Your Daily Phil: Remembering Ted Comet
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a new survey of formerly Orthodox Jews finding that most still appreciate their old denomination, and spotlight a new initiative providing bridging loans and mortgage assistance to Oct. 7 survivors who need to relocate to new communities. We examine an innovative foundation that purports to offer a one-stop shop for funders and fundees alike, and speak with friends and colleagues of American Jewish leader Ted Comet, who died yesterday at 100. We feature an opinion piece by Aya Shechter sharing the personal and communal significance of the Israeli-American Council’s recent acceptance into the Conference of Presidents; and one by Hadassa Halpern calling for a different vision of Jewish day school’s place in the community ecosystem. Also in this newsletter: J. Philip Rosen, Gary Engel and Karen Sher.
What We’re Watching
Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi is speaking this morning before the United Nations Security Council.
The JCRC of Greater Washington will announce tonight a new “Partners for Peace” initiative between Israelis and Arabs at an event at Washington Hebrew Congregation with the Abraham Accords-inspired group Sharaka.
What You Should Know
Despite media depictions to the contrary — a la Netflix’s “Unorthodox” — the majority of those who move away from the Orthodox community still maintain a positive view of it, according to a new study by the Orthodox Union’s Center for Communal Research, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.
In the first stage of the study, “Attrition and Connection in American Orthodox Judaism,” researchers analyzed the experiences of 29 “switchers” — defined as those who, in adulthood, left the Orthodox community that they were raised in — from Hasidic and Yeshivish to Modern Orthodox — in favor of a different lifestyle. This part of the study relied on qualitative interviews, and it will be followed up by a large-scale quantitative survey at a later date, according to Moshe Krakowski, a lead researcher.
According to Krakowski, the study indicates that the OU should not abandon those who leave the community. “Communal institutions like the OU should be aware that there is this positivity towards Orthodoxy and feeling of connection towards it,” he told eJP. “There are people out there who might be a core constituency for the OU that you might not be thinking of as a core constituency.”
One formerly Orthodox respondent told the pollsters: “I do feel that the Orthodox Judaism is the most loyal, the most committed, the most saturated form of Judaism that there is today, and I am part of that thick Jewish culture.”
Major factors that contributed to fissures in an individual’s relationship with Orthodoxy included a “misalignment” between a family’s religiosity and that of a child’s school; a negative experience with a figure in religious leadership; and perceived “rigidity and intolerance” when it comes to feminist and LGBTQ+ issues. A positive relationship with a religious leader was cited by many “switchers” as the reason for their positive feelings towards their former denomination.
“For rabbis, there’s a really, really serious responsibility that implies that you’re not just you, you’re the face of a whole religious movement,” Krakowski told eJP. “That’s a huge responsibility, and when people see a rabbi or religious authority figure behaving in a way that they think is wrong, or even just being a little hypocritical, not being sensitive, that can have huge, huge ramifications.”
According to the study, the majority of “switchers” began to doubt elements of their sect as early as high school, though the rate of departure varied. According to Krakowski, most did not depart from the community during their gap year or college, despite common misconceptions.
Some interviewees shifted rapidly, some more gradually and others led “double lives.” According to the study’s parameters, for some Modern Orthodox participants, “their families’ observances lay so close to the borders of Orthodoxy that their current non-Orthodox life choices cannot really be considered a real departure.”
HOUSING ASSISTANCE
ReHome offers loans, mortgage help to ‘hardest-hit’ survivors of Oct. 7 massacre who won’t or can’t return home
Rachel “Cheli” Baram will not — cannot — go back to Kibbutz Kfar Aza. It is the place where her husband, Aviv, was killed as he and the other members of the community’s emergency response team tried to prevent the infiltration of hundreds of terrorists from the Gaza Strip. And it is a place she believes that even after 17 months of war against Hamas remains fundamentally unsafe, as seen in today’s early morning rocket attack. “I won’t bring my children back to Kfar Aza because of the dangers inherent to it,” she told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. And Baram is not alone. An unknown number of survivors of the Oct. 7 massacres refuse to return to their homes. And yet despite the need of many Oct. 7 survivors, particularly those who experienced the worst horrors of the attacks, to relocate in the wake of the atrocities, there is currently no government program to facilitate such a move. Israeli authorities — as well as nonprofits — are primarily focused on rebuilding their communities and sending them home. Into that vacuum has stepped a new initiative, ReHome, which is offering bridging loans, financial advice and mortgage assistance, to “the hardest-hit victims” of the Oct. 7 attacks, the organization’s co-founder Dalia Black, told eJP.
Wraparound service: Black and her team performed a feasibility study to understand what would be needed to offer this kind of support to Oct. 7 survivors, and they quickly realized that there was no existing model for them to adopt, no “down payment assistance finance funds” as exist in the United States and the United Kingdom, for instance, she said. “We didn’t choose for it to be innovative, but it didn’t exist so we’ve had to get legal approvals and regulatory approvals because now we have partnered with a credit provider,” she said. “We put together a wraparound social service to remove anything painful in the process of buying a house. So each participant gets a case manager who is a financial advisor,” Black said, noting that ReHome has partnered with the social lender Ogen, which has experience working with soldiers who have PTSD to buy a home.
NETFLIX OF GIVING
Merit Spread Foundation aims to transform philanthropy, offering an international one-stop shop for funders, fundees
In the first days after the Oct. 7 terror attacks, when more than 250 people were kidnapped into Gaza and the country headed to war with Hamas, the families of the hostages were thrust into a nightmarish, unfamiliar world of terrorism, geopolitics and international advocacy as they fought to secure the release of their loved ones. They needed to organize quickly, solicit donations and gain support for their campaign. There was no time to go through the bureaucratic legal process of establishing themselves as an independent nonprofit. To begin responding to their emergency financial needs, the nascent Hostages and Missing Families Forum turned to the Merit Spread Foundation, which had just received its recognition as a nonprofit that month. “Without the help of Merit Spread I don’t know how we could’ve survived and succeeded,” Ruben Eblagon, chairman of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judith Sudilovsky.
Shaking things up: For donors, the foundation provided a simple way to make donations to the recipient of their choice, similar to donor-advised funds. But unlike those, it offers transferable tax incentives, so a donation made in Israel can be counted as a charitable donation for American tax purposes. In addition to its services for donors, Merit Spread can also be used by fundees. The foundation can function as the financial arm of a new initiative, receiving and distributing funds — to pay for services, salaries, goods, whatever. “This is something very enriching because usually [donor-advised fund] organizations…[that] work with charities…are like a pipe or a channel to transfer money to a charity, but they don’t execute anything. And on the other hand, you will see charities that execute, but they cannot do anything with other charities. We do both,” said Tal. He is convinced that the new, integrated model they have created will be the “Netflix” of philanthropy giving, he said, shaking up the field. “Netflix was a destructive change to the market. You can feel the same sentiment now, when Merit came to the [philanthropy] market.”
BARUCH DAYAN EMET
Lifelong Jewish leader Ted Comet dies at 100
In 1946, Theodore “Ted” Comet, the 100-year-old Jewish communal leader who died on Wednesday, traveled to Versailles, France. It was the first leg of a lifelong journey of service to the Jewish community. Then 22, and pursuing chaplaincy at Yeshiva University in Manhattan, Comet volunteered through an American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee-funded program at a Jewish children’s orphanage, helping those who had lost their parents in the war, many of them Holocaust survivors. According to a story told at his funeral yesterday in New York, shared with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim by JDC’s CEO, Ariel Zwang, Comet brought a piece of paper with him — on it, the name of an acquaintance’s cousin who had survived. As it turned out, the cousin was Elie Wiesel, with whom Comet forged a deep bond with until Wiesel’s death in 2016.
‘Real love of the Jewish people’: From when Comet first arrived in the city until his death this week, he remained involved in the Jewish organizational world, acting as an advisor to groups such as JPro — and, according to American historian Jonathan Sarna, an unofficial advisor to many more. Sarna recalled catching up with Comet whenever he visited his daughter in Massachusetts. The two would sit next to each other in synagogue, and talk “perhaps too much,” about the goings on of the Jewish communal world. “I’ve had the privilege of knowing some of the great Jewish leaders in the United States, and he’s one of them,” Sarna told eJP. “I especially will remember his active mind. He was someone for whom nothing Jewish was really alien to him, and who had a real love of the Jewish people broadly and a desire to strengthen the Jewish world.”
A SEAT AT THE TABLE
From outsiders to equal partners: An Israeli-American story of belonging and leadership
“Earlier this week, something extraordinary happened: The Israeli-American Council was officially accepted into the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. ??For many, this may sound like just another piece of communal news. But for me, it represents the closing of a deeply personal circle,” writes Aya Shechter, the IAC’s chief programming officer, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Marking a milestone: “When I first arrived in New York as a young aspiring attorney, I wanted to make a difference. I began volunteering with an organization called Dor Chadash, whose mission was simple but groundbreaking: to bridge the gap between Israeli and American Jews in New York. We believed in the power of connection — but not everyone believed in us. At one meeting, a prominent Jewish leader turned to us and said bluntly, ‘Israelis should live in Israel.’ … Years later, I found myself working as the Israel Connection program manager at the Kaplen JCC on the Palisades, in Tenafly, N.J. My office was a converted storage closet; I liked the symbolism. I’ll never forget when the CEO shared with me that there had been a time when he was advised not to offer programs for Israelis. ‘We shouldn’t make it too comfortable for them to live here,’ he was told… The very community where we were once seen as outsiders now embraces us as equal partners. We are not just welcome — we are needed. We have a voice, and we have earned our seat at the table where decisions and initiatives that shape Jewish life are made… It’s time for Israeli Americans to show up, speak out and take our place as leaders in shaping the future we want — for our children here in America, and for the future of Israel.”
PERCEPTION SHIFT
Redefining the role of Jewish day schools
“Jewish day schools offer rigorous academic and religious programs, yet many cater only to a specific demographic, inadvertently reinforcing the perception that they serve a niche community,” writes Hadassa Halpern, executive director of the Lauder Impact Initiative (LII), in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “What if Jewish day schools were seen not as a choice for a select few, but as an indispensable institution for the entire Jewish community — an engine for Jewish continuity, a pipeline for future leadership and a means of ensuring long-term engagement in Jewish life?”
Driving change: “Through data analysis, pilot initiatives and direct engagement with stakeholders, LII is developing targeted strategies to enhance the appeal and accessibility of Jewish day schools. More importantly, LII does not function as just another philanthropic entity. It serves as a facilitator, bringing together key players in Jewish education… To drive meaningful change, we need more leaders, funders and stakeholders willing to invest in the future of Jewish education. The current climate — one where increasing numbers of Jewish children feel unsafe in both public and private schools — underscores the urgent need for strong, values-driven educational environments. Jewish day schools are no longer just an alternative; they are a necessity.”
Worthy Reads
Nightmare Scenarios: In The Washington Post, Shira Rubin reports on the rollercoaster of emotions facing the family and friends of hostages still trapped in Gaza as IDF operations resumed this week. “When Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire in late January, Sharon Cunio suspected her husband, David, would not be among the first of the Israeli hostages to come home. He was a young man and, she surmised, a high-value bargaining chip that Hamas would keep until later phases of the ceasefire. On Tuesday, Israel resumed its aerial bombardment of Gaza, and, Cunio said, her ‘world collapsed.’ She imagined him languishing in the tunnels under Gaza and feared he would die under the rubble or be killed by his captors. Cunio, like dozens of Israelis whose relatives are still in captivity, said she was shocked and terrified by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to restart the war… David was taken hostage, along with his wife and their young twin daughters, from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel when it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. A month later, Sharon Cunio and their daughters were released during a pause in fighting. Since then, she and the girls, now 4 years old, sing to David every morning and speak to him through photos, which the twins keep close at hand, including in a drawer at day care. For the past year and a half, Cunio said, she has told them their father was ‘waiting in a long line, and was still waiting for his turn’ to be freed. She hopes she hasn’t been ‘lying’ to them.” [WashingtonPost]
Learn to Live With Less: In a Q&A in STAT, John-Arne Røttingen, CEO of one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, says that America’s cuts to global health-related aid are not replaceable by private philanthropy and assistance from other governments. “The United States has in recent years provided about 18% of the WHO’s overall budget, through a combination of assessed contributions — effectively membership dues — and voluntary donations earmarked for programs of specific interest to the country. More broadly, the United States spends about $12 billion annually on global health, less than 0.1% of the federal budget. Though many disease control efforts are reeling because of the unexpected U.S. retreat from aid funding, Rottingen suggested it would be prudent to take stock and figure out how best to proceed with what will inevitably be fewer donor dollars before moving to try to fill the gaps left by the U.S. cuts… ‘In a way I think we also actually demonstrated that the global health ecosystem of aid is vulnerable, when a decision from a funder one day can lead to people not being paid a couple of days later on the ground. It means that we have a very vertical integrated delivery system. I think we need to think more through how to be more robust, resilient, and probably more integrated really on the ground.’” [STAT]
Word on the Street
The Israel Defense Forces intercepted a ballistic missile fired by the Houthis overnight; the projectile, which set off sirens across central Israel, was shot down before crossing into Israeli territory; this morning, terrorists in the Gaza Strip fired three rockets at central Israel, one of which the IDF says was intercepted and the other two landed in unpopulated areas…
J. Philip Rosen was unanimously elected by the board of World Jewish Congress-American section to be its new chair…
Israel dropped from fifth place to eighth in the world happiness ranking…
The Jewish Community Foundation, Inc., the endowment arm of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest (N.J.), reported a 25% increase in grantmaking in the most recent fiscal year compared to the prior one, up to $4.2 million…
The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey has provided $534,762 in grants to five health-care nonprofits in its first quarter giving cycle of 2025, including one for $85,000 to Moving Traditions toward a project strengthening “behavioral health supports” for Jewish teens in Greater MetroWest New Jersey…
Jewish National Fund-USA appointed Gary Engel as its next chief marketing officer, succeeding Jodi Bodner, who is getting a new role “supporting strategic marketing efforts from Israel”.…
The Atlantic explores how researchers at Columbia University suspect that $400 million in their federal research grants are being cut by the Trump administration due to diversity, equity and inclusion-related components that were once imposed by the federal government and have now been ordered terminated by Trump…
A treasure trove of documents discovered by researcher Amy Williams in 2024 in the archives of Yad Vashem is helping to shed light on details of the Kindertransport, which helped Jewish children escape Nazi Germany to Britain between 1938 and 1939, revealing a more complex story than previously known. For some of the surviving children and their children, this final piece of the puzzle has brought relief mixed with grief…
The Gates Foundation, led by Bill Gates, is among the philanthropic foundations that have warned that private philanthropy cannot replace U.S. government funding for global health-care efforts, which has been slashed by the Trump administration after it dissolved USAID…
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore will cut over 2,200 jobs in the U.S. and abroad after the Trump administration canceled more than $800 million in USAID grants…
Karen Sher was promoted to chief impact officer of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis…
The Pentagon removed at least half a dozen articles about the Holocaust from Department of Defense websites, as part of a broader effort to remove “diversity” content from federal websites…
The University of Pittsburgh chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine received an interim suspension from the school, stemming from a campus sit-in organized by the group during the fall semester…
Bank of Israel Deputy Governor Andrew Abir was approved for an additional five-year term; Abir’s reappointment by the Israeli government had been delayed several weeks over debates around the bank’s institutional independence…
In a post on X, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, “In America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist Deep State weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people’s will”; Netanyahu first posted the tweet on his official account, before deleting it an hour later and reposting it from his personal account…
The post came shortly after an Israeli business man living in the Gulf was recorded saying that he transferred money from a U.S.-based lobbyist for Qatar to a senior aide to Netanyahu…
Mother Jones co-founder and editor Jeffrey Klein died at 77…
Pic of the Day
Thousands of Israelis marched through Jerusalem last night amid renewed mass protests against the government. The demonstrations reignited this week amid the collapse of ceasefire negotiations with Hamas and the renewal of fighting in Gaza; the prime minister’s moves to dismiss the head of the Shin Bet security service; and an investigation into several prime ministerial staffers’ alleged ties to Qatar.
Birthdays
Senior advisor to the family office of Charles Bronfman, he was previously senior vice president and COO of UJA-Federation of New York, among other leadership roles in the Jewish community, Jeffrey R. Solomon…
Retired consultant on public policy issues to IBM, Ford and Citicorp, among others, he was the chair of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, Norman Ira Gelman… Rabbi and human rights activist, he has served for over 60 years as the senior rabbi of New York City’s Park East Synagogue, Arthur Schneier… Stage and screen actor, television director and musician, best-known role as the title character in the television comedy series “Barney Miller,” Hal Linden (born Harold Lipshitz)… Pioneer of financial futures, he is the chairman emeritus of CME Group, Leo Melamed… Member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences as a geologist and oceanographer, but known popularly as poet and performer, Alexander Gorodnitsky… Australian award-winning writer of Portuguese Sephardi descent, author of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays and poetry collections, David George Joseph Malouf… Senior lecturer of Talmud at Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Tzvi Berkowitz… Award-winning author of 26 children’s books, Louis Sachar… Owner of Diamond Point Metals, Jack Zager… Former professional tennis player, Bruce Manson… Philanthropist, visionary, pioneer in corporate social responsibility, formerly CEO of family-owned Timberland, Jeffrey Swartz… Retired as Israel’s chief of police in 2018 after a 27-year prior career at Shabak (a/k/a the Shin Bet), Roni Alsheikh… Host of “Time Team America,” a PBS program, she also produced and directed a feature-length documentary titled “Our Summer in Tehran,” Justine Shapiro… Chilean businessman with substantial mining interests, in 2014 he donated seven newly written Sefer Torah scrolls to synagogues on six different continents, Leonardo Farkas… Former member of the Knesset for the Blue and White alliance, he served as Minister of Justice, Avraham Daniel (Avi) Nissenkorn… Journalist, author and lecturer, he is an editor-at-large for Esquire, Arnold Stephen “A.J.” Jacobs… Actor, podcast host, director and comedian, has appeared in more than sixty films, Michael Rapaport… First-ever Jewish mayor of Lansing, Mich., now in his second term, Andy Schor… Award-winning Israeli actress, her credits include a role in “Fauda,” Netta Garti… Actor, music video director and writer, he is the son of Dustin Hoffman, Jake Hoffman… Head of global strategic partner sales within the financial services group at Amazon Web Services, Daniel M. Eckstein… Senior speechwriter and messaging strategist for Apple, Matt Finkelstein… Assignment editor at The Washington Post, Benjamin (Benjy) Sarlin… Director of real estate development for a N.Y.-based hedge fund, Jason Lifton… Comedian, writer and actress who gained popularity through her comedy videos on YouTube, Joanna Hausmann… New York City-based comedian, his most recent show centers on a meeting of neo-Nazis that he attended incognito in Queens, Alex Edelman… Talmud teacher and secretary of the committee of Jewish law and standards at the Rabbinical Assembly, Max Buchdahl… Hacker success manager at Bugcrowd, Tatiana Uklist… Ehud Lazar…
