Your Daily Phil: Talmud Daily offers guided tour through the tractates
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In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine a new study on Israeli Jews’ Yom Kippur practices. We report on Rabbi David Bashevkin‘s Talmud Daily, a free daily video guide easing newcomers into the Talmud, and cover the Supreme Court case of Daniel Grand, an Orthodox man barred from hosting a weekly prayer service at his home. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Rick Jacobs reflecting on the legacy of Paul J. Reichenbach, who died over Rosh Hashanah, and a piece by Marina Rosenberg highlighting why the Jewish community should be paying attention to the upcoming elections for the next U.N. secretary-general. Also in this issue: Malcolm Hoenlein and Julie Platt, Solomon Schechter and Dan Ben-David.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
EarlyJ is hosting a “Innovation & Impact Showcase” this morning at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, highlighting the early childhood education initiative’s progress since launching as a stand-alone organization in 2023. Read eJP’s previous coverage here.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S JUDAH ARI GROSS
When Yom Kippur begins on Sunday evening, the majority of Israelis will mark it by fasting (74%) and attending synagogue services (57%), according to a new survey by the Israel Democracy Institute think tank. But a deeper dive into the poll shows subtle and substantial differences between demographic groups.
These levels are higher than those reported in similar, albeit older, studies conducted in the United States. The Pew Research Center’s “Jewish Americans in 2020” found that 40% of American Jews said that they fasted on Yom Kippur, and 35% said that they attend synagogue “a few times a year, such as for High Holidays.”
The IDI survey offers at last a partial explanation for this disparity between Israel and the United States: Israel has many more Mizrahi Israelis, who are far more likely to both fast on Yom Kippur and attend services.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
TRACTATE TUTOR
Talmud Daily offers free guide to the text, offering newcomers an on-ramp for serious study
To offer an easy introduction to the central text of Rabbinic law, Rabbi David Bashevkin, the founder of the religious engagement website 18Forty, recently launched Talmud Daily, a free 40-week, daily video breakdown of the Talmud, which he says he’s treating like a tour through a theme park. “A lot of times there’s a tram or a train that takes you around the park to point out where everything is,” Bashevkin told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher. “This is where the bears are; this is where the giraffes are, and then after you do the train ride, you can go to each exhibit or decide [to] leave the zoo.”
Toppling Talmudic misconceptions: The Talmud is often “misunderstood,” said Rabbi Gil Student, a rabbinical advisor to Talmud Daily. “The Talmud is not actually a book… It’s really a record of conversations over hundreds of years.” Because “that kind of text is so unfamiliar” to many Jews, studying the Talmud “requires a switch in your thinking, going away from reading page by page, line by line, like you read any novel, to thinking nonlinearly, and that requires certain amounts of training and certain amounts of background.”
MINYAN MATTERS
Supreme Court to hear case of man blocked from holding minyan in his home
The Supreme Court is set to hear a case this winter brought by a man, Daniel Grand, whose hometown sought to block him from holding a minyan in his residence, a case that Jewish community advocates argue could have profound implications for religious Jews, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Cause célèbre: Numerous Jewish organizations, primarily religious and conservcative ones, as well as groups representing a host of other religions, have filed briefs in support of Grand, including Agudath Israel of America, the National Jewish Advocacy Center, National Council of Young Israel, Coalition for Jewish Values, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, the Orthodox Union and the American Association of Jewish Lawyers and Jurists (AAJLJ).
Opinion
IN MEMORIAM
Paul J. Reichenbach: Remembering an inspired leader of Reform youth programs
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, celebrates Paul J. Reichenbach, who served as co-director of URJ (then the Union of American Hebrew Congregations) Kutz Camp, led the Reform movement’s teen Israel programs and spent 17 years overseeing the URJ’s camps across North America as director of camping and Israel programs.
“The imprint of his remarkable leadership can be found in literally every corner of our movement, but more than that, there are hundreds of thousands of Jewish people whose Jewish lives were sparked by the programs that he championed.”
TIME FOR A CHANGE
The U.N. is about to choose a new leader. It can’t afford to get this wrong.
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Marina Rosenberg, senior vice president of international affairs at the Anti-Defamation League, draws attention to the significance of the upcoming election for the new secretary-general of the United Nations.
“Despite the U.N. being one of the preeminent institutions charged with defending human rights, it, among others, has allowed this epidemic of anti-Jewish hate and prejudice to become normalized, both globally and within its own halls. … The secretary-general’s election is one of the most consequential decisions the U.N. will make this decade, and its results will reveal whether the U.N.’s founding promise of equal dignity truly applies to everyone, including Jews.”
Worthy Reads
Power Players: In the latest issue of Sapir, Malcolm Hoenlein, former Conference of Presidents executive vice chairman, and philanthropist Julie Platt are interviewed by Sapir associate publisher Ariella Saperstein about the distinction between Jewish power and Jewish influence and how communal leaders should wield both as the political ground shifts. “‘One of the misuses of influence or power is Jew against Jew. We’re not all going to agree, but we’re a small people, and to use our power effectively, we have to stop defaming one another,’ [Platt said].”
Resilience Architecture: In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Lauren Sowers, Kalista Pepper, Ryan M. Eller and Andrew Crosson highlight ways in which the community response to Hurricane Helene can serve as a model of “trust-based recovery” for other underserved communities in the wake of disaster. “[A]fter generations of underinvestment and institutional neglect — on top of a legacy of ecological and economic extraction — our communities have become accustomed to building our own civic and financial infrastructure. And so, after Helene, Appalachians did what we always do in response to disaster: organize.”
Paper Trail: In National Geographic, archaeologist Jaime Aznar Auzmendi recounts how nearly 200,000 manuscripts — among them a lost Hebrew original of the Book of Sirach — emerged from the genizah of Cairo’s Ben Ezra Synagogue after scholar Solomon Schechter hauled 30 sacks of them to Cambridge in 1897. “The information provided by these documents has allowed researchers to piece together evidence of the realities of daily life for the Jewish community and those around it. The genizah has turned out to be not only a library of academic interest but also a window into a social reality that has long since disappeared: the bustling streets of Cairo during the Middle Ages.”
Mission Critical: In Newsweek, founder and CEO of Staffing Boutique Inc. Katie Warnock argues that nonprofits undercut their own anti-poverty missions by underpaying entry-level staff. “A sector devoted to expanding opportunity should not depend on workers sacrificing their own economic security to provide it. Paying people sustainably is not money diverted from the mission. The people doing the work are the mission.”
Major Gifts
Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny, will donate $1.1 billion to Oregon’s Providence St. Vincent Medical Center to build the state’s first women’s hospital and expand cardiovascular care…
Talia “Tali” Zuckerman has been hired as the next director of engagement for the Jewish Federation of Broward County (Fla.)…
Zach Benjamin has been named executive director of Park Plaza Senior Living, a kosher Jewish senior living community in Chicago…
Transitions
The Elie Wiesel Foundation has named Goldman Sachs chief accounting officer Sheara Fredman and Palantir executive Elias Davis to its board of directors…
Talia “Tali” Zuckerman has been hired as the next director of engagement for the Jewish Federation of Broward County (Fla.)…
Zach Benjamin has been named executive director of Park Plaza Senior Living, a kosher Jewish senior living community in Chicago…
Word on the Street
Jewish National Fund has ordered the evacuation of a residential compound that youths from the West Bank settlement of Tekoa built on Jewish National Fund land inside the Arab Israeli town of Majd al-Krum, saying the plot was leased for grazing and not housing…
The International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame has named its 2026 award winners, honoring Maccabi World Union president and former Jewish Agency Chairman Michael Siegal, Australian sports philanthropist Geoff Levy, 1972 Munich Olympian Karen James, Maccabi USA leader Stephen Berliner and the late Mexican philanthropist Miguel Litchi…
Israeli teens, wearing religious attire, threw eggs at worshippers arriving at Jerusalem’s Kol HaNeshama Reform synagogue on Rosh Hashanah, the third attack on Israeli Reform communities in a month…
Six Israeli municipalities will ban live-chicken kapparot ceremonies before Yom Kippur, animal rights group Let the Animals Live said, after it appealed to local leaders nationwide to reject the ritual…
In The Economist, Israeli economist Dan Ben-David argues that Israel’s near-bottom ranking among OECD countries on PISA math, science and reading exams stems from the lack of core-subject education in Haredi schools. Read eJP’s interview with Ben-David here…
Haaretz reported another IDF reservist‘s death by suicide this week, bringing the toll among active-duty soldiers to 20 so far in 2026…
Earlier this week, the Jewish community in Vancouver, British Columbia, broke ground on JWest, a $234 million project — the largest in Western Canadian Jewish history — that will include a new community center and a bigger King David High School, followed by more than 600 rental units…
The House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee advanced the Pray Safe Act by a voice vote; Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement the move “bring[s] us one step closer to passing a bill that would ensure every house of worship, faith-based organization and nonprofit can access critical resources to protect themselves”…
Several musical acts set to open for Ed Sheeran withdrew from the singer’s remaining U.S. tour dates after the production company overseeing the tour parted ways with rapper Macklemore over his political rhetoric during two recent performances; Sheeran and the production company had faced pressure from venue owners, including Robert Kraft, who said the rapper’s onstage comments and displays and “broader history of antisemitic rhetoric and imagery” led to the decision…
Tanchum Portnoy, the composer of the popular melody for “Eitz Chaim,” died on Saturday at 75…
Pic of the Day
The Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the Jewish Community Council of Greater Coney Island host a Rosh Hashanah celebration at the JCCGCI yesterday, marking the new year, with community leaders, elected officials and local residents, including 20 Holocaust survivors.
“Rosh Hashanah reminds us, with every blast of the shofar, to choose faith, family, community, and shared joy… and to remember that hatred will never have the last word,” Mark Treyger, CEO of JCRC-NY, said in a Facebook post after the event.
Birthdays
Avishag Semberg, winner of an Olympic bronze medal for Israel in taekwondo at the 2020 Games in Tokyo, turns 25
Esther Vilar, Argentine German writer and physician, author of books on gender relations, turns 91
Elaine Bloom, Democratic member of the Florida House of Representatives for multiple terms, in 2015 she became the president and CEO of Plaza Health Network, turns 89
Rubin Schron, NYC-based real estate investor and the founder of Cammeby’s International Group, turns 88
Richard Perle, defense policy advisor to Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 and Bush 43 and member of a number of DC-based think tanks, turns 85
Jon Olesen, Montebello, Calif., resident
Shari Goldberg, Pompano Beach, Fla., resident
Motti Lerner, Israeli playwright and screenwriter, turns 77
Jim Perelman, sheriff of Nantucket County, Mass., turns 76
Jonathan Medved, founder and former CEO of OurCrowd, an equity-crowdfunding platform focused on investing in Israeli startups, turns 71
David Seth Kotkin, award-winning illusionist, who has sold tens of millions of tickets to his shows worldwide, known professionally as David Copperfield, turns 70
Fern Wallach, former advertising account executive at The Forward, now a media sales consultant
Jonathan Boyarin, anthropology professor at Cornell, his work centers on Jewish communities and culture, turns 70
Dan Kohl, director of stakeholder engagement at the National Council of Jewish Women, he is a nephew of former Sen. Herb Kohl (D-WI), turns 61
Rabbi Dov Linzer, president and rabbinic head of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School in Riverdale, N.Y., turns 60
Jason Zengerle, staff writer at The New Yorker
Gal Fridman, Israeli windsurfer, he won bronze in Atlanta 1996 and gold in Athens 2004, Israel’s first Olympic gold medalist, turns 51
Tzvi Avisar, mayor of Kiryat Motzkin, a city in the Haifa suburbs, turns 48
Josh Ginsberg, VP of corporate marketing at Meta
Koby Altman, president of basketball operations for the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, turns 44
Lauren Morgan Suriel, chief field officer at the Israel on Campus Coalition
Suzy Goldenkranz, VP of customer success at SimpliFed
Daren Maxwell Kagasoff, actor, best known for starring in “The Secret Life of the American Teenager,” turns 39
Rachel Louise Ensign, NYC-based economics reporter at The Wall Street Journal
Niv Sultan, Israeli actor who played the lead role in Apple TV’s spy thriller “Tehran,” turns 34
Caryn Rosen Adelman, planned giving consultant
