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Good Wednesday morning! 

In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Jewish National Fund-USA raising $10 million since the outbreak of the American-Israeli war against Iran. We cover this week’s Leffell Foundation rabbinic conference in Florida and a security briefing for Jewish communal organizations ahead of Passover. We also recap last night’s “Get Your Phil” discussion on Israel-Diaspora relations in light of the Iran war. We feature an opinion piece by Alison Gardy encouraging Jewish communal institutions to host blood drives, and one by Emma Strongin about the inspiration for StrongerVoices, which features interviews and testimonials from teens who have experienced post-Oct. 7 antisemitism. Also in this issue: Jesse Brown, King Charles III and Bridget Griswold.

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In the nearly four weeks since the U.S. and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, Jewish National Fund-USA has raised $10 million to meet urgent and long-term needs in Israel, providing bomb shelters, fire trucks, resilience centers and civilian security equipment, the organization’s CEO, Russell Robinson, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Jay Deitcher yesterday.

Every few days since the war broke out on Feb. 28, the organization has held emergency briefings on Zoom featuring Israeli politicians, community leaders, civil society officials and high schoolers. Sessions have drawn increasingly large numbers, peaking at Tuesday’s event, which had 1,400 attendees. According to Robinson, the community is motivated to help and ready to mobilize. “All of our people activated, calling on their friends and getting them together,” he said.

The funds were raised from over 2,500 individual commitments — some big, some smaller. “Did we have a million-dollar gift? Yes,” Robinson said. “But did we have a lot of $10,000 and $25,000 [gifts]? Yes. We had a lot of $1,000 and $500 [gifts] as well.”

The $10 million is being spread across the “ecosystem” of “affiliates on the ground” in Israel, Robinson said, including Makom, HaShomer HaChadash and Adam V’Adama. The funds are being used to purchase bomb shelters, supplies for first responders and protective vests and helmets for park rangers. JNF is backing mentoring support for 1,120 children and adults with disabilities whose programs were closed because of the war, and JNF has ordered 55,000 packages from 162 small businesses in Israel’s North and South that are being delivered to lone and injured soldiers, supporting both the soldiers and the local businesses.

Read the full report here.

As 150 North American rabbis gathered at a luxury Palm Beach, Fla., resort this week for the third annual “Zionism: A New Conversation” conference, an initiative of the Leffell Foundation, several described the event as representing a pivotal shift from “defense to offense” on Israel-related issues. “Everyone here is proud to be a Zionist, but they’re being attacked in so many different places, either internally or externally, that it makes it so challenging. Here, people got a lot of tools, whether it’s educational tools or pragmatic, on how to say ‘I don’t want to be a defensive Zionist, I want to bring it out to the world in a positive way,’” Rabbi Samuel Klibanoff, who helped plan the gathering, told Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy. 

Owning our story: While “war in Israel” has been a theme of all three of these rabbinic conferences, Rabbi Brigitte Rosenberg, senior rabbi of the Reform United Hebrew Congregation in St. Louis, echoed that there was a “slight pivot” this year in “shifting to an offense,” especially during a speech by author Dara Horn. “It’s like, what do we need to do in our community, for ourselves? How are we training our kids? It’s not about Israel and war or antisemitism, it’s also about, how we are telling our own story?”

Read the full report here.

Matthew Kozma, under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, called on Tuesday for continued vigilance “given the threat that’s stemming from Iran, particularly in the Middle East, but also here at home,” in comments at a security briefing webinar hosted by the Secure Community Network, a leading Jewish security organization, ahead of the Passover holiday, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports. 

High alert: Kozma said that Americans should remain cautious of threats from “malicious actors, particularly ones encouraged by or empathetic to Iran,” as two upcoming events in the country — the 2026 FIFA World Cup and America’s 250th anniversary — bring an influx of visitors into the U.S. The briefing was held during what Michael Masters, CEO of SCN, described as “an elevated threat environment from Iran and its proxies,” ahead of the start of the Passover holiday next week.

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

Holiday planning: Israeli authorities are also warning that Iran is expected to try to carry out attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets around the world ahead of next week’s Passover festival…

Shifts in American foreign policy, different views on what constitutes an “existential threat” to their respective community and frustration with the Israeli government. All of these were offered on Tuesday night as possible causes for the distancing that some in Israel have reported feeling from their American Jewish peers during the current war with Iran, in a panel discussion, moderated by eJewishPhilanthropy Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, in the latest installment of “Get Your Phil”

Iranian interruption: The panel featured philanthropic advisor and former World Zionist Organization President Tova Dorfman, writer and activist Barak Sella, and Shalom Hartman Institute senior educator and academic Masua Sagiv. As if on cue, in the middle of the discussion on Israelis' experiences in the war, air raid sirens sounded in Tel Aviv, forcing Dorfman and Sella to rush to fortified shelters before eventually returning to share their final thoughts.

Watch the full episode here.

“Blood drives have a unique feature that most volunteer efforts do not: After donating, every donor must sit down for at least 15 minutes to recover. This pause is medically required, but at the blood drives I coordinate for American Friends of Magen David Adom in partnership with Blood Centers of America, we treat that time as an opportunity to connect,” writes Alison Gardy, director of external and partner relations at AFMDA, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Make an impact: “The United States continues to face a serious blood shortage. Our blood supply never fully recovered after the COVID-19 pandemic. … At a time of rising antisemitism, deep division around Israel and a persistent U.S. blood shortage, community blood drives are a simple yet powerful way to model Jewish values in action while strengthening the communities that host them. Synagogues, schools, JCCs and other community organizations should seize this opportunity to lead.” 

Read the full piece here.

“When my mother was 8 and living in the Former Soviet Union, her childhood depended on silence. Her mother secretly paid her teacher to hide her Jewish identity, simply so she could receive the same social and educational opportunities as everyone else. Silence was protection, and concealment reassured her family that they would be safe,” writes Emma Strongin, a member of the UJA-Federation of New York Jewish Teen Summit Advisory Council and the founder of StrongerVoices, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Paradigm shift: “Shortly after the Oct. 7 attacks, as I scrolled and determined which teachers had ‘Free Palestine’ banners on their profiles, my mother asked me something that left me uneasy: ‘Do your teachers know you’re Jewish?’ What I hadn't realized is that the question carried her childhood inside it; years of generational trauma filled her words as if they hadn't been spoken since. The generational paradigm struck and scared me. Instead of retreating, however, I was inspired and moved by it to do something my parents could have never imagined.”

Read the full piece here.

Intimidation and Alienation: In The Atlantic, Jesse Brown explores antisemitism in Canada, noting that Jews aren’t just experiencing acts of violence but also an increasing sense that they aren’t welcome or protected in academia and their lines of work. “I have a general sense that we’re witnessing a polite pogrom, that Jewish life in my country has forever changed, and that I can no longer take for granted that people like me are represented in Canada’s hospitals, schools, newsrooms, and legislatures. But I don’t know for sure. The data do not exist, and the institutions in question won’t collect them. Perhaps they consider it impolite to ask.” [TheAtlantic]

Lifestyles of the Rich: In The Wall Street Journal, Rachel Louise Ensign examines the growth in the number of ultrawealthy Americans and what it means for the economy. “The number of Americans worth tens of millions and hundreds of millions of dollars has boomed in the past few decades, thanks to a rising stock market, lucrative private investments and swelling valuations for small and midsize businesses. This growing class is now a huge force in the economy, driving the demand for everything from lavish hotel rooms to private jet travel.” [WSJ]

Beating Burnout: In Alliance magazine, Nikki Brown Booker discusses quality of (internal) life among nonprofit professions. “Traditional philanthropic frameworks have tended to value productivity over personal partnerships with the assumption that the internal experiences of nonprofit leaders are somehow separate from their work; how often the exact opposite is true! This is, however, something that the disability justice movement has long understood: how, and whether, we experience joy has impacts on all parts of our lives. It affects how we show up, work, and make meaning, and is fundamental to building connections. Luckily, the disability justice framework is one that all funders can learn from — especially those of us concerned with the long-term resilience of those leading change work…” [Alliance]

What We Learn: In Algemeiner, Samuel J. Abrams sees a teachable moment in the closure of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. “Too many institutions in recent years have confused relevance with purpose. In an effort to remain current, they have chased trends, embraced fashionable programming, and diluted the very identity that made them distinctive. In doing so, they have weakened the case for their own existence — both to the public and to their donors. … When an institution like this collapses in a wealthy and engaged community, it is rarely because no one cared. It is because no one felt ultimately responsible for ensuring that it endured. Not the board. Not the donors. Not the broader community. Everyone assumes someone else will step in. And no one does. That is the accountability failure. And it is correctable — if the community chooses to correct it.” [Algemeiner]

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British police announced today that they had arrested two men suspected of carrying out an arson attack in north London on four ambulances belonging to the Jewish Hatzolah emergency service…

The Community Security Trust, the main British Jewish group advising communal organizations on security issues, said that King Charles III accepted the group’s invitation to serve as the royal patron of the organization…

Officials in Antwerp, Belgium, arrested two teenage suspects in connection with the torching of a car that is being investigated as an antisemitic incident…

OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit that controls the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, announced plans yesterday to allocate $1 billion in grants over the next year to initiatives aimed at bringing AI to “all of humanity”; the organization also said it was looking for a new executive director…

CNBC examines a new bipartisan bill that would allow individual retirement account holders over the age of 70 ½ to make direct transfers from their accounts to donor-advised funds, instead of to charitable organizations, as the law currently requires…

A first-of-its kind leaderboard evaluating how major video game companies address antisemitism and extremism in online games was released on Wednesday by the Anti-Defamation League, Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports…

The New York Times reviews “Giant,” the play about author Roald Dahl that opened on Broadway earlier this week…

In The Times of Israel, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev President Daniel Chamovitz praises Cornell University President Michael Kotlikoff, who denounced a student assembly resolution calling on the administration to sever academic ties with the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology…

The century-old Middletown, N.J., estate built by Macy’s heir Herbert N. Straus was listed for $10 million…

Bridget Griswold was named the next CEO of the Sandberg Goldberg Bernthal Family Foundation and Sheryl Sandberg’s female empowerment nonprofit Lean In…

COURTESY

Fifty Israeli “lone soldiers” — troops whose parents don’t live in Israel or who are not supported financially by them — dance together last Friday at a lunch event in Tel Aviv’s Cantina restaurant, which was hosted by philanthropist and businessman Brandon Korff, in collaboration with the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center.

“For us, lone soldiers are superheroes. They are among the very best of our sons and daughters, who left everything behind and came to fight for the State of Israel,” Tzachi Dabush, the director of the Brandon Korff Foundation in Israel, said in a statement. “We are grateful for the opportunity to host them and thank the Michael Levin Lone Soldier Center for the partnership that made it possible to give these soldiers a bit of respite and bring a wide smile to their faces.”

ARTURO HOLMES/GETTY IMAGES

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