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Good Tuesday morning!

In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we interview Sarah Mali of the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA about her group’s efforts to turn Tel-Hai Academic College near the northern Israeli city of Kiryat Shmona into a university to help revitalize the country’s north. We spotlight a newly funded initiative by the Center for Jewish History to help solve Holocaust-era family mysteries, and bring the latest on the Kennedy Center’s call to Jewish donors to “act quickly” to renovate its Israeli Lounge before another entity steps in. We feature an opinion piece by Shira Hutt about bolstering community security, and one by Mali about the wider Pan-Canadian Coalition to help rebuild Israel’s north. Also in this issue: Lois Eskenazi, Daniel Grycman and David Weisberg. 

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The plans to convert the Tel-Hai Academic College into a full-fledged university — the University of Kiryat Shmona and the Galilee — have been in the works for years. Located just north of Kiryat Shmona, toward the very tip of the so-called “finger of the Galilee,” the institution has long been seen as a potential economic engine for the region, which for decades has suffered from underemployment, population stagnation and gaps in education, medicine and other key areas.

These issues were exacerbated when, a day after the Oct. 7 terror attacks in southern Israel, the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist militia joined in the fray, firing missiles and flying explosive drones into northern Israel. These attacks prompted a mass evacuation from the north, which was pummeled daily for a year, until the Israeli military launched a major ground offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, ending with a still-holding, albeit tense, ceasefire in November 2024. 

Despite lingering concerns, the push to turn Tel-Hai College into a university — it will be Israel’s 11th — has ramped up in recent weeks. Toward the end of last year, the institution held a cornerstone-laying ceremony, and last week, a deal was finalized that will officially make the university-to-be part of the city of Kiryat Shmona. The Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA, an umbrella group representing all of Canada’s federations, has been involved in these efforts throughout the years, as part of a broader push by the Great White North to strengthen Israel’s north. The group has donated some CAD 25 million ($18 million) to the effort, as well as helping to bring on board other donors. Read more about JFC-UIA’s broader efforts to rehabilitate northern Israel below.

To hear more about these efforts by JFC-UIA, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross recently spoke with the director-general of its Israel office, Sarah Mali, about the push to turn Tel-Hai College into a university, where else her umbrella group is operating in northern Israel and how she has worked with other federations and foundations to make this happen.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

JAG: Let's start with Tel-Hai College. Of course, this plan has been in the works since before the war to turn it into a university. So when did the Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA first get involved?

SM: We were involved in 2006 after the Second Lebanon War. That was when we first did a pan-Canadian allocation to the north. And really we've been following and been friends of and supporting Tal Hai since then. And when it comes to Tal Hai, we were looking, with a pan-Canadian coalition, to find ways to create opportunities for the young people in the north, for people who had been evacuated and who were debating whether to come back and to potentially attract new families to come live and thrive in the north. We were looking for organizations that had value that would lead to a ripple effect. So it sounds very technical, that a college becomes a university, but the university is really about strengthening young people in their relationship to higher education. It's about students being able to volunteer in the physically adjacent Kiryat Shmona, which needs strong role models. It’s about young people who have chosen to live and study in the north being champions for the north. And to think of Kiryat Shmona as a university town, which would hopefully have an influx in the next five to seven years of 10,000 students annually, to a city of 23,000 people currently. 

For us, Tel-Hai was the meta project, the project that you say, “When this becomes a university, you're going to have new scientists with their families coming to live and work and learn there. You're going to have students who are going to have opportunities to ultimately settle in the region and be role models. You're going to have a beacon for the young people in the area, who have a really low rate of [higher education].” So this is kind of a lighthouse.

Read the full interview here.

When the Nazis seized Poland in 1939, Ilana Rosenbluth’s family fled to Uzbekistan, where her grandfather peddled bolts of fabric used to make suits. Four years later, he boarded a train to Andijan, a city known for textiles, and never returned. What happened to her grandfather has plagued her family to this day, but a new initiative, Histories and Mysteries, launched last week by The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History, where Rosenbluth is director of communications, offers her hope of finding out. The initiative, backed by a nearly $300,000 grant from the Claims Conference, looks to solve Holocaust-era family mysteries, posting the research journey across social media, using both Jewish and non-Jewish influencers to educate new audiences about the Holocaust, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.

Answers to be found: After receiving an online inquiry, CJH’s experts dive into archives and sometimes contact other experts as distant as the Buchenwald Memorial Archives in Germany or the Archives de Vienne in France. “I like to view it as a puzzle,” Jenny Rappaport, CJH’s head genealogist, told eJP. “You’re never going to have all the pieces of a Holocaust story, unfortunately, just due to record loss, because things were destroyed. There aren’t all the pieces left. But I try to put it together as much as possible.” Still, there’s hope, Miriam Malka Frankel, CJH’s social media coordinator, told eJP. “People think that 81 years ago, when the Holocaust happened, is just so far away, but it’s alarmingly closer than we realize, and there are so many answers that can still be found.”

Read the full report here.

Sources at the Kennedy Center confirmed that it is warning Jewish donors that if they do not make a substantial contribution to renovate its Israeli Lounge, the room may be handed over to a corporate donor or foreign government, reports Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider, though two sources denied claims that Qatar could purchase the lounge. 

Tick-tock: “The Israeli Lounge, specifically, the contract lapsed 15 years ago, and now it’s up for sale again, and we would love for it to remain a space that honors the Jewish People,” the Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, Roma Daravi, told JI on Monday. As those conversations with individual philanthropists and corporate sponsors continue, the Kennedy Center is offering no guarantee that the room will remain the Israeli Lounge. Nor will the institution guarantee that the artwork in the lounge, by the artists Shraga Weill, Ezekiel Kimche and Nehemia Azar, will remain. Kennedy Center President Richard Grenell has not publicly named a deadline for the project. But since a major donor has not yet materialized, Grenell has given the team raising money for the project additional time beyond what was initially allotted, according to one source. 

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

“Saturday’s cowardly antisemitic attack against the historic Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., is the latest reminder of something our community has been learning the hard way for nearly a decade: Security is no longer a peripheral component to building vibrant Jewish life. It is foundational,” writes Shira Hutt, executive vice president of Jewish Federations of North America, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. 

What’s on our minds: “This effort has two, interrelated components: protecting our physical spaces and communal gatherings, and confronting the rise in antisemitism and incitement to violence directly through sustained relationships with civic leaders across government, education, business, media and law enforcement. After another year of violence directed at Jewish institutions and gatherings, it is clearer than ever that keeping our communities safe must be our highest priority. Here are some of the considerations that will continue to shape the federation system’s role in protecting Jewish communities in the year ahead.”

Read the full piece here.

“[At] Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA), we soon realized something: Israel’s north was becoming the silent victim of the war. Communities in the Galilee Panhandle had endured both the constant threat of fire and the pain of prolonged evacuation. Their resilience was remarkable — but their recovery would require collective care, and it would be JFC-UIA’s responsibility, as the convener of the national federation system of Canada, to do something about it. So, we began to stitch together a coalition to support the north. This is the story, and the anatomy, of how it came together. We share this to offer insight into the back workings of the coalition-building effort as a model we invite you to join, adapt or replicate,” writes Sarah Mali, director general of JFC-UIA in Israel, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. 

‘Learn, live and thrive’: Eighteen months on, what began as an idea has become a living model of aspirational realism. The Pan-Canadian Coalition isn’t just funding projects — we are working, together, humbly and alongside the people of the north, to build pathways toward strong futures for their children. We’ve built a framework for impact and accountability, with a strong Pan-Canadian subcommittee and a process for measuring what matters most: educational achievement, community vitality and a north where young people can learn, live and thrive.

Read the full piece here.

An Innovator and a Mensch: In The Times of Israel, Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi interviews entrepreneur and venture capitalist Jon Medved. “Every generation produces a small number of builders — people who don’t just succeed within a system, but reshape the system itself. In Israel’s founding era, David Ben-Gurion helped turn a dream into a state. In our time, Jon Medved has helped turn Israel’s ingenuity into a global engine for innovation — one rooted not only in profit, but in human value. Medved, the founder and CEO of OurCrowd, is widely known as one of Israel’s most influential investors. Recently diagnosed with ALS, he is famous for the OurCrowd summit which brought together hundreds of innovative start-up companies and thousands of investors. Less often acknowledged is the deeper truth: he helped reinvent how Israel builds companies, funds ideas, and aligns capitalism with purpose.” [TOI]

Turning Numbers Into Stories: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jennifer Hahn writes about the role of chief financial officers in nonprofit organizations.“Chief financial officers often possess the clearest, most comprehensive view of an organization’s performance, strategic direction, and the outside economic forces that will shape its future. Yet for too many CFOs, conveying clear and compelling information to their teams can be challenging. … Historically, the role was purely numbers-focused, and narrative skills were not a job requirement. Plus, CFOs often lack formal training on how to deliver bad news effectively, preferring to let the numbers speak for themselves. But nonprofit stakeholders need information that is succinct, direct, and immediate — not buried in dense reports. To protect an organization’s sustainability, CFOs must become powerful narrators for their nonprofit’s finances.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]

Supporting Transformation: In City & State New York, John Macintosh spotlights “transformation-oriented philanthropy” as a potential response by funders to the challenges facing today’s nonprofit sector in the U.S. “Over the course of the year, we have seen five basic responses by funders: double down; make new friends; hibernate; stay the course; and support transformation. These are often mixed and matched — for example, doubling down in some areas while hibernating in others. But for every grantee that receives additional support, others lose out unless funders increase their aggregate spending — which only a minority have announced plans to do. Of these, supporting transformation seems to have piqued the interest of many funders. However, far fewer are actually doing what we have labeled ‘Transformation-oriented philanthropy’ … providing a combination of funding, expertise and even governance to help nonprofits significantly and sustainably transform (or in some people’s parlance, ‘restructure’) to better advance their missions in response to the current environment.” [City&StateNY]

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The suspect in an arson attack that severely damaged Mississippi’s largest synagogue early Saturday morning confessed to targeting the building because of its “Jewish ties,” the FBI announced on Monday, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

Australia has announced a national day of mourning on Thursday, Jan. 22, to commemorate the terror attack last month at Sydney’s Bondi Beach…

The Wall Street Journal investigates how foreign governments, including Israel and Qatar, are increasingly funding initiatives to reach out to social media influencers in addition to traditional lobbying efforts….

The Jewish Federation of St. Louis closed its 2025 annual campaign having raised $10.6 million, the largest amount since 2009…

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 12, former hostage David Cunio shared details about his time in captivity, including a visit in the tunnels by former Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar…

California Jewish groups have sharply condemned state Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat running in a crowded primary to replace retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), after he released a video accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza; Wiener’s video came shortly after he refrained from using the designation in a debate and decried the “genocide” question as a purity test to separate Jews into “good” and “bad” in an interview with The Atlantic, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports…

The executive council of the American Historical Association vetoed two anti-Israel resolutions, including one that accused the Jewish state of scholasticide in Gaza, saying that the resolutions “fall outside the scope” of the association and approving them “would present institutional risk and have long-term implications for the discipline and the organization”...

Israeli archeologist and educator Gabriel Barkay, the co-founder and director of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, died yesterday at 81…

Lois Eskenazi, an Indianapolis-based philanthropist who provided $40 million to fund a local hospital, the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, with one of the largest-ever donations to an American public hospital, died recently at 92…

Alon and Monique Abady donated a 16-story complex in Los Angeles to West Coast Chabad — estimated to be worth roughly $100 million — which will be turned into the Chabad Campus for Jewish Life; the Hassidic group says it will be the largest Jewish center in North America…

Pershing Square’s Bill Ackman donated $10,000 to a GoFundMe campaign for ICE officer Jonathan Ross, who fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis last week; the campaign was launched by a man whose Facebook page features white nationalist memes. In a post on X, Ackman explained that he donated to Ross out of the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” and would have donated to a similar crowdfunding campaign for Good’s family as well, but it was already closed…

Daniel Grycman was elected the next board chair of Jewish Federation Los Angeles…

David Weisberg was named the next executive director of World Jewish Relief-USA, the American branch of the British aid group; he succeeds Rabbi Dina Brawer, who stepped down last year…

Jay Haberman was tapped at the American Jewish Committee’s vice president for strategic philanthropy and major gifts; he was previously the chief development officer at ELNET-US… 

Israeli shared society nonprofit The Hand in Hand Association announced Shahaf Gal as its new CEO…

Jay Greene is joining the Defense of Freedom Institute as a senior fellow with a focus on antisemitism in education…

COURTESY/FJC

Members of the Foundation for Jewish Camp’s Cornerstone Fellowship participate last week in the group’s annual planning seminar, JanPlan, whose theme was “Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh: Holy People, Holy Places, Holy Teachings.”

SCREENSHOT

President of the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Cindy S. Moelis turns 65… 

Argentine writer, he has authored 14 novels, 17 essay collections, four short story collections and two biographies, Marcos Aguinis turns 91… Marriage and family therapist in Bakersfield, Calif., Kathleen Arnold-Chambers… Las Vegas resident, Cathy Nierenberg… Retired teacher, Lucia Meyerson… NYC pediatrician at Carnegie Hill Pediatrics, Barry B. Stein, MD… Lifelong resident of Greenwich Village, a two-time Emmy Award winner as a television producer, she worked for NBC Nightly News, Susanna Beth Aaron… Actress and producer, winner of 11 Emmy Awards, she is best known for “Saturday Night Live,” “Seinfeld” and “Veep,” Julia Louis-Dreyfus turns 65… Kaileh Lynn Pistol… Founder of the Freelancers Union, she was a MacArthur genius fellow in 1999, Sara Horowitz turns 63… Retired member of the Senate of Canada for 12 years, she is a past chair of the UJA of Greater Toronto, Linda Frum turns 63… Partner at Baker McKenzie, he served as deputy attorney general of the U.S. following 12 years as U.S. attorney for Maryland, Rod J. Rosenstein turns 61… Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel from 2013 until July 2024, Rabbi David Baruch Lau turns 60… Executive assistant to the president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits after 15 years at JFNA, Bruce Maclver… Vice president for policy at the Middle East Institute, Kenneth M. Pollack turns 60… Founder and director of the Israeli religious services advocacy group Itim, Rabbi Seth Farber… President and CEO of Amazon, Andrew R. Jassy turns 58… Long-time activist for Israel, Heidi Krizer Daroff… French screenwriter and director, Alice Winocour turns 50… Statistician and writer who analyzes sports and elections, he was the editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight until 2023, Nate Silver turns 48… Former vice president of donor relations at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, now a marriage and family therapist, Shira Berenson Feinstein… Israeli singer and rapper, known by his stage name Nechi Nech, Ravid Plotnik turns 38… Communications consultant based in Denver, Carly Freedman Schlafer… Rebecca Seider… Sandra Shapiro...