led the IDF’s intelligence unit during the Yom Kippur War and whose legacy was shaped by his dismissal of warnings of the impending Syrian and Egyptian attack on Israel in 1973, died at 97…
Major Gifts
Gertrude Ehrlich, who died earlier this year, bequeathed $9 million to her alma mater, Georgia College & State University, where she studied after fleeing Nazi Germany in 1939; the funds will be used for scholarships, similar to the one that allowed her to study at the school…
JBI Library, which supports Jews with vision impairments, is awarding more than $180,000 in total to 18 legally blind Jewish students studying in the United States and Israel…
Transitions
Erik Ludwig was hired as CEO of Jewish Long Beach (Calif.), beginning last week…
The JCC Association of North America has appointed Rabbi Daniel A. Septimus its inaugural executive director of the Center for Jewish Peoplehood…
Yishai Goldflam has joined the Israel branch of Hillel International as its deputy director of development and partnerships…
Israel’s Cabinet approved diplomats to be sent to posts in the U.S. next summer, doing so in a unanimous vote in its weekly meeting on Sunday. Adi Farjon is set to be Israel’s consul-general to Houston and the Southwest, replacing Livia Link-Raviv. Ron Gerstenfeld was appointed consul-general in San Francisco and the Pacific Northwest, replacing Marco Sermoneta. The Cabinet also authorized new ambassadors to Ukraine, Argentina, Mexico, Costa Rica and Uruguay, as well as consuls-general in Shanghai and Hong Kong. Sami Abu Janeb, previously deputy ambassador to Jordan, was appointed consul-general to Dubai, Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov reports…
Pic of the Day
The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and Jewish Book Council launched a new women’s leadership forum on Thursday in the Philadelphia museum as part of the 100th anniversary celebrations of Jewish Book Month. The partnership was the brainchild of Jane Weitzman, a trustee of both the museum and the council.
Pictured above, from left: Sharon Tobin Kestenbaum, co-chair of the museum’s board of trustees; Naomi Firestone-Teeter, CEO of the Jewish Book Council; Georgia Hunter, author of We Were the Lucky Ones; Jane Weitzman; and Jacqueline Goldstein, chief development officer of the museum.
Birthdays
Author and founder of Nashuva, a Los Angeles-area Jewish outreach community, Rabbi Naomi Levy turns 63…
Former member of Congress from Kansas, secretary of Agriculture and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, Dan Glickman turns 81… Retired English teacher, Adele Einhorn Sandberg turns 81… Chairman of Lyons Global Insurance Services, he is a senior advisor to the Ashcroft Group, Simcha G. Lyons turns 79… Professor emeritus of chemistry at Bar-Ilan University, he is also an ordained rabbi, Aryeh Abraham Frimer turns 79… Coordinator for the International Association of Jewish Free Loans, Tina Sheinbein turns 75… President of Gesher Galicia, Dr. Steven S. Turner turns 74… Actress, best known for her role as Gaby in the film “Gaby: A True Story,” Rachel Chagall turns 73… Senior consultant at Marks Paneth (now CBIZ), he is an honorary VP of the Orthodox Union and a trustee of Congregation Shearith Israel, Avery E. Neumark… Partner in the Los Angeles-based law firm of Gordon & Rees, Ronald K. Alberts… Past president of the University of Michigan, Mark Steven Schlissel turns 68… Former coordinator of clinical oncology trials at Englewood Health, Audrey E. Ades… Born to a Jewish family in Havana, former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro N. Mayorkas turns 66… Former co-CEO of global shopping center company Westfield Corporation, he is also chairman of the World Board of Trustees of Keren-Hayesod United Israel Appeal, Steven Lowy turns 63… Media executive, lobbyist, and political consultant, Jeff Ballabon turns 63… Member of the Knesset for the Democrats (the merger of Labor and Meretz), she is a granddaughter of Rudolf Kastner, Merav Michaeli turns 59… EVP and COO of the Orthodox Union, Rabbi Dr. Joshua M. Joseph… Israeli actor and screenwriter, he is best known for portraying Doron Kabilio in the political thriller television series “Fauda,” Lior Raz turns 54… Professional poker player, his tournament winnings exceed $9.5 million, Robert Mizrachi turns 47… President of global affairs and co-head of the Goldman Sachs Global Institute, he is an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Jared Cohen turns 44… Olami Texas rabbi at the Austin campus of the University of Texas, Rabbi Moshe Trepp turns 44… Assistant director of the electric unit at the Georgia Public Service Commission, Benjamin Deitchman… Director at Green Strategies, Rachel Kriegsman… Senior director of strategic marketing at Phreesia, Madeline Bloch… Actress best known for her lead role in the Netflix series “Bonding,” Zoe Levin turns 32… Chief of staff for Douglas Murray, Kennedy Lee… Michael Davis… Co-chair of the Bergen AIPAC Network and board member of the New Jersey Jewish Business Alliance, Philip Goldschmiedt… Instructional specialist at Montgomery County (Md.) Public Schools and nationally recognized home brewer, James “Jim” Brameyer…
