Your Daily Phil: Post-Oct. 7 Jewish engagement keeps ‘Surging,’ JFNA finds
Add EJP on GoogleGood Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we consider the lessons learned from the Oct. 7 terror attacks, and report on a new Jewish Federation of North America study about “The Surge” in Jewish engagement growing again. We examine a new Hebrew University study aboutthe role of political affiliation in PTSDamong Israel’s reservists, and feature opinion pieces by Joshua Simmons and Rabbi Avi Killip reflecting on the purity tests and political loneliness that have become familiar to many American Jews since Oct. 7, 2023. Also in this issue: Danny Shapiro, Shaun Maguire and Henri Kagan.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Israel Editor Justin Hayet and Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is slated to hold a press conference with Council Speaker Julie Menin this morning on nonprofits. It comes on the heels of the mayor’s widely panned statement on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. More below.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog will present the Presidential Award for Civilian Heroism today in Jerusalem to six people who helped thwart the attempted hijacking of the FlyDubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Sept. 30: Tali Manes, Zvika Manes, Yaniv Hayoun, Shota Musayev, Asaf Rajuan and Or Pardilov.
The Michael Levin Base, which supports Israeli “lone soldiers,” is hosting its annual gala ?this evening at The Jerusalem Theater.
Friends of the Israel Defense Forces is hosting its National Gala this evening in New York City.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S JUDAH ARI GROSS
In the outpouring of music, art and creativity that emerged from the trauma and pain of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, one song stands out — composed in that first terrible week of sorrow and uncertainty by the Israeli folk band Jane Bordeaux.
“We’ll all lend a hand/We are not alone/Partners in fate, pain and love, as one nation/We’ll weep and overcome/As before, we won’t break/We have only one another and no more/And we don’t need more,” sings Doron Talmon in “Not Alone.” The haunting tune, released on Oct. 15, 2023, immediately captured the fundamental, terrible lesson that millions of Israelis learned eight days prior: that in their worst moment, in their time of greatest need, the government was not coming to save them. They were on their own.
Though on a far less visceral level, Jewish communities around the world have also learned a similar lesson over the past three years. In the immediate wake of the attacks, many Jews around the world, looking for comfort and acknowledgment from the organizations, movements and institutions that they had long supported, found instead silence and even rebuke. They too were on their own.
And yet, while this sentiment — that we “have only one another and no more, and we don’t need more” — is prevalent and reflects tragically lived experiences, it is also wrong.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
SURVEY SAYS
‘The Surge’ in post-Oct. 7 Jewish engagement is growing again, JFNA finds
Three years after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks, the wave of heightened Jewish engagement that followed — commonly referred to as “The Surge” — is not only holding, but growing, according to the third survey since the attacks from the Jewish Federations of North America released on Thursday, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim reports. The survey, conducted in May and June, found that 38% of Jewish Americans are now engaging more fully with Jewish life, a seven-point increase from the 31% recorded last spring. The figure, however, is still lower than the 42% who reported engaging more in the first survey in 2024, but reverses last year’s decline.
Who’s surging now: The age group most represented in “The Surge” is adults ages 55-74, who have “time and resources” to invest in the Jewish community, Mimi Kravetz, JFNA’s chief impact and growth officer, said, followed by young adults in their 20s and 30s, who are looking to find peers but less likely to engage in long-term membership. Parents of young children ranked third.
DATA COLLECTION
New Israeli study links PTSD among combat vets with voting patterns
Without a political “buffer” to protect them, Israeli combat reservists who oppose the current government are more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress and experience high anxiety in their close relationships than those who back the governing coalition, according to a recent Hebrew University study, led by researcher Uri Lifshin, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet.
Citation needed: The study is part of a growing body of research on the mental health toll that the Oct. 7 terror attacks and resulting three years of war have had on Israelis. But Lifshin warned that funding is not always being directed to the more complicated subjects of mental health, even as he says that these are critical to understanding how to prevent and treat things like post-traumatic stress disorder. “There is a real need for data and reliable information to understand which types of treatments and long-term support are most effective, and to determine how philanthropic funding should be allocated over time,” Maya Natan, CEO of the Keshet donor-advised fund, told eJP.
Opinion
DÉJÀ VU
I thought I was done coming out. Then Oct. 7 happened.
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Bay Area clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst Josh Simmons, who serves on the advisory board of Gesher Community Care and the national advisory council of the Center for Combating Antisemitism, sees echoes in a post-Oct. 7 world of his coming-out experience almost 30 years ago in the internal deliberations over when and where one is willing to be fully visible as a Jew, including disclosing one’s relationship with Israel.
“There are obvious differences between coming out as gay and what I’ve experienced as a Jew since Oct. 7, 2023. I’m not suggesting they’re equivalent. But there’s something about concealment that I recognize immediately: it’s the calculation underneath it. Can I say this here? How will this person see me? Is explaining myself worth it? Maybe I’ll just let it go. After a while, you don’t realize how much energy you’re spending.”
SILVER LINING
Political homelessness is freeing
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Avi Killip, executive vice president of the Hadar Institute, notes that while American Jews may feel increasingly abandoned by their political homes on both the left and the right in the years since the Oct. 7 attacks, freedom from a party mentality can remind us to whom we always belong: the Jewish People.
“[I]n feeling less and less accountable to the ever-shifting demands of America’s political leaders and movements, I have come to see more clearly my accountability to Torah and mitzvot; in other words, to God.”
Worthy Reads
Counting Connection: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, contributor Barbara Frye examines how nonprofits are trying to measure trust and belonging, two of the hardest outcomes in philanthropy to quantify. “The business of measuring is no substitute for donors who accept the complexity and typically slow pace of trust-building efforts. “Ours is often not headline work,” Parker said, noting that it can take years ahead of a crisis for the group’s efforts to come to fruition. “Donors who are interested in this work understand they need to watch how it evolves over time — and well ahead of when they will see the best outcomes.”
Grandparents on Duty: In his Substack, former Women’s International Zionist Organization director Danny Shapiro reflects on the Israeli grandparents in their 60s and 70s who are raising some of the 27 children orphaned on Oct. 7 while still mourning their own murdered sons and daughters. “Life did not stop and politely give these people time to grieve. Childhood certainly did not stop. Children still had to be fed and hugged and disciplined and driven to school in the morning, picked up in the afternoon. Birthdays arrived. School years began. Clothes became too small. Children became teenagers. And these grandparents get up and do it. They do it all.”ust.’ Those six words crystallized everything I had come to believe about philanthropy.”
Transitions
Gili Gutwirt is joining the Legal Clinic for Combating Racism and Hate at Reichman University in Herzliya, Israel, as its director…
Word on the Street
ENew York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani‘s Oct. 7 anniversary statement, which briefly condemned Hamas before primarily criticizing Israel’s war in Gaza, drew sharp rebukes from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the UJA-Federation of New York, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports…
Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire told CNBC’s “Squack Box” how Oct. 7 changed him, framing the attack as part of a wider fight over the West while discussing why Sequoia invests heavily in Israeli companies…
Calcalist reports Israel has paid NIS 38.6 billion ($12.6 billion) on about 1.18 million war-damage claims since Oct. 7, more than 10 times what it paid after the 2006 Second Lebanon War, draining most of its compensation fund…
French-Jewish scientist Henri Kagan, a Holocaust survivor, won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, alongside Japan’s Kenso Soai, for their work on homochirality, building off the 19th-century research of Louis Pasteur; Kagan, 95, is the third-oldest winner of a Nobel Prize…
Canva’s chief marketing officer, Zach Kitschke, speaks with Inc. about how supporting nonprofits — the company has donated $2.5 billion in free software for more than 1 million groups — has been part of its mission since its 2013 founding…
Axios reports that the Pentagon has ordered the U.S. military to finish preparing for a possible resumption of strikes on Iran…
The Washington Free Beacon reports New York City First Lady Rama Duwaji has provided illustrations since at least October 2025 for at least two products from Olive Odyssey, an olive oil brand whose labels and social media celebrate Palestinian terrorists…
Pic of the Day
Jon Polin (in red shirt) stands last night alongside more than 50,000 friends and relatives of victims of the Oct. 7 terror attacks, as well as supporters, at the third anniversary National Memorial Ceremony of October 7 Families. Polin’s son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was one of 251 hostages who were taken into captivity in the Gaza Strip in the attacks; he was murdered by terrorists in captivity on Aug. 31, 2024.
Birthdays
Shira Piven, movie and theater director, writer and filmmaker, turns 65
Isadore Sharp, founder and chairman of Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, author and philanthropist, turns 95
Agustin Estrada, general surgeon in Tempe, Ariz.
Rona Barrett, gossip columnist and businesswoman, turns 90
R. L. Stine, author of more than 330 horror fiction novels, turns 83
Brian E. Frosh, attorney general of Maryland from 2015 to 2023, turns 80
Stephen Shore, director of the photography department at Bard College since 1982, more than 25 books of his photographs have been published, turns 79
Edward Zwick, Academy Award-winning film producer and director, turns 74
Jonathan Kessler, AIPAC senior staffer for 18 years and now CEO of Heart of a Nation
David Kustoff, member of the House of Representatives (R-TN-8), one of four Jewish Republican congressmen, turns 60
Stefan Simchowitz, Los Angeles-based art collector, art curator and art advisor, turns 56
Rabbi Menachem Creditor, scholar-in-residence at UJA-Federation of New York
Ben Lyons, entertainment reporter and sports commentator, turns 45
Ilana Blitzer Snider, magazine editor and daughter of Wolf Blitzer, turns 45
Yaakov “Kobi” Marimi, singer and actor, he represented Israel in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, turns 35
Aliyana Traison, N.Y.-based therapist
Adina Lichtman, founder of Knock Knock, Give a Sock, an organization that collects socks for the homeless
