Your Daily Phil: The kids are not alright: ‘Identity crisis’ grips young U.S. Jews, study finds
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on two new studies from the Jewish People Policy Institute — one on the challenges facing American Jews, especially young adults, and another assessing the field of Israel studies — plus the Merage Foundation’s $1 million donation to Israel’s war-battered Soroka Medical Center. We feature an opinion piece by Steven Windmueller about the evolution of American pulpit rabbis’ approach to politics from the pulpit and the Trump administration’s effort to lower the wall between church and state. Also in this issue: Eli Sharabi, Jillian Segal and Larry Sheakley.
What We’re Watching
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wraps up his U.S. trip today and will depart for Israel, after hosting a reception last night for Jewish and evangelical leaders.
What You Should Know
Young American Jews and the field of Israel studies are facing dual “identity crises”: That’s the key takeaway from two recent studies by the Jewish People Policy Institute think tank, whose findings were presented in a webinar this week, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross.
“The main focus was more on what are people feeling,” Shlomo Fisher, a JPPI researcher and one of the two authors of the former study, said at the event on Sunday evening. “The ADL records how many swastikas are drawn on synagogues in a year, and that’s very important. We thought we wanted to concentrate on the inner experiences of American Jews, and especially of young people, and especially in connection with university campuses. And what we discovered was that there was — this is a sort of hackneyed phrase — something of a crisis in identity, or at least an issue, a dilemma of identity among these people.”
The first study found that this centered around the tensions between the respondents’ commitments to Israel and the Jewish People, which are seemingly putting them at odds with their fellow progressives, who reject American Jews’ core understanding of their place in the world. “I view myself as a persecuted minority who has the moral authority to critique and to promote social justice concerns,” Fisher said, relating the views of the respondents. “And I’m being told that I’m part of a privileged oppressor class that is the very paradigm of colonialism and genocide. So my own self-definition is being contradicted by the outside world, by the other. That’s unprecedented. That’s very unusual.”
The study, which was conducted by Fisher and fellow JPPI researcher Rachel Fish, involved in-depth interviews with 106 participants, 58% of whom were under 35. Fisher and Fish found that much of this turmoil is tied to the rising anti-Israel activism and antisemitism at American universities and colleges, whose influence, they said, extends far beyond the campus borders.
“We know that antisemitism doesn’t exist only within the ivory towers,” Fish said. “However, we do understand that the world of ideas deeply matters, and what happens in those ivory towers impacts not only the time that students spend in the campus community, but extends well beyond into social justice movements, politics, media consumption, and the way in which our culture is developing.”
Speaking at the event, Yossi Klein Halevi, a fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, tied the issues on American campuses to what he described as the weaponization of the Holocaust against the Jewish People by universalizing it and stripping it of the uniqueness of antisemitism.
“The Holocaust has now become one of the great weapons against Israel and against the Diaspora,” Halevi said. “And the irony here is that this generation… was raised with Holocaust education, went on field trips to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. And so the question is, what went wrong? How did the Holocaust go from being an educational tool that was supposed to protect the Jewish People to itself being one of the principal threats against Jewish welfare? And it’s a question that I would urge you all to take up. What went wrong in Holocaust education? And how do we begin the very slow process of turning that around.”
The second report presented at the event, written by JPPI researcher Sara Hirschhorn, examined the Israel studies field, finding that it too is going through an “identity crisis.”
“Its open-tent philosophy allowed many different fields of academia, different disciplines to create a new shared sense of community around the understanding of Israel studies and also different pedagogical approaches to how to teach Israel studies in the classroom,” she said at the event. “But what began as a kind of open-ended experiment has led to an identity crisis in the field of Israel studies, in which today it doesn’t methodologically know who or what it is.”
Hirschhorn noted that Israel studies has increasingly taken a turn “towards self-criticism and even self-excoriation,” unlike other university ethnic studies programs that are explicitly aimed at instilling pride.
Addressing potential donors, Hirschhorn also called for further support to strengthen and expand the field as part of a broader effort to create “more balanced narratives and healthier discourse” about Israel and Jews on campus.
EXCLUSIVE
Merage Foundation commits $1 million to Soroka Medical Center after direct missile hit from Iran
The Merage Foundation — founded by Persian Jewish venture philanthropists David and Laura Merage — has committed $1 million to support Beersheva’s Soroka Medical Center, less than a month after an Iranian missile slammed into the southern Israeli hospital, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.
No health care, no economy: “The moment we saw that there was a direct hit in Soroka, that same day, David asked me to call our partners,” Nicole Hod Stroh, the foundation’s CEO, told eJP. Although the foundation’s work in southern Israel is primarily focused on economic development, she said that without access to health care in Israel’s south, economic growth slows. “For us, it’s very clear that even if our focus is jobs, if there’s no good health in the Negev, nobody’s gonna move to the Negev. And so if our aim is to kind of make the Negev this attractive place for young families, health is a critical aspect of it,” she said.
LOOKING AHEAD
Sunsetting the Johnson Amendment: The politicization of the American synagogue
“At the outset of this nation, religious leaders were directly involved in spreading the messages of political parties,” writes Steven Windmueller, professor emeritus of Jewish communal studies at Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion in Los Angeles, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “Nineteenth-century rabbis were publicly active on the political scene in connection with the Civil War, race, church-state matters and U.S. foreign policy concerns.”
After the ‘One Big, Beautiful Bill’: “Already experiencing internal political divisions, synagogues — and more directly, their rabbinic leaders — will be facing new challenges in managing the expectations of congregants and the likely pressure from political candidates and parties to lend support on behalf of their respective campaigns… No doubt, some congregational leaders will move to establish synagogue codes of conduct (where they don’t already exist) that will reject such an effort to politicize their congregational community and reaffirm their nonpartisanship. As for the Jewish religious organizations and rabbis who have been for some time actively engaged in politics by endorsing candidates, this ruling will simply empower them to be more involved in advancing their political preferences.”
Worthy Reads
Bad Actors: In “CCP Influence in U.S. Pro-Palestinian Activism,” a report for the Program on Extremism at The George Washington University, Jennifer Baker spotlights the Chinese Communist Party’s support for anti-Israel activism in the U.S. as a means of exacerbating fissures in American society to weaken the country. “It focuses on Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. businessman based in Shanghai, who built a wide-reaching network that funds activist groups with anti-U.S. and anti-Israel agendas. Key organizations in this network, such as the People’s Forum, ANSWER Coalition, and the International People’s Assembly, have facilitated the ‘Shut It Down for Palestine’ (SID4P) campaign, which launched in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Evidence suggests that these groups benefit from funding and messaging consistent with China’s global strategy, promoting itself as a defender of justice while weakening U.S. influence… This report also unpacks China’s response to the Israel-Hamas conflict, including its state media narratives and use of antisemitic tropes to complement this strategy. Finally, the report concludes that some forms of activism, while appearing organic, are enhanced by external influence campaigns that serve the geopolitical interests of foreign powers.” [CCPInfluence]
Under Pressure: In The Atlantic, Roya Hakakian reports on the anxious reality of Jews in Iran today. “After the escalation of hostilities with Israel, and the wave of arrests that Iran has conducted throughout the country, several dozen Jews were detained, according to human-rights agency sources. Authorities have interrogated them, scoured their social-media and messaging-app activity, and warned them to avoid contact with any Israeli citizen or relatives abroad. Some of these Jewish Iranians have reportedly now been released — but some, also reportedly, remain in custody. My emphasis on reportedly is because a climate of fear inside the country makes full information difficult to obtain… The regime’s more rational elements may eventually prevail and reduce tensions. Right now, the rhetoric is menacing: The new revolutionary anthem, which originated from devotees of Iran’s supreme leader and was prominently featured on state television last week, calls for ‘uprooting’ not Zionists or Israelis, but Jews.” [TheAtlantic]
Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: In Inside Philanthropy, Jenna Tatum urges funders to opt for steady support to address climate change rather than gauging it based on the friendliness (or unfriendliness) to the cause of the latest administration or Congress. “[O]ver the past decade, philanthropy’s support for local climate efforts has too often followed a damaging ‘boom and bust’ cycle. Many foundations ramp up funding for local and state action when national leadership falters, only to pull back when a climate-friendly administration takes office in Washington… Climate change is not a four-year problem. Local efforts can’t be paused or abandoned depending on who’s in the White House… Local governments are the level of government most accessible and accountable to the people. When philanthropy backs community-driven climate solutions, it helps build civic trust, empowers residents to shape the decisions that affect their daily lives, and strengthens the democratic process from the ground up.” [InsidePhilanthropy]
Word on the Street
Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi‘s memoir about his time in captivity will be published for the first time in English, timed for the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks…
The Conservative movement’s gap-year program Nativ will return in September 2026; the once stand-alone program will now be run through the gap-year provider Aardvark Israel. Read more about Nativ’s hiatus here…
Jillian Segal, Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, released a report recommending a series of steps that Canberra can take to address the spike in antisemitism across the country; among the suggestions in the report are that the government cut funding to universities that fail to adequately address antisemitism, a joint counter-terror taskforce and banning the granting of visas to individuals who engage in antisemitic acts…
The Jews of Color Initiative issued grants to 10 organizations for programs aimed at combating antisemitism “through a [Jews of Color] lens”; the group told eJP that the grants total some $300,000…
United Airlines is the first American carrier to announce that it is resuming flights to and from Israel since last month’s Israel-Iran war, beginning July 21…
San Diego Jewish groups have created an alternative Pride celebration after the city’s main parade hired a performer with a history of making anti-Israel and antisemitic comments to headline the event…
The Society for Advancement of Education, Jerusalem, and the Israeli capital’s Mae Boyar High School established a new scholarship fund in memory of alumnus Yaron Lischinsky, who was killed in the Capital Jewish Museum terror attack in May…
New York City Mayor Eric Adams is working to modify a city ban on mask-wearing after parts of the legislation rankled Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and UJA-Federation of New York, that had previously backed efforts to ban protesters from wearing masks during demonstrations…
Jewish Insider spotlights Jewish students opting to attend Ivy League schools next year despite campus antisemitism controversies…
Transitions
Spertus Institute added three new members to its board of trustees: Jared Isaacson, Rachel Stern and Scott Braswell…
Dan Green was named the next CEO of the Anne Frank Trust UK, succeeding Tim Robertson, who has served in the role for seven years…
The Harold Grinspoon Foundation has promoted Beth Rose to serve as its next director of events…
Cincinnati-based businessman and philanthropist Larry Sheakley was appointed to the board of trustees of the University of Cincinnati…
Pic of the Day
A drone is seen repairing an eruv in the southern Israeli city of Ofakim last Friday afternoon.
During a pre-Shabbat check of the eruv — a string encompassing an area that allows observant Jews to carry things inside without running afoul of various Shabbat prohibitions — an Ofakim religious council employee saw that it had ripped and would need to be prepared quickly lest people accidentally violate the Sabbath. As bringing in a truck would have taken longer, the person responsible for maintaining the city’s eruv decided instead to send a drone — one of the first times this has been done, according to Israel’s Religious Services Ministry.
“We are dedicated to ensure the kosherness of the eruv in all situations — sometimes by finding extraordinary solutions,” Rabbi Binyamin Malka, the head of the city’s religious council, said in a statement.
Birthdays
Author of 13 books, journalist, she is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Julie Salamon…
Neurologist, certified by Guinness World Records as the oldest practicing physician in the U.S., in his 60s he attended law school and then passed the bar exam, Howard Tucker, MD, JD turns 103… Senior U.S. district court judge in the Southern District of Texas, Judge David Hittner… Retired attorney at the California Office of Legislative Counsel, Robert D. Gronke… Stan Udaskin… Folk singer-songwriter, Arlo Guthrie… New York City-born author of 12 novels, she has been living in Israel since 1971, Naomi Ragen… Partner in consulting firm Quorum, LLC and president at Regal Domestics, Barbara Goldberg Goldman… Editor of the Cleveland Jewish News, Columbus Jewish News and Akron Jewish News, Bob Jacob… Israel’s ambassador to Spain until 2024, Rodica Radian-Gordon… Past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey, Leslie Dannin Rosenthal… Partner in Holland & Knight’s public policy group, he was previously a member of Congress (D-FL-22), Ronald J. “Ron” Klein… Lobbyist, he was a member of the New York State Assembly for 10 years and Senate for 14 years, Jeffrey D. Klein… Voice actor and impressionist who has voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and dozens of others, Jeffrey Bergman … National president of the American Jewish Committee, he is a founder of Lapin & Landa, a Houston-based civil litigation firm, Robert E. Lapin… Nominee to be the U.S. ambassador to his native Estonia, he is the president of New York City’s Park East Day School, Roman Pipko… Critic at large for The New York Times Book Review, Anthony Oliver (A.O.) Scott… U.S. senator (D-MI), serving since the start of this year, Elissa Blair Slotkin… NYC-based founding partner at Purposeful Communications, Elie Jacobs… Member of the Knesset for the Shas party, Yinon Azulai… Head of politics and public affairs at Altice and Optimum Media, Rena Shapiro… Writer and comedian, his conversion from Mormon to Judaism is the subject of a documentary, “Latter Day Jew,” H. Alan Scott… Senior policy advisor at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, Morgan Deann Ortagus… Managing editor of The Bulwark, Sam Stein… Founder, creative director and designer for a fashion line bearing her name, Kimberly Ovitz… Television and film actress, Aviva Farber Baumann… Dance teacher at John Foster Dulles High School in Missouri City, Texas, Kayla Sokoloff…
