Your Daily Phil: Survivors of Nir Oz massacre seek help from U.S. funders
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a Virginia court ruling that could help bring the financial records of a nonprofit with suspected ties to Hamas to light. We feature an opinion piece by Lisa Popik Coll and Gail Norry about making Jewish day school education accessible for more families. Also in this newsletter: Yuval Levin, Malka Simkovich and Yossi Azulai. We’ll start with the mission driving a group of Oct. 7 survivors from Kibbutz Nir Oz to appeal for assistance from American funders.
While dozens of the mostly agricultural communities near Israel’s border with Gaza, along with the towns of Sderot and Ofakim, were devastated during Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, only the residents of Kibbutz Nir Oz were left to fend for themselves without help from the IDF for hours, apparently due to an accidental oversight. In those nightmarish hours, invading terrorists killed or kidnapped one-quarter of the kibbutz’s 400 residents — several of whom remain in Gaza today — injured even more, and burned 70% of the kibbutz to the ground.
Approximately 60% of the kibbutz members and 80% of the families with children have decided to relocate as a group to a kibbutz further away from the Gaza border rather than return home, Chen Itzik, a Nir Oz survivor leading the group’s fundraising efforts, told Jan Jaben-Eilon for eJewishPhilanthropy. He traveled to the U.S. at the end of June with a handful of other Nir Oz survivors to share their story, which penetrated both the hearts and pocketbooks of American Jews.
Though they’ve found a place to go, relocating dozens of people is an expensive proposition, expected to cost more than $25 million. The Nir Oz survivors’ decision to relocate instead of rebuild their community makes them stand out — and also makes them ineligible for much of the government funding going toward rebuilding efforts, at least for now. And so they are looking for alternative donors.
“How can you not be moved?” said Sam Merrin, founder and CEO of New York-based Liquidnet Holdings, a few days after he and his siblings heard the Nir Oz story during the New York-area leg of the trip and committed to contributing $250,000 toward the relocation effort. He was already reaching out to contacts he has with “multibillion-dollar foundations” to encourage others to contribute, he added.
As of July 1, Temple B’nai Jeshurun in Short Hills, N.J., had raised $700,000 toward supporting the relocation, according to Senior Rabbi Matthew Gewirtz. He expects that the remaining $300,000 needed to reach the congregation’s goal will be committed by the end of the summer.
“[The Nir Oz survivors] are not professional fundraisers. They are kibbutzniks,” said Gewirtz. Rather than contribute to efforts such as the Israel Emergency Fund that was launched by the Jewish Federations of North America in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, Temple B’nai Jeshurun “wanted to raise money that goes directly to something we know.”
“We feel uncomfortable asking for this help,” Itzik emphasized. “We never ask for anything. For us to go and ask is to put us in an uncomfortable position. But the fact is that people need to know the Nir Oz story. It’s really unique. They have lost everything.”
UNDER SCRUTINY
Virginia judge rules pro-Palestinian group required to disclose donor documents
A Richmond, Va., judge has ruled that American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a Virginia-based nonprofit with alleged ties to Hamas, must turn over closely guarded financial documents requested by the state attorney general as part of an investigation into its funding sources, reports Matthew Kassel for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider. Tuesday’s highly anticipated decision represents a significant setback for the organization, which could now be compelled to turn over sensitive financial records — including donor information it has long successfully shielded from public view.
Some background: Founded in 2006, AMP describes itself as “a grassroots organization dedicated to advancing the movement for justice in Palestine by educating the American public about Palestine and its rich cultural, historical and religious heritage and through grassroots mobilization and advocacy.” But the group has drawn mounting legal scrutiny in recent months over its ties to anti-Israel protests on college campuses and its financial support for National Students for Justice in Palestine, which has voiced pro-Hamas rhetoric.
A long time coming: Jason Miyares, the Republican attorney general, has sought to compel AMP to hand over its records ever since his office launched its investigation shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. The group drew increased scrutiny in the wake of the attacks “for fundraising without proper registration and for potentially violating Virginia’s charitable solicitation laws, including benefitting or providing support to terrorist organizations,” Miyares said in a statement back in October. The nonprofit is embroiled in multiple court cases, including an ongoing civil lawsuit in Chicago seeking to collect a $156 million judgment to be paid to the family of David Boim, an American killed by Hamas in a 1996 terrorist attack at a West Bank bus stop.
AMP lawyer’s response: The Virginia court did not make a specific ruling regarding any particular documents “nor about the constitutional protections we assert,” wrote Christina Jump, an attorney for AMP, in an email to JI. While AMP would “probably” be able to retroactively correct what the attorney general’s office cited as AMP’s failure to produce required paperwork going back several years, Jump still pledged to challenge the request for “all donor information and transactions,” arguing that such documents exceed the scope of the investigation. If the attorney general’s office “still wants a fishing expedition that violates federally protected rights not addressed by the Court today, then we aren’t done with legal proceedings yet,” Jump wrote.
Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
SPEAKING OF TUITION
The next billion-dollar gift
“We believe the best way to fight antisemitism is with Jewish pride and Jewish joy. We need to raise a generation of strong, proud, knowledgeable, literate and unapologetic Jews, and there is no better way to do this than Jewish day school,” write Prizmah’s board chair, Lisa Popik Coll, and its vice chair, Gail Norry, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
A barrier to access: “But our schools are also expensive — sometimes prohibitively so. Just last week we met a woman whose children, enrolled in public schools, have faced antisemitism from both fellow students and teachers. We suggested she look into one of our local Jewish day schools. She sighed and said she wished she could, but there was no way they could make the finances work. Even though day schools will work with families to address financial needs, many parents are hesitant to even apply.”
Values-driven giving: “A year ago, few of us could have imagined a $1 billion donation, but within the space of five months we have now seen two — and both designated for the same purpose. Ruth Gottesman donated $1 billion to cover medical school tuition for students at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Michael Bloomberg donated $1 billion to cover the same for students at Johns Hopkins Medical School. It is no surprise that both donors are Jewish. These incredible gifts are reflective of values that run deep through our community: the value of education and the value of leaving this world a better place. What if the next billion dollar gift went to Jewish day school tuition?”
Worthy Reads
Turn Away From the Edge: In The Free Press, Yuval Levin urges Americans to rein in their gusto for division and recrimination after Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. “Throughout most of history, most people have been acutely aware of this deadly potential of politics. But here and now, we’ve had the luxury of being largely ignorant of it. And so we have let ourselves imagine that we can rebel against the frustrating deficiencies of our constitutional republic — like its tendency to become anti-democratic, elitist, morally vacuous, or just plain boring — without taking care to preserve its fundamental achievement: its capacity to sustain a modicum of peace… Saturday’s shooting was a reminder of what it would mean to cast aside that achievement, and to really break the bounds of our constitutional republic. The near universal recoil from the assassination attempt suggests that even the people who have tested those bounds don’t actually want to break them… That we feel repulsed by the alternative to our constitutional democracy, having seen it up close, is a very good sign. In this sense, hypocrisy plays an important part in the moral formation of us fallen creatures. Pretending to be a better person than you are is a pretty good way to become a better person than you are. So let’s allow each other the space to do that. Let’s take one another’s embrace of the boundaries of our politics seriously, even if the people you oppose aren’t about to confess all their past sins. But let’s also think practically about what it would take to sustain and reinforce those boundaries.” [FreePress]
Is the Relationship Worth It?: In Inside Philanthropy, Julia Freeland Fisher argues in favor of the value of investment in “social capital,” even if the return on investment might not be immediate, obvious or easily measured. “The primacy of relationships as both foundational to human thriving, and, left unchecked, an engine of social inequality, is at the heart of my research… Although relationships are often inputs to evidence-based interventions, they are rarely seen as valuable outcomes in their own right. And although I have yet to meet a philanthropic leader who disputes that ‘relationships matter,’ that mattering expresses itself as a sentiment, not a strategy to guide investment decisions… In an age of data-driven, strategic philanthropy, it’s hard to allocate significant budget without impeccable evidence to back your investment thesis. And funding is often pegged to short- and medium-term outcomes. Longer-term outcomes — like the lasting value of a strong support network or the downstream opportunities a diverse professional network can unlock — are a hard sell on a short timeline. In turn, for foundations focused on specific challenges like educational attainment, better health outcomes or poverty relief, scarce research dollars rarely go toward studying something as amorphous as human connection. That leaves efforts to elevate social capital in a catch-22: We need more research to build the case for social capital investments, but the cost of developing evidence is hard to justify relative to other priorities.” [InsidePhilanthropy]
Around the Web
Leora Levy, a member of the national leadership of the Republican Jewish Coalition, led a prayer at the close of the first day of the Republican National Convention for the hostages still in captivity in Gaza…
An investigation by the Associated Press and Shomrim – The Center for Media and Democracy in Israel found that Israeli groups disrupting aid deliveries to Gaza are receiving financial support from donors in the U.S. and Israel…
DAIA, Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organization, praised President Javier Milei’s recent announcement officially designating Hamas as an international terrorist organization. The designation means, among other things, that any assets tied to Hamas in Argentina can now be frozen…
A new report from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization details how the ongoing war in Ukraine is impacting the country’s agricultural sector. In anticipation of the harshest winter since 2022, the report calls for outside support to maintain local food production and supply…
Open Society Foundations, founded by billionaire investor George Soros, announced it is pledging $400 million over eight years to support green economic development in Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Senegal, Malaysia and Indonesia. This is the group’s first new major commitment after a years-long internal reorganization…
The Knight Foundation launched a $6.9 million initiative to bolster election news coverage — primarily in swing states — and support small news organizations and their publishers to help voters make informed decisions about local and statewide elections and ballot initiatives…
Magen David Adom and the Israel Midwives Organization have launched a new project to assist women in labor in communities under Hezbollah fire to deliver their babies safely if they are unable to make it to a hospital…
The Jewish Publication Society announced that scholar and author Malka Z. Simkovich will serve as its new director and editor-in-chief starting in September…
Josh Goldberg was elected president of the Jewish Community Federation of Richmond, Va. …
Pic of the Day
Yossi Azulai, a senior paramedic based at Magen David Adom’s Herzliya station, celebrates his 300th shift with Israel’s national emergency medical response organization on Tuesday.
Birthdays
Civil rights and criminal defense attorney, he is the co-founder of the Innocence Project, Peter J. Neufeld…
Founder of the Frommer’s series of travel guides, Arthur Frommer… Professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University, he served as a member of Knesset, minister of foreign affairs and as ambassador to Spain, Shlomo Ben-Ami… Emmy Award-winning play-by-play announcer on radio for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Charley Steiner… Retired in 2014 after 27 years as senior vice president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Martin Raffel … Former chairman of the board of the Jewish Federation of Greater Hartford, he is now a lecturer at UConn School of Law, Robert K. Yass… Rabbi emeritus at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, Pa., Lance Jonathan Sussman, Ph.D. … Managing GP and co-founder of Pitango Venture Capital, he serves as chairman of The Peres Center for Peace & Innovation, Nechemia “Chemi” J. Peres… Chair of Samson Energy Company, co-founder of Granite Properties and chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Stacy Helen Schusterman… Business development team lead at Quorum, Steven Lebowitz… Television and film director, Joshua Seftel… Actress best known for playing Sharona in the television series “Monk,” Elizabeth Natalie “Bitty” Schram… Rabbi of Young Israel of Woodmere (Nassau County, N.Y.), Rabbi Shalom Axelrod… Founder and CEO of Zeta Global, David A. Steinberg… Stand-up comedian, he was a finalist on the NBC reality talent show “Last Comic Standing” in two seasons, Gary Gulman… Treasurer of Australia until 2022, he has previously served as minister for the environment and energy, Joshua Anthony “Josh” Frydenberg… Blogger, journalist and science fiction author, Cory Efram Doctorow… President and CEO of Mashber Strategies, Matthew E. Berger… Public television host, Shannan Butler Adler… Member of the Knesset for the Yesh Atid party, Boaz Toporovsky… Emmy Award-winning actor, comedian, podcaster and writer, Brett Goldstein… Healthcare reporter for Barron’s, Josh Nathan-Kazis… Senior account manager at Red Banyan, Jared Sorhaindo… Virtual banking strategy lead and executive director at JPMorgan Chase, Melanie Ettleson…