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Good Thursday morning.

In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on world Jewry’s reaction to the deadly shooting last night in Washington, how Jewish communities are stepping up security in the wake of the attack, and on House lawmakers’ calls for funding to combat antisemitism in health care. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Jay Henry Moses and Lisa Kay Solomon about combining Jewish wisdom with futurist strategies to empower forward-thinking Jewish leaders. Also in this issue: John Podhoretz, Meredith Dragon and David Frankel.

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Jewish communities around the world are reeling after a deadly shooting attack last night outside an American Jewish Committee event at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, which killed two Israeli Embassy staffers, Sarah Milgrim and her soon-to-be fiancé, Yaron Lischinsky.

“This is a shocking act of violence, and our community is holding each other tighter tonight,” Ted Deutch, CEO of AJC, said in a statement after the shooting. “At this painful moment, we mourn with the victims’ families, loved ones, and all of Israel. May their memories be for a blessing. While we wait for the conclusion of the police investigation – and urge all our friends and allies to do the same – it strongly appears that this was an attack motivated by hate against the Jewish people and the Jewish state. This senseless hate and violence must stop.”

From across the political and religious spectrum, Jewish leaders and organizations in the United States, Israel and elsewhere around the world released statements of support for the victims’ families and friends and for the American Jewish community, as well as fierce condemnation of the attack and the suspected shooter, Elias Rodriguez, who was arrested at the scene. 

“Though this brazen act of violence occurred on American soil, its message was meant to cause Jews everywhere to tremble with fear,” Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, said in a statement. “But let there be no mistake — this act of terror will not drive us into the shadows. We will not hide our faces or our symbols. We will live openly and proudly, as a courageous people.”

Those who knew them mourned the couple as beautiful, motivated humanitarians, who were due to be engaged next week in Jerusalem. The AJC event where the attack took place was for young diplomats and focused on interfaith collaboration and efforts to address zero-sum thinking. The event spotlighted efforts to respond to humanitarian crises in the Middle East and North Africa, including in Gaza. 

“We, and all the attendees, gathered in the interest of finding practical solutions to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and showing that working together is the only way forward for all the people in the region,” the Israeli humanitarian relief group IsraAid, which participated in the event, said in a statement. “The brutal and tragic irony that such an event – motivated by humanitarian principles – was targeted for more violence is heartbreaking.”

Milgrim joined the Israeli Embassy shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, organizing events about the female victims of the massacres and the role of Jewish women in diplomacy. She previously worked for the Tech2Peace nonprofit in Tel Aviv, which works to bring together Israelis and Palestinians through technology and entrepreneurship. Lischinsky was born and raised in Germany, moving to Israel and studying international relations and diplomacy. 

“Yaron Lischinsky was the finest friend I’ve ever had, brilliant, kind, and endlessly thoughtful,” Zineb Riboua, a researcher at the Hudson Institute, wrote on X. “They are both gone. And the loss is immeasurable. The world has lost two extraordinary souls. And I have lost a dear friend who made every moment brighter.”

In addition to the general shock at the murders, Jewish and Israeli leaders focused on the context in which the shooting occurred — amid rising antisemitism and extremist rhetoric in the U.S. and around the world. On social media, commentators noted that this type of deadly attack was the meaning of the phrase heard at some anti-Israel protests, “globalize the intifada.”

Many groups called for stronger security measures in the wake of the attack. Read more about this below. 

In Israel, politicians on opposing sides of the aisle blamed the other for the attack, with lawmakers on the right assigning culpability to Yair Golan, the head of the progressive Democrats party, who yesterday accused Israel of “kill[ing] babies as a hobby,” while left-wing politicians blamed the rise in anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric on the current government and its policies.

This political mudslinging prompted derision and criticism, exemplified pithily by one Israeli X user who noted the absurdity of Israeli politicians blaming the other for an apparent antisemitic terror attack. “[Right-wing] Minister Amichai Eliyahu: It’s all because of you. Yair Golan: It’s all because of you. The terrorists: It’s all because of your big noses,” he wrote. 

The Tzohar rabbinic group denounced the polarized rhetoric and called for solidarity. “At a time when Israeli society and the Jewish People are dealing with ruthless enemies, the last thing we need is internal hatred and accusations against one another for our enemies’ crimes,” the group said in a statement. “No Jew is responsible for the murder of the two embassy employees in Washington. We’ve had enough of this inflammatory and divisive language.”

ALEX WROBLEWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Jewish communities are going on high alert following the deadly shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington on Wednesday night, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports. Richard Priem, CEO of the Community Security Service, which trains security teams at synagogues and other institutions, told eJP this morning that his organization and other security groups would be stepping up their “posture” in the wake of the shooting in case additional attacks had been planned or others are “inspired” to act by this one. “We’re definitely going to be present, we’re definitely going to do something that increases our posture because anytime there’s an attack, certain people get activated and think, ‘Now’s the time,’” Priem said. “But we don’t know yet if there might be a direct, correlated threat.” 

Increased measures: According to Priem, whose career has been focused on security and countering antisemitism, there remain many unanswered questions about the shooting, particularly if the event was targeted generally because it was a Jewish event taking place at a Jewish location or if the Israeli Embassy employees were specifically targeted by the suspect, Elias Rodriguez. While Priem stressed that both scenarios are deeply troubling, targeting specific individuals would require a higher degree of training, coordination and planning than a “random” antisemitic attack on a Jewish event. In either case, Priem said his organization called for “increased situational awareness” at Jewish institutions going forward, particularly ahead of the weekend. “Shabbat [is when] many many more Jews will be going to synagogues, and the details about the perpetrator — why he picked this target, how sophisticated the attack was in terms of planning and preparation — all of those factors will have an impact on our posture,” he said.

Read the full report here.

NATHAN HOWARD/GETTY IMAGES

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is urging colleagues to take steps to address antisemitism in the health-care field in the 2026 appropriations process for the Department of Health and Human Services and related agencies. In a letter sent Wednesday, the lawmakers called on the leaders of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education and Related Agencies to demand reports from HHS on the rise of antisemitism in health care, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.

What they said: “Failure to confront this pernicious ideology harms not only Jewish medical professionals, students, and patients but threatens to destroy the very foundations of our healthcare system,” the letter reads. “Dangerous rhetoric from individuals in positions of influence raises fears among Jewish and Israeli students, families, and patients about whether they will receive equitable and compassionate care. Antisemitic hate and bigotry put Jewish patients at risk and undermine the ethical foundations of medicine, where commitment to the patient should be paramount.”

Read the full report here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.

COURTESY/RABBI JAY HENRY MOSES

“Jewish tradition calls upon us to harness the wisdom of our past in service of bequeathing a better world to our descendants. In a time when our community is so fractured and we as leaders are overwhelmed, there is great power in devoting time to imagining and shaping a preferred future,” write Rabbi Jay Henry Moses, vice president of the Wexner Foundation, and Lisa Kay Solomon, futurist-in-residence at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. 

Planting seeds of change: “Earlier this spring, 22 Jewish leaders — alumni of Wexner Foundation initiatives for Israeli public sector leaders along with volunteers and professionals from North American Jewish communities — gathered in Columbus, Ohio, to participate in our Summit Seeds: Atid program, which focused on developing leadership skills to promote a more proactive approach to anticipating, imagining and building better futures in the Jewish world and in Israel. We grounded our work together in the concept of being ‘good ancestors,’ encouraging participants to consider the long-term impact of their decisions, extending their moral imagination to future generations they will never meet… Together we explored: How might the seeds we plant today through our leadership choices, institutional designs and community investment grow into forests that our great-grandchildren will inhabit?”

Read the full piece here.

History Doesn’t Repeat, It Rhymes: Commentary Editor John Podhoretz reflects on the nature of last night’s deadly attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. “This is a different kind of event from the attacks on synagogues in Pennsylvania and California in 2018, which were the work of white supremacists. It happened at a secular Jewish site, and targeted an event sponsored by the American Jewish Committee for young diplomats. And it was self-evidently an act of anti-Semitic terror in the nation’s capital — which raises similarities to the 2015 attack on the Hyper Casher supermarket in France’s capital, Paris. The only analogue here I can think of was the invasion of the headquarters of the B’nai Brith in D.C. in 1977 by Hanafi Muslims, during which 104 staffers at the Jewish organization — including my wife’s cousin, William Korey, an expert on Soviet Jewry — were held hostage for three days and repeatedly threatened with execution and torture. Two other buildings in DC were invaded as well, and a security guard at one of them was shot in the head and killed.” [Commentary]

College Spirit: In The Atlantic, Cornelia Powers reports that, despite a large percentage of young adults today not identifying with any established religion, religious-life programs on campus are experiencing a surge in participation not seen in  decades. “Recent data show that Gen Z is, by some measures, the loneliest generation in the United States, and that rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation on university campuses are at a peak. ‘These kids achieve to very high levels, they jump through the hoops, they get to college, and then they’re left wondering what it’s all for,’ Jennifer Breheny Wallace, the author of Never Enough: When Achievement Culture Becomes Toxic—And What We Can Do About It, told me. Universities aren’t blind to the pressures students are under, and many have made student wellness a priority. This may be one reason more schools are investing in religious and spiritual life… Yet, unlike mental-health professionals, the chaplain’s goal is not to treat students, but rather to help them find community, meaning, and a reprieve from the grind. ‘People want to feel loved for who they are and not what they do,’ Chaz Lattimore Howard, the university chaplain and vice president for social equity and community at the University of Pennsylvania, told me. Whether or not they believe in God, they ‘want to be reassured that it’s going to be okay.’” [TheAtlantic]

Read the Room: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Craig Kennedy writes about the American philanthropic sector’s response to pending federal tax legislation. “Both the Council on Foundations and the Philanthropy Roundtable have argued that a tax on endowments will result in less funding for small local organizations throughout the country. If community foundations were included or if the new excise tax was increased for all foundations, that might be a strong claim. As it is, scare tactics of this sort are unlikely to resonate with groups funded by local donors and community foundations. The lack of political support for the nation’s wealthiest foundations and universities should be a cause for reflection by the associations that represent these institutions. The emphasis on a relatively small group of their wealthiest members creates the potential for divisions within these organizations and the sector as a whole… These institutions need a new strategy. That means acknowledging that the charitable sector is in serious need of reform and then coming up with politically viable proposals for addressing those concerns… The sector needs to recognize that nonprofits operate in a political environment and that their actions have political consequences.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]

The Tax Man Cometh: In Bloomberg, Ben Steverman and Sophie Alexander examine how proposed changes to the tax code would affect large philanthropic foundations. “Private foundations have defined billionaire philanthropy for more than a century, from John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie to Elon Musk and Bill Gates, who recently said his organization would shut down in 2045. They are largely exempt from federal income taxes, and in return must spend 5% of their assets, on average, each year for charitable purposes, underpinning funding for food banks, religious institutions, schools and everything in between. But a provision in the $4 trillion GOP tax bill threatens a core benefit of the foundation structure, according to interviews with more than a dozen lawyers, accountants and experts in charitable giving. … ‘It will have a chilling effect on the creation of new foundations and end up accelerating the growth of donor-advised funds,’ said Laura MacDonald, former chair of the Giving USA Foundation and founder of philanthropic consultancy Benefactor Group. ‘I would be preparing my organization — whether I’m a grant maker or a grant recipient — for some challenging times.’” [Bloomberg]

Looking for tools to address antisemitism? Join the next cohort of Spertus Institute’s Leadership Certificate in Combating Antisemitism for Lay Leaders. This program empowers board members and trustees to respond to growing challenges with confidence and clarity. Learn from experts, connect with peers, and gain concrete skills to build a stronger Jewish community. Learn more and apply today! 

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Meredith Dragon, CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Rochester (N.Y.), has been hired as the next CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest (N.J.), ending a nearly yearlong search for a new chief executive of the organization…

The Wall Street Journal spotlights shifting Israeli public sentiment toward the war in Gaza…

Beit Halochem UK, a British charity supporting Israeli centers for wounded veterans, was the victim of wire fraud, losing more than $1.3 million… 

Magen David Adom UK, the British fundraising arm for the Israeli emergency service, was added to the country’s Jewish Leadership Council…

Arc magazine chronicled the role of the Lubavitcher Rebbe in supporting President Jimmy Carter’s creation of the Department of Education…

The Korea Israel Bible Institute, a Christian Zionist organization in South Korea, opened the country’s first Holocaust museum this week… 

Amy Schumer, Israeli actor Yadin Gellman and Israeli director Eliran Peled are co-producing a romantic comedy called “Now More Than Ever” about the divides between Israeli and American Jewry post-Oct. 7…

Philanthropist and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, whose father was Jewish, died yesterday at 65…

COURTESY

Schechter Institutes Bible professor David Frankel (in maroon shirt) peruses a copy of Ugarit-Forschungen, an International Journal for Syrian-Palestinian Antiquity Studies, that he found in the institution’s bomb shelter, which also serves as a storage room, where he was forced to run this morning after an incoming missile from Yemen triggered air raid sirens in and around Jerusalem. 

ANDREW MATTHEWS/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

British writer, philanthropist and documentary filmmaker, Dame Hannah Mary Rothschild... 

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