In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we examine newly released Jewish Federations of North America’s fundraising data showing an increase in donors, and report on the pending sales of five of the Shabsels brothers’ camps. We feature an opinion piece by Rachel Saifer rallying to keep Ramah Day Camp Philadelphia from closing after the 2026 season, and a piece by Chanie and Rabbi Peretz Chein about helping college students become not merely consumers of Jewish experiences prepared for them by others but owners of their own. Also in this issue: Ron Dermer, Judit Polgar and Efrat Bocher.

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What We're Watching

Tzohar is hosting its Annual Summer Conference today at the Expo Tel Aviv, with speakers including Eric Goldstein, the outgoing CEO of UJA-Federation of New York; Shlomit Mali, the CEO of AMI; and Tzohar CEO Rabbi David Stav. If you’re there, say hi to eJP’s Judah Ari Gross!

In New York, Jewish Women International is hosting a daylong workshop series focused on Jewish women in the workplace.

More than a dozen Jewish and pro-Israel groups, including the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, the Israeli-American Council, the Jewish Federations of North America, Christians United for Israel and Columbia (S.C.) Jewish Federation are hosting a virtual tribute to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tonight ahead of his funeral next week.

This evening in Tel Aviv, the Hashiloach quarterly journal is hosting an event at the Center for Israeli Freedom on the question of “Where is American Jewry heading?” featuring Hashiloach Editor Sagi Barmak, Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, Hartman Institute faculty member Masua Sagiv and Rabbi Daniel Gordis. 

What You Should Know

A QUICK WORD FROM eJP'S NIRA DAYANIM

Nearly three years after the Oct. 7 terror attacks triggered a wave of emergency giving to Jewish causes, Jewish Federations of North America officials say that has transformed into a lasting growth in their donor base, bucking both broader trends and the organization’s own trajectory.

As Jewish philanthropy — and philanthropy in general — is defined by more and more money being given by fewer and fewer big donors, JFNA said that it saw a 2.7% increase in donors to local Jewish federations between 2023 and 2025, bringing the total to around 290,000 donors. Prior to Oct. 7, 2023, JFNA had been seeing a “slow decline,” both in the number of donors and the number of dollars raised, David Heller, JFNA’s outgoing national campaign chair, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

“If you work in Jewish communal fundraising, 2.7% is pretty big. When you're talking about the overall number that we're talking about, it's a pretty incredible trend,” Heller said.

Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ →

News

GOING, GOING, ALMOST GONE

As more than two dozen summer camps head to auction after their owners declared bankruptcy, a vision of their future is forming, with some camps being purchased by their current operators, one by a nonprofit — and another by a famous media mogul, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who aims to purchase the camp his children attended, Mohawk Day Camp in Westchester County, N.Y., reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher.

Auction block: The bids that have come in are so-called “stalking horse” bids, meaning they set the floor for where auctions begin. The final sales are set for July 28. Insiders tell eJP that many other nonprofit entities are set to bid on the camps.

Read the full report →

Opinion

NOT SO FAST

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rachel Saifer, chief operating officer of Penn Hillel, responds to the recent announcement of Ramah Day Camp Philadelphia’s impending closure after this summer (her two sons have been involved with the camp, first as campers and then as counselors, since 2009).

“Tell us what the financial gap is. Tell us how many additional campers are needed. Tell us what benchmarks must be met to keep the camp open. Give us a goal, and give us the opportunity to reach it. This should not become a story of decline. It should become a story of a community that refused to let an institution disappear.”

Read the full piece →

FROM BORROWERS TO OWNERS

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, the founders and longtime leaders of Chabad at Brandeis, Rabbi Peretz and Chanie Chein, draw from the writings of developmental psychologist Robert Kegan and the Chassidic framework of “avoda pnimis” — literally “internal work,” or as the Cheins have dubbed it, “insourcing” — to answer the question: What kind of Jewish experience during one’s college years informs the years and decades beyond it?

“Kegan's research on adult development describes the move from a ‘socialized mind,’ an identity held together by the expectations and frameworks of the surrounding group, to a ‘self-authoring mind,’ in which a person steps back from those frameworks and deliberately makes them their own. … What if we started thinking of ourselves not as educators of texts and ideas alone, but of something deeper: the art and skill of self-authorship itself?”

Read the full piece →

Worthy Reads

From Ruin to Rebuilding: In the Times of Israel, Yad La'isha's Pnina Omer draws on Tisha B'Av to argue that just as the Temple's destruction opened the way to renewal, freeing an agunah (a woman whose husband refuses to grant her a divorce) from an abusive marriage can be the first step toward safety and a life rebuilt. “Because sometimes, what appears to be destruction is, in truth, the beginning of rebuilding.”

Trust the Village: In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, organizer Ashley Fairbanks contends that in a crisis, communities can identify and meet their own needs faster than the foundations meant to help them — and she urges funders to route resources directly to the people closest to the harm. “Philanthropy can help till the soil. It can plant seeds... Or, to put it less delicately: You can put the money on the table, trust your community partners, and watch what happens when you step back. Not to withdraw, but to make space for the people who are already carrying the work.” 

Community Comms

Applications close August 3! Spertus Institute offers the Leadership Certificate in Combating
Antisemitism in two cohorts this fall for both professionals and board members in the Jewish
community, to promote strategic engagement and immediate application. Discounts are
available for senior professional/Board member pairs! Learn more and apply by August 3.

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

Major Gifts

Israeli renewable energy company Energix will invest NIS 50 million ($16.40 million) over five years to build an energy-tech innovation center and industrial-scale grid-testing lab at Tel Aviv University…

Jewish Nevada has approved roughly $1.6 million in funding from its Annual Campaign with recipients including Friendship Circle of Las Vegas, Jewish Family Service Agency, Chabad Southwest Las Vegas, Yeshiva Day School of Las Vegas, the Jewish Agency for Israel and the Israeli-American Council…

Transitions

Israel’s former Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer is returning to JINSA to serve as its distinguished fellow at its Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy…

Israel Friends has hired Matt Levin as its national director…

Michael Belinsky has stepped into a role at the OpenAI Foundation to build out its civil society and philanthropy work…

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem has named former Intel vice president Yishai Fraenkel as its new vice president for advancement and external relations…

The Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Hartford named Ron Cipriano and Eric Zachs to its board of trustees…

Word on the Street

Testifying before Australia's Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, local Jewish day school and synagogue leaders urged the Australian government to allocate more funding toward the soaring security costs burdening Jewish organizations since the Oct. 7 terror attacks…

OpenAI is reportedly starting a business development operation in Israel, having hired a senior Israeli executive from Amazon Web Services to lead the effort to develop relationships in the Israeli high-tech sector…

The New York Times examines the impact that the Trump administration’s crackdowns on immigration are having on elder care facilities… 

Mark Zuckerberg overtook Michael Dell as the fifth wealthiest person after shares of Dell stock dropped 3.3% yesterday… 

In an interview with the Pittsburgh Jewish Chronicle, New Jewish Healthcare Foundation new president and CEO, Danny Rosen, cautions that federal cuts to healthcare and research funding have made the foundation's mission more essential than ever…

More than 1,000 British Jews, including philanthropist Dame Vivian Duffield as well as 22 rabbis, signed a letter urging U.K. ministers to ban trade with West Bank settlements…

Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgar turned down Hungarian Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s offer to serve as the country’s interim president, saying she felt she lacked “the strength to take on the historic responsibility of uniting a divided nation” in the post-Viktor Orbán era…

Photo of the Day

EFRAT BOCHER/ISRAEL ANTIQUITIES AUTHORITY

Recently uncovered charred wooden beams from a building burned by the Babylonians during the destruction of the First Temple in Jerusalem, which were unveiled yesterday by the Israel Antiquities Authority.

The announcement comes ahead of the Tisha B’Av fast day, which mourns the destruction of the two temples, among other tragedies that have befallen the Jewish People. 

“It appears that these beams, which seem to have been used for the walls of an internal courtyard of a structure in the time of the First Temple, which collapsed during the destruction to the floor of the structure,” Efrat Bocher, the director of the archaeological dig, said in a statement. “We estimate that the plaster that covered the walls of the structure melted during the fire, covered the charred wooden beams, and that’s what helped preserve them.”

Birthdays

MICHAEL TULLBERG/GETTY IMAGES

Jon Lovitz, comedian and actor, best known for his five seasons on "Saturday Night Live" ending in 1990, turns 69

Henry Dean Ostberg, president at Admar Group, turns 98

Martin Bandier, retired CEO of Sony/ATV, a large music publishing firm, he is a member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, turns 85

Shlomo Havlin, professor in the Physics Department at Bar-Ilan University, he won the Israel Prize in 2018, turns 84

Robert Shrum, director of the Center for the Political Future at USC, turns 83

Benjamin Brafman, criminal defense attorney, known for representing many politicians, celebrities and organized crime defendants, turns 78

Susan Veronica Kramer, former member of the U.K.'s House of Commons, now in the House of Lords, Baroness, turns 76

Sanford "Sandy" Jay Grossman, chairman and CEO at Quantitative Financial Strategies, turns 73

Shonni Joy Silverberg, endocrinologist and professor at Columbia University's medical school, she is an honorary president of NYC's Central Synagogue

Jane Carol Ginsburg, professor at Columbia Law School and daughter of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, turns 71

Irene Ostrovsky, Brooklyn resident

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, former chief rabbi of Moscow, his opposition to the Ukraine war prompted him to leave Russia, turns 63

Eric Matthew Simonoff, literary agent at the William Morris Endeavor book department, turns 59

Alysia Reiner, actor and producer, turns 56

Sara Seager, professor of astronomy at MIT and winner of a 2013 MacArthur Genius Award, turns 55

Alexandre Herchcovitch, Brazilian fashion designer best known for avant-garde designs and eclectic prints, turns 55

Michael G. Rubin, CEO of Fanatics, licensed sports merchandise and digital sports platform, turns 54

Raphael "Robbie" Diamond, founder, president and CEO of Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE) and the Electrification Coalition

Rabbi Yoel Gold, rabbi of Congregation Bais Naftali in Los Angeles, his YouTube channel has over 4.6 million views

Veronica Belmont, online media personality and director of product management at Electronic Arts (EA) in British Columbia, turns 44

Rabbi Liz P.G. Hirsch, CEO of Women of Reform Judaism since 2023

Aniko Gomory-Pink, clinical social worker

Chloé Simone Valdary, entrepreneur and political activist, she came to prominence as an African American pro-Israel student activist at the University of New Orleans, turns 33

Zachary A. Marshall, policy advisor at Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck

Rachel Elizabeth Nieves, senior recruiter at Tines

Elias Cohen, attorney in Madrid and secretary general of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain until 2021

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