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Good Friday morning.

In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we speak with experts about growing security concerns for Jewish leaders in light of an emerging “assassination culture” in the United States. We report on the efforts by the family of Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term “genocide,” to have his name removed from an anti-Israel nonprofit and on the advancement of a bill in California to address antisemitism in K-12 schools in the state. We feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Benjamin Berger reflecting on the value of pluralism — on campus, in the Jewish community and in democratic society in general — in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk; plus Rachel Heiligman and Stacie Cherner explore updating how we define “impact” in Jewish learning. Also in this issue: David Magerman, Sophia Chitlik and Robert Kraft.

Shabbat shalom!

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For less-distracted reading over the weekend, browse this week’s edition of The Weekly Print, a curated print-friendly PDF featuring a selection of recent eJewishPhilanthropy and Jewish Insider stories, including: Inside ‘Arthur’s vision’: Brandeis University restructures, looking to be more economical; The ‘good news’ and ‘not so good news’ about Jewish giving from historian Jack Wertheimer; and ‘We won’t normalize it’: Friends of Ziv and Gali Berman mark twins’ 28th birthday in Hamas captivity. 
Print the latest edition here.

America is entering into an “assassination culture,” the Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University’s Social Perception Lab warned earlier this year, with political violence becoming increasingly common and justified by a growing segment of the population, particularly on the extreme left. “Given the current economic volatility and institutional distrust, the online normalization of political violence may increasingly translate into offline action,” the groups wrote in an April report. Their prediction has since proven tragically accurate, most recently with Wednesday’s killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.

With antisemitism still raging throughout America, Jewish leaders — executive directors, CEOs and rabbis — are increasingly at risk as the public face of their institutions and movements. They are already being targeted online, at events, on college campuses and at their homes, and experts say that increased security at synagogues is not enough; Jewish leaders need individual protection.

Over the past six months, Hal Lewis, CEO and consultant at Leadership for Impact LLC, an executive coaching and organizational consulting firm specializing in nonprofit leadership, told eJewishPhilanthropy that his clients have contacted him worried about their houses and family being attacked. Their concerns are warranted after numerous incidents, such as last June’s when antisemitic graffiti was painted on the private homes of leaders from the Brooklyn Museum. “These aren't people who should be worried about sending their kids to the local Jewish day school,” he said, “or their spouse being involved in communal life in a different capacity.”

One major change in where the threats are coming from is that they are often politically to the left, according to Andrés Spokoiny, president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network and an outspoken critic of both the far left and far right. While the antisemitic far right still presents a major threat to the Jewish community — indeed the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States, the 2018 Tree of Life shooting, was carried out by an anti-immigration white nationalist — support for political violence is now becoming increasingly commonplace on the far left as well. “It was always assumed that the far left was antisemitic more in an ideological discourse,” Spokoiny said. “They were looking for cultural influence, and the far right was violent, they would do shootings, they would do that kind of stuff. Now that equation has changed. We know that the anti-Zionist far left can and has become violent as well.”

According to Michael Masters, national director and CEO of Secure Community Network, the first step for keeping Jewish leaders safe is the same step recommended for keeping all Jews safe: training on situational awareness and countering active threats.

Lewis hopes this High Holy Day season, synagogues have a different kind of appeal, one that is not financial, but simply acknowledges that these threats need to be taken seriously. “I don't want us to be victimized as a community by a failure of imagination,” he said. “We may choose to go in one way in one community and another in another, but we've got to be talking about this, and it's not just about security cameras in shuls.”

Read the full report here.

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Raphael Lemkin served as a columnist for the Zionist World journal. In 1927, he declared that the “task of the Jewish people is … [to become] a permanent national majority in its own national home.” And yet despite Lemkin’s Zionist bona fides, 10 days after the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, on Oct. 17, 2023, the institute named for the Polish-born Jewish lawyer accused the State of Israel of carrying out a “genocide” against Palestinians — the very term that Lemkin coined in 1943. Now, members of Lemkin’s family, with assistance from the European Jewish Association, are trying to get the Pennsylvania-based Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention to stop using his name, calling it deceptive and disparaging, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.

Not what he stood for: Joseph Lemkin, Lemkin’s second cousin, told eJP that he first learned about the Lemkin Institute from his son, after its statements began circulating widely on social media. While it’s not atypical for the name to be used by a number of initiatives, upon looking into the institute’s public statements, Lemkin said that he felt they contradicted Raphael Lemkin’s values. “Our family name has been used for quite a number of different scholarships and academic purposes. For the most part, we’re proud, we’re happy,” he told eJP. “But when we see that it’s being used [in a way that’s] contradictory to what we believe Rafael stood for, and, you know, directly opposed to what he stood for, candidly, we feel that… it really disparages the name.”

Read the full report here.

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A key California Senate committee voted on Wednesday to advance an amended bill targeting antisemitism in K-12 schools, following two months of closed-door negotiations that came after the state’s largest teachers’ union announced its opposition to the bill and stalled its passage, reports Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider. 

Red pen: The version of the bill that came before the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday night was markedly different from an earlier version that had been approved unanimously by the State Assembly in May. But when the 300,000-member California Teachers Association came out against the bill in July, arguing that its targeting of antisemitism could affect teachers’ “academic freedom,” lawmakers scrapped a planned hearing in order to take time to try to assuage the powerful union. A section that defined antisemitism and provided examples of an “antisemitic learning environment” were stripped out before passage, but the union ultimately did not withdraw its opposition to the bill. 

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

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“College should be a place of curiosity and connection. Too often, it feels like a battleground, with the sword hovering at the entrance,” writes Rabbi Benjamin Berger, senior vice president of Jewish education, community and culture at Hillel International, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “And now, once again, the sword has been unsheathed again in real life with the assassination of Charlie Kirk in front of thousands of students on a college campus.”

Our task: “Whether people agreed or disagreed with Kirk’s views, his campus debates with college students normalized the idea that public space requires contested speech. This engagement with people who disagreed with him publicly, loudly and regularly was a reminder that democracy depends not on the clash of weapons but on the clash of arguments and of ideas. … Jewish community, and democratic community, can only survive when we practice the ‘discipline of pluralism’ — choosing to argue passionately, listen generously and remain bound to one another even when consensus is impossible. Whether Kirk himself represented this disciplined and energetic pluralism should not dissuade us from the hard task of doing so ourselves.”

Read the full piece here.

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“In recent years, the Jim Joseph Foundation has invited the field to reconsider how we think about Jewish identity and Jewish learning,” write Rachel Heiligman, the foundation’s strategy advisor and senior portfolio lead of R&D, and Stacie Cherner, the foundation’s director of research and learning, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “As more programs reach more diverse audiences in more expansive ways, one insight has become increasingly clear: impact is relative.”

Worth noting: “Decades of research in learning sciences, identity studies and behavioral psychology support the idea that emotion, context and relationships play a critical role in shaping how people learn and grow. Jewish learning is no exception. And for learners who have limited prior exposure to Jewish life, those emotional and social cues may matter even more than the intellectual content itself — at least at the outset. Across the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Emergent Strategy, we’re seeing that meaningful Jewish growth often happens in experiences that don’t fit traditional molds. They may be brief, digital, aesthetic or episodic. But they are real. And they often serve as entry points into deeper exploration.”

Read the full piece here.

Wrong Focus: In an opinion piece for the Jewish News Syndicate, philanthropist David Magerman argues that funders interested in a secure Jewish future should shift gears from the fight against antisemitism to investing in strengthening Israel. “Jewish philanthropists have been lured into a pointless, expensive, and unwinnable fight against antisemitism, when they could be using their resources to capitalize on Israel’s successes and help Israel grow stronger through investment. … In the short run, ignoring antisemitism will not be easy. Hostile rhetoric may continue, and some communities may feel abandoned without dedicated advocacy. Yet over time, resilience may be better demonstrated by thriving despite hostility, rather than by fighting to silence it. Perhaps the most powerful response to hatred is not defense but success.” [JNS]

For All Our Sakes: In The New York Times, Ezra Klein praises Charlie Kirk’s approach to political discourse and warns of the danger that faces public figures of all political stripes when disagreement devolves into violence. “[T]here is no world in which political violence escalates but is contained to just your foes. Even if that were possible, it would still be a world of horrors, a society that had collapsed into the most irreversible form of unfreedom. … Kirk and I were on different sides of most political arguments. We were on the same side on the continued possibility of American politics. It is supposed to be an argument, not a war; it is supposed to be won with words, not ended with bullets. I wanted Kirk to be safe for his sake, but I also wanted him to be safe for mine and for the sake of our larger shared project. … We are all safe, or none of us are.” [NYTimes]

Stay in Your Lane: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Eboo Patel warns nonprofits against veering into areas outside their expertise as a response to the various crises underway in the U.S. “[N]onprofit leaders should ask themselves these questions: What is the core mission of our organization? What does our constituency trust us to do? How do we do that as well as possible? … I was reminded of this wisdom while re-reading the excellent monograph by management guru Jim Collins, ‘Good to Great and the Social Sectors.’ Collins was writing in the wake of a different crisis, and he tells a compelling story about what one organization did to meet that moment. The crisis was the 9/11 attacks and the fearful days that followed. The organization was the Cleveland Orchestra.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]

Get a taste of Spertus learning.  Join Spertus Institute faculty member Stefan Teodosic, founder of Maverick Soul Consulting, on “Leveraging Trust to Build Strong Professional Relationships.” Free online workshop for Jewish professionals! Tuesday, Sept. 16, 12:30-1:30 CT. Reserve your spot. 

The Bronfman Fellowship announces outstanding faculty lineup for new cohorts of Campus Commons.

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Russian-Israeli researcher Elizabeth Tsurkov was reunited with family in Israel, days after being freed by an Iran-backed Iraqi militia that kidnapped her in Baghdad more than two years ago…

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington responded to a recent controversy over the inclusion of a Palestinian folk tale in local public schools, saying that after investigating the matter, it determined that the fears are unfounded and the “children’s story is appropriate and beneficial for all students”... 

Sophia Chitlik, a Durham, N.C.-based philanthropist and state senator, distanced herself from remarks made by comedian Jerry Seinfeld at a joint event earlier this week, in which he called the “Free Palestine” movement worse than the KKK…

Support for the separation of religion and state in Israel has dropped to a 13-year low, according to a new poll by the religious freedom advocacy group Hiddush, which found that 57% of respondents said they supported the idea, down from a high of 68% in 2017…

Multiple Historically Black Colleges and Universities were locked down yesterday after receiving “terroristic threats” that referred to the recent killing of a Ukrainian refugee, Iryna Zarutska, by a mentally ill homeless Black man earlier this week in Charlotte, N.C…

A Queens College Zoom lecture featuring Yofi Tirosh, an Israeli academic and fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, was disrupted by some attendees shouting antisemitic threats and displaying violent and sexually explicit images…

Chicago’s ABC7 interviews Elad Strohmayer, the city’s new Israeli consul general, who discussed his plans to reach out to local non-Jewish groups…

Josh Kraft dropped his Boston mayoral bid after a preliminary election showed him trailing incumbent Mayor Michelle Wu by 49 points…

In an interview on CNBC yesterday, philanthropist and NFL owner Robert Kraft responded to Wednesday’s killing of Charlie Kirk, calling for “more curbs on social media” to rein in hate speech, including through regulation, and said “we need more spirituality in America today and less hate”...

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg met with Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani yesterday; Bloomberg had spent upward of $8 million opposing Mamdani’s primary bid earlier this year…

Paramount Skydance is reportedly moving toward making a majority cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery that would merge the parent companies of HBO Max and Paramount+…

The San Francisco Standard spotlights last week’s opening ball for the San Francisco Opera, which was attended by a bevy of local philanthropists, including Mayor Daniel Lurie, Maria Manetti Shrem, and Marieke and Jeff Rothschild…

Jewish Voice for Peace is suing the City of Miami Beach as well as its mayor and a city commissioner, alleging that the group’s First Amendment rights were violated by the passage of an ordinance on public protests…

Ireland’s public broadcaster said the country will opt out of the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel is permitted to participate…

Michael Cohen, previously the East Coast director at the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Museum of Tolerance, is joining the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation as its U.S. executive vice president…

David Halbfinger, who served as New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem from 2017-2021, is returning to the role following the departure of Patrick Kingsley; longtime Times correspondent Isabel Kershner was promoted to senior correspondent for the bureau…

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The U.S. Embassy in Israel, Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund and Jewish National Fund-USA hold a memorial ceremony yesterday at the Arazim Valley Memorial in Jerusalem to mark the 24th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The ceremony was attended by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, KKL-JNF Chair Ifat Ovadia-Luski and JNF-USA President Deb Lust Zaluda, among other American and Israeli dignitaries. 

“Sept. 11, 2001, is a date indelibly etched into our minds. Another such date is Oct. 7, 2023,” Huckabee said at the ceremony. “As we are approaching Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, let us pray that we will never know another 9/11 or an Oct. 7, that Hamas and other terrorist organizations will be vanquished, and that all the hostages will be released.”

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Executive chairman of MDC Holdings (parent company to Richmond American Homes) until last December, and the principal supporter of the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, Larry A. Mizel turns 83 on Sunday... 

FRIDAY: 2020 Nobel Prize laureate in medicine, Harvey James Alter turns 90... Chairman at Waxman Strategies, he served for 20 terms through 2015 as a Democratic Congressman from Los Angeles, Henry Waxman turns 86... 2017 Nobel Prize laureate in economics, University of Chicago behavioral economist, Richard H. Thaler turns 80... Director of Intergovernmental Affairs in the Obama White House, he was previously lieutenant governor of Kentucky and mayor of Louisville for 20 years, Jerry Abramson turns 79... Former president of AIPAC, Amy Rothschild Friedkin... Denver Jewish community leader, Sunny Brownstein... President emeritus of the Democratic Majority for Israel, Mark S. Mellman turns 70... U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom during the Trump 45 administration, he was governor of Kansas and a U.S. senator, Sam Brownback turns 69... Miami-based chairman of American Principles Super PAC, Eytan Laor... Former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he is now the global chair of the litigation department at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, Geoffrey Steven Berman turns 66... Senior vice president of government and public affairs at CVS Health, Melissa Schulman... Internet entrepreneur and a pioneer of VoIP telephony, Jeff Pulver turns 63... Chair of ADL's board of directors, Nicole G. Mutchnik... Attorney specializing in the recovery of looted artworks during the Holocaust and featured in the 2015 film "Woman in Gold," E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg turns 59... Senior paralegal and contract manager at The St. Joe Company, Sherri Jankowski... Senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Max A. Boot turns 56... Screenwriter, producer and director, he won three Emmy Awards for episodes of Robot Chicken, Douglas Goldstein turns 54... Chief advocacy officer at the Defense Credit Union Council, Jason Stverak... Israeli singer, songwriter and musician, Idan Raichel turns 48... Founder of the Loewy Law Firm in Austin, Texas, Adam Loewy... Venture capitalist and one of the co-founders of Palantir Technologies, Joe Lonsdale turns 43... AIPAC's area director for Philadelphia and South Jersey, Kelly Lauren Stein... Actress, director and singer, she directed and starred in the 2022 Peacock miniseries Angelyne, Emmanuelle Grey "Emmy" Rossum turns 39... Former advisor to the prime minister of Israel for foreign affairs and world communities, now a venture capitalist, Sara Greenberg... Manager of operations communications at American Airlines, Ethan Klapper... National political correspondent at Politico and the author of The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power, Ben Schreckinger... Product manager for Pixel watch at Google, Natalie Raps Farren... Film and television actress, Molly Tarlov turns 33…

SATURDAY: Retired motion picture editor, Avrum Fine... Columnist, author and etiquette authority known as Miss Manners, Judith Perlman Martin turns 87... Chairman of global brokerage at CBRE, a worldwide commercial real estate services company, Stephen Siegel turns 81... Folk artist, photographer and writer focused on European Jewish history, Jill Culiner turns 80... Retired after 57 years as a Washington reporter for many print and broadcast media, Richard Pollock... Ice dancer, who, with her partner Michael Seibert, won five straight U.S. Figure Skating Championships between 1981 and 1985, Judy Blumberg turns 68... Founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, he is the author of 16 books, Rafael Medoff turns 66... Executive director of Aspen Digital, part of the Aspen Institute, Vivian Schiller... Senior lecturer in Talmud at Ner Israel Rabbinical College, Rabbi Chaim Kosman... Comedian known as "Roastmaster General" for his Comedy Central celebrity roasts, Jeffrey Ross Lifschultz turns 60... Governor of North Carolina, one of three Jewish governors — all named Josh, Joshua Stein turns 59... Member of the Los Angeles City Council, Robert J. Blumenfield turns 58... Founder of United Hatzalah of Israel and president of its U.S.-based support organization, Friends of United Hatzalah, Eli Beer turns 52... Israel's minister of health until this past July, he is a member of the Knesset for the Shas party, Uriel Menachem Buso turns 52... Vice president of state and local advocacy for the Anti-Defamation League, Meredith Mirman Weisel... Former 9-year member of the Colorado House of Representatives, Jonathan Singer turns 46... Advocacy strategist with experience in opinion research, Gary Ritterstein... Senior editor and elections analyst at Cook Political Report focused on the U.S. House of Representatives and redistricting, David Nathan Wasserman turns 41... Founder and president of Reshet Capital, Betty Grinstein... Director at Finsbury Glover Hering, Walter Suskind... Policy associate at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, Sierra DeCrosta... Senior software engineer at Capital Connect by J.P. Morgan Chase, David Behmoaras... Managing director at Page Four Media, Noa Silverstein…

SUNDAY: Actor, writer and director, first known for his role as Chekov in the original Star Trek television series, Walter Koenig turns 89... The only basketball head coach to have won both an NCAA national championship and an NBA championship, Lawrence Harvey (Larry) Brown turns 85... San Diego-based attorney, a specialist in mass torts, Frederick A. Schenk turns 72... Mayor of Miami-Dade County, Daniella Levine Cava turns 70... Born in Chicago as Robert Francis Prevost, Pope Leo XIV turns 70... Plastic surgeon and television personality, Dr. Terry Dubrow turns 67... Chairman and chief investment officer of The Electrum Group, he is the world's largest private collector of Rembrandt's works, Thomas Scott Kaplan turns 63... Founder of Mindchat Research, Amy Kauffman... Founder of Vermont-based Kidrobot, a retailer of art toys, apparel and accessories, and Ello, an ad-free social network, Paul Budnitz turns 58... British secretary of state for defence until 2024 and knighted earlier this year, he was a national president of BBYO, Sir Grant Shapps turns 57... President of Strauss Media Strategies, during the Clinton administration he became the first-ever White House Radio Director, Richard Strauss turns 56... Managing director at Gasthalter & Co., he is a past president of the Young Israel of New Rochelle, Mark A. Semer... Comedian, television actor, writer and producer, Elon Gold turns 55... Managing partner of Berke Farah LLP, his clients include SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas, Elliot S. Berke... Senior White House reporter for CBS News, Jennifer Jacobs... CEO of San Francisco-based Jewish LearningWorks, Dana Sheanin... Senior booking producer at CNN's Inside Politics with Dana Bash, Courtney Cohen Flantzer... Israeli-American actress, Hani Furstenberg turns 46... Artist, photographer and educator, Marisa Scheinfeld turns 45... Staff writer at The Atlantic since 2014, Russell Berman... Co-founder and co-executive director of the Indivisible movement, Leah Greenberg... Los Angeles-based attorney working as a contracts supervisor at MarketCast, Roxana Pourshalimi... New York Times reporter since 2011, now focused on in depth profiles, Matt Flegenheimer... Executive vice president at Voyager Global Mobility, Jeremy Moskowitz... Founder and owner of ARA Capital, a British firm with holdings in e-commerce and energy, Arkadiy Abramovich turns 32... MSW graduate this past May at Yeshiva University, Julia Savel... Artistic gymnast, she represented Israel at the 2020 (Tokyo) and 2024 (Paris) Summer Olympics, Lihie Raz turns 22...