In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we interview Bernard-Henri Lévy after his closing remarks at the Contemporary Antisemitism Conference in Haifa, and report on David Lubin's effort to open the first North American chapter of Yad LaBanim this fall in memory of his daughter Rose, an Atlanta-born lone soldier killed in a 2023 terror attack. We feature an opinion piece by Anna L. Prager on how our behavior as individuals and as a community shapes Jewish identity for today’s children; a piece by five rabbis serving on Hebrew Union College’s Board of Governors about setting clear boundaries but allowing diverse views at the school; and a piece by Mimi Greisman about the impact of Jewish early childhood education and calling for ECE teachers to be compensated in a manner more commensurate with their value. Also in this issue: Alan Senitt, Jonathan and Polly Levine and Sara Sideman.

Shabbat shalom!

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: Jewish communal veteran Evan Bernstein tapped to take helm of B'nai B'rith International; Aviv Foundation grants $1 million to expand operations of Orthodox LGBTQ inclusion group Eshel; and Rahm Emanuel, in Tel Aviv, says he is ‘not impressed’ by far-left wing of the Democratic Party. Print the latest edition here.

What We're Watching

On Sunday evening, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will host a state ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the 1976 Entebbe rescue mission. 

Also on Sunday, over 5,000 North American and Israeli teens will gather for RootOne's annual Big Tent Event at LivePark stadium in Rishon LeZion, outside Tel Aviv. If you're there today, say hi to eJP's Justin Hayet!

What You Should Know

The French philosopher and author Bernard-Henri Lévy closed the Contemporary Antisemitism Haifa 2026 conference on Thursday evening with a stark warning — one that he has been sounding for 50 years now — but also with a glimmer of hope. 

Afterward, Lévy spoke with eJewishPhilanthropy’s Justin Hayet about why this moment feels unlike any other for Jews around the world, weighed in on what a conference and a new academic journal can realistically accomplish in the fight against antisemitism, warned about AI's growing role in amplifying antisemitic narratives and shared what he wants Jewish philanthropists to understand. 

JH: What is different about this conference and the new academic journal that's come out of it? Can ideas like these actually change anything on the ground globally? 

BHL: I do not know what a conference, by itself, can change. But one thing is certain: We must not give up, because the battle, contrary to what some believe, is not lost in advance. Jews, the friends of the Jewish people, the friends of democracy and genuine liberals can win this fight. And taking part in this conference is one of the simple yet meaningful things one can do if one believes that such a victory is still possible.

Read the full interview →

News

HELPING HAND

Yad LaBanim, the Israeli organization that supports bereaved military families, is opening its first North American chapter this fall, led by David Lubin, whose daughter, Rose, a lone soldier from Atlanta, was killed in a Jerusalem stabbing attack, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim.

Carrying grief together: “After you lose someone like that, and you come back home, you realize that you need a community,” Lubin told eJP. 

Read the full piece here →

Opinion

ZACHOR

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, researcher and lay leader Anna L. Prager urges the Jewish community to pay attention to the narrative our kids are constructing about their identity from the world around them.

“From the rituals they participate in to the fears they witness, [children] gradually construct an understanding of where they belong. When security, vigilance and responses to threat dominate the communal landscape, children may begin to understand Jewish identity primarily through the lens of external threat, even as institutions intend to transmit something much richer, joyful and more expansive. The question is not whether the lessons of vigilance are wrong. The question is how they fit into the larger narrative children are building.”

Read the full piece →

GROUND RULES

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbis David E. Stern, Rachel S. Mikva, Peter S. Berg, Daniel Kirzane and Daniel A. Weiner, members of Hebrew Union College’s Board of Governors, push back against the idea of refusing to ordain people who identify as anti-Zionists but also emphasize that space for diversity of opinion at the institution should not come without limits.

“Anyone who advocates for the destruction of the state of Israel, or for the removal of the Jewish People from their homeland, has no place at Hebrew Union College. Anyone who promotes the displacement of any people from their historic land has no place here. Anyone who calls for the destruction of a people — any people — has no place here. These are not litmus tests. They are standards of moral and intellectual integrity, conditions necessary for any serious academic or religious community. One cannot pursue honest learning about Jewish peoplehood in an environment that tolerates the denial of Jewish existence.”

Read the full piece →

KNOCK KNOCK

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Mimi Greisman — the musician and Jewish early childhood educator behind the children’s Shabbat song “There’s a Dinosaur Knocking At My Door” — talks about the 33-year-old song’s origins and sees a lesson about Jewish ECE in its enduring popularity.

“Like traditional folk songs, ‘There’s A Dinosaur Knocking at My Door’ was passed along from person to person, and it ultimately traveled around the country and around the world. This is what Jewish early childhood education does when it works: it plants something that grows underground for years before you see it bloom.”

Read the full piece →

Worthy Reads

Buy-in Economics: In Nieman Lab, vice president of Southern California Public Radio’s Andy Cheatwood argues that public media newsrooms need to start asking readers to buy instead of just donating. “Through all of this we’ve pried open a few doors public radio has mostly kept shut, and broadened what it can mean to support public media and to put a real, human value on the work. Building these muscles isn’t optional anymore. If we want a business that lasts, and a newsroom that reaches people wherever and however they choose to show up, this is the work.”

Titles Aren’t Leadership: In a LinkedIn post, Dan Sacker marks 20 years since friend Alan Senitt's murder by reflecting on what Senitt's life still teaches about leadership. “What he had built, through BBYO and the Union of Jewish Students and the Coexistence Trust, was influence: the kind of standing that made people trust him before any title ever arrived.”

Buy Local: In the military publication The War Horse, Sonner Kehrt examines the fraught relationship between local chapters of Disabled American Veterans and the national organization and the broader struggles of veterans groups. “‘It’s part of a long decline of civic organizations in our country,’ said Stephen Ortiz, a historian who studies veterans organizations at Binghamton University, The State University of New York. ‘Since the Gulf War, you’ve had the internet, and since then social media, and that has for many Americans replaced the sense of connection from intensely local places to completely global places.’”

Community Comms

SPONSORED | Email us to place an advertisement to the eJP readership of your upcoming event, job opening or other announcement.

Major Gifts

Jonathan and Polly Levine donated $10 million to Hillel at Arizona State University to name a new center for Jewish life, marking one of the largest single gifts ever made to a local Hillel in the U.S…

MacKenzie Scott gave $20 million to Active Minds — the largest gift in the organization's history — to scale the youth mental health nonprofit's national programs, leadership initiatives, and advocacy training…

Walton Family Foundation committed $15 million over three years to the Aspen Institute's Center for Rising Generations, including a $12 million endowment boost matched by the Bezos Family Foundation and $3 million for a new education-focused strategy group…

Transitions

Holocaust Museum Boston has named Ann Welch as its inaugural chief operating officer…

Sara Sideman was appointed executive director of Katz JCC in Cherry Hill, N.J.

Word on the Street

A bipartisan group of 58 House members urged the Federal Emergency Management Agency on Thursday to extend the deadline for 2026 Nonprofit Security Grant Program applications, arguing that the current timeline gives states and institutions “insufficient time to complete the application process” and fulfill the program’s goals, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports…

Writing in Jerusalem News Syndicate, Alpha Epsilon Pi CEO Rob Derdiger argues that fraternities and other student-led Jewish spaces are locked out of federal security funding due to their tax status — and urges Congress to amend the eligibility requirements…

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and his wife, Janet, installed a plaque yesterday through the My Tree in Israel program honoring Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, alongside former Israeli hostage Yarden Bibas…

Mark Cuban filed a pre-suit legal action in Dallas County against new Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont, alleging he was frozen out of both basketball decisions and new arena plans…

Tamar Dayan, founding chair and a professor at Tel Aviv University's Steinhardt Museum of Natural History, resigned along with seven board members in protest of a university reorganization plan she says will strip the museum of its academic standing…

The Orange County Register spotlights the Samueli Foundation’s approach to philanthropy, which seeks to empower nonprofits to define their own needs, an approach that's now catching on with other funders like the Sun Family Foundation…

Israel's priciest home ever listed, a nearly 74,000-square-foot Versailles-style estate called Bat Sheba's Palace — priced at $210 million — is back on the market after a decade-long search for a buyer…

Jared Kushner, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba appeared together onstage at the prestigious dealmaking Allen & Co. conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, Jewish Insider’s Emily Jacobs reports

London Mayor Sadiq Khan toured the Nova Music Festival Exhibition in the city yesterday and met with a survivor of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre at the Nova festival...

Reykjavik opened Shvidler House, Iceland's first-ever Jewish cultural center…

The New York Times spotlights Notarikon Review Publisher Mendel Uminer, whose collection of some 10,000 books prompted his landlord to force him from his apartment…

A PEN America investigation found more than 30 Israeli and Jewish writers describe a growing isolation in publishing since the Oct. 7 terror attacks, including canceled book deals and agents dropping clients, as well as pressure to remove Jewish characters and Jewish content…

The Times of Israel spotlights Ra'anana's Ezra Schwartz Memorial Field —named after American gap-year student Ezra Schwartz, who was killed in a 2015 terror attack— where Team USA beat Team Israel to close out its Maccabiah Games series…

Assaf Razin, a noted Israeli economist who once served as the government's chief economic advisor before being dismissed for warning about looming hyperinflation, died at 85…

Photo of the Day

COURTESY/ORTHODOX UNION

Rabbi Aharon Drebin (second from left) of Brooklyn, N.Y., and Rabbi Mordechai Gholian (second from right) of Baltimore analyze a piece of fabric to determine if it contains the biblically forbidden mixture of sheep’s wool and linen, known as shatnez, at the Orthodox Union’s National Shatnez Conference this week.

The gathering is one of several organized by the OU for authorities on various areas of Jewish law, including religious burial and maintaining an eruv, which allows observant Jews to gather things in public spaces on Shabbat. The conference was meant to strengthen the field, which works with the fashion industry and within communities to identify forbidden garments so that people know to avoid wearing them or to remove the forbidden mixed materials, Rabbi Ezra Sarna, the OU’s director of Torah and halacha initiatives, said in a statement.

“Beyond that, my hope is that bringing together leaders in the industry will foster greater collaboration and new ideas that will enable clothing companies to obtain ‘shatnez-free’ certification,” Sarna said.

Birthdays

 MIRIAM ALSTER/FLASH90

Yonit Levi, Israeli news anchor, television presenter and journalist, turns 49 on Sunday

Friday

Judge David Hittner, senior U.S. District Court judge in the Southern District of Texas, turns 87

Robert D. Gronke, retired attorney at the California Office of Legislative Counsel

Stan Udaskin

Arlo Guthrie, folk singer-songwriter, turns 79

Naomi Ragen, NYC-born author of 13 novels, she has been living in Israel since 1971, turns 77

Barbara Goldberg Goldman, partner in consulting firm Quorum, LLC and president at Regal Domestics

Julie Salamon, author of 13 books, journalist, she is the daughter of two Holocaust survivors, turns 73

Bob Jacob, editor of the Cleveland Jewish News, Columbus Jewish News and Akron Jewish News

Rodica Radian-Gordon, Israel's ambassador to Spain until 2024, turns 69

Leslie Dannin Rosenthal, past president of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest New Jersey

Ronald J. "Ron" Klein, partner in Holland & Knight's public policy group, he was previously a member of Congress (D-FL-22), turns 69

Jeffrey D. Klein, lobbyist, he was a member of the New York state Legislature: Assembly for 10 years and Senate for 14 years, turns 66

Robert E. Lapin, national president of the American Jewish Committee, he is a founder of Lapin & Landa, a Houston-based civil litigation firm, turns 66

Jeffrey Bergman, voice actor and impressionist who has voiced Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Sylvester the Cat and dozens of others, turns 66

Roman Pipko, U.S. ambassador to his native Estonia, he is the former president of NYC's Park East Day School, turns 66

Anthony Oliver “A.O.” Scott, critic at large for The New York Times Book Review, turns 60

Elissa Blair Slotkin, U.S. senator (D-MI), turns 50

Elie Jacobs, NYC-based founding partner at Purposeful Advisors

Yinon Azulai, member of the Knesset for the Shas party, turns 47

Rena Shapiro, VP of politics and public affairs at Altice and Optimum Media

H. Alan Scott, writer and comedian, his conversion from Mormon to Jew is the subject of a documentary, “Latter Day Jew”, turns 44

Morgan Deann Ortagus, senior policy advisor at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, turns 44

Sam Stein, managing editor of The Bulwark

Kimberly Ovitz, multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker,and fine art photographer, she is the daughter of CAA co-founder Michael Ovitz, turns 43

Aviva Farber Baumann, television and film actor, turns 42

Kayla Sokoloff, dance teacher at John Foster Dulles High School in Sugar Land, Texas

Saturday & Sunday birthdays will be posted on the web version — have a great weekend. See this weekend's birthdays →

You are receiving this email because rachel@ejewishphilanthropy.com signed up for updates from eJewishPhilanthropy.

Submit an op-ed   •   Send a tip   •   Advertise With Us   •   Subscription questions

© 2026 eJewishPhilanthropy • 228 Park Ave S • PMB 40660 • New York • NY 10003

Manage Email Preferences  •   View in Browser