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Good Wednesday morning! 

In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we cover yesterday’s Israel Tennis and Education Centers Foundation women’s luncheon in Manhattan, and report on a new letter by Jewish and interfaith groups calling for an increase in the federal Nonprofit Security Grant Program in light of rising threats. We feature an opinion piece by Sanford Antignas sharing his observations as a senior lay leader with multiple U.S.-based organizations but who lives in Israel; Rabbi Gesa Ederberg reflects on her new role as president of the Conservative/Masorti movement’s Rabbinical Assembly; and Ron Halber zooms in on the role of local government in bolstering security measures in American Jewish communities. Also in this issue: John Arnold, Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz and Aaron Mendelsohn.

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It's a long way from the sun-baked tennis courts of the southern Israeli town of Arad to the sleek event space atop a Park Avenue building with a wall of windows looking out over the Midtown Manhattan skyline. 

But with the fighting between Israel and Iran on hiatus as the United States negotiates a ceasefire with the Islamic Republic, Leah Hershkovitz, the manager of the Israel Tennis and Education Centers’ Arad branch, attempted to bridge the gap yesterday between her community, which was hit by an Iranian ballistic missile during the war, and the uptown crowd that had gathered for the ITEC Foundation’s annual women’s luncheon, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim from the gathering.

Speaking at The Diagrid Club, Hershkovitz not only offered a window into the wartime experiences of her organization and broader community, but also of her own family, whose longtime home was destroyed in the March 21 attack, which injured 71 people. 

“All my life was there,” Hershkovitz told eJP at the event. “We had stories in my house. Stories, pictures, memories, a lot of memories for my children.”

After the missile struck Arad, Hershkovitz said, some children took a break from attending the tennis center that she manages, but many other parents and children reached out to her to see if there was anything they could do to help. “The tennis center is like a family,” she said.  

Israeli journalist Tamar Ish Shalom also spoke at the event, discussing her work as a news anchor after the Oct. 7 attacks and her subsequent temporary move to the United States. Asked what gives her optimism about the current situation in Israel, Ish Shalom praised Israeli civil society. 

“When you look at the political scene… in Israel, there’s a lot of polarization, and it's volatile,” she said. “But then you look at civil society in Israel… When we didn't see the state after Oct. 7, we did see people. We saw Israelis, and they shone with all of their glory. And it's continuing right now. So if there's something that brings me hope. It's the people.”

Read the full report here. 

Citing an "unprecedented and escalating threat environment facing religious communities and institutions" across the country, a coalition of Jewish groups, joined by organizations representing a range of other faiths, is urging Senate and House leaders to significantly expand funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to “up to $1 billion,” reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.

Who signed on: Jewish organizational signatories on the letter included the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Hillel International, the JCC Association of North America, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism, the Orthodox Union and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. They were joined by groups representing the Muslim, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox, Hindu, Evangelical, Seventh-day Adventist, Sikh and Catholic communities.

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

“I landed back in Israel two days before the latest war with Iran began, knowing full well that a confrontation was coming. But I did not return to Israel only as a resident. I also came back as a senior lay leader of the Jewish Federations of North America — and that not only shaped how I experience this war, but also how I understand its impact on Israeli society,” writes Sanford Antignas, chair of the board of United Israel Appeal and a member of the boards of the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

For instance: “The Jewish Agency’s Roaring Lion Fund for Victims of Terror is providing direct financial support to families who have lost loved ones, to those injured and to people whose homes have been destroyed. The JDC is working with municipalities to deliver humanitarian relief in locations hardest hit by missile strikes, ensuring that local leaders have the resources they need to respond in real time and look to the future. … As a lay leader, I have sat in meetings discussing these mechanisms in the abstract. But standing in a bombed-out neighborhood, watching those systems activate within hours, is something else entirely. It transforms theory into reality.”

Read the full piece here.

“When I first walked into the Jewish Theological Seminary, the center of learning for Conservative/Masorti Judaism, more than three decades ago, I was simply curious,” writes Rabbi Gesa Ederberg in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “I never imagined that this first step would eventually lead me to become president of the Conservative/Masorti Movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, a role I assumed last month, and to bring my own perspective as a German Jew to that work.”

The rabbi’s role: “Jewish communities today face challenges that transcend borders: rising antisemitism, difficult debates about Israel and Jewish identity and the rapid pace of technological and cultural change. … Across the world, our rabbis are helping their communities navigate questions that earlier generations could scarcely have imagined, while still grounding those conversations in the wisdom of Jewish tradition.”

Read the full piece here.

“During my 25 years leading the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, we have worked with policymakers at all levels of government to build programs that protect nonprofits at high risk of violence and terrorism,” writes CEO Ron Halber in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy. “In our experience, it is local governments that can stand up programs the fastest and have the most flexibility to surge emergency funding during times of increased threats.”

Never has the need been clearer: “The Secure Community Network documented more than 8,200 online threats against Jews in the first five days of the war with Iran, the most ever in a five-day span. Antisemitism is becoming increasingly normalized in both conservative and liberal circles. We don’t know where or when the next attack will come, but we know it’s coming. As communities across the country consider their response to a heightened security environment, they should keep the following principles in mind.”

Read the full piece here.

Future Planning: In the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Matthew Forti and Claire McGuinness warn that "big bets" by philanthropists must be a catalyst for permanent infrastructure, not a temporary windfall that ends in a fiscal cliff. They outline four strategic pathways to ensure long-term sustainability. “Big bet doers and their donors should ‘begin with the end in mind,’ ideally planning well before the expiry of the initial big bet for the pathways to be pursued to sustain impact thereafter. Design choices can undoubtedly be made to programming, infrastructure, and fundraising to increase the odds of a successful post-big bet period. And it is vital for donors to see themselves as true partners, providing the transparency for their own likelihood of re-upping, ideally along with advice and connections for the work to carry forward.” [SSIR]

Too Big to Connect: In Nonprofit Quarterly, Alvin Starks and Helen Wong argue that to protect democracy, institutional philanthropy must move away from its disconnected, top-down bureaucracy and instead invest in community-rooted intermediaries. “Sitting at the intersection of institutional philanthropy and grassroots movements, community-rooted philanthropic intermediaries make alignment possible, and by inviting simultaneously diverse opinions and experiences through collaborative positioning offer iterative possibilities to collectively imagine and create a pluralistic future. Whether the threat is authoritarianism, disinformation, polarization, or fraying democratic trust, this connective function is exactly what philanthropy must safeguard."” [NonprofitQuarterly]

Conflicting Values: In the Substack “Identity/Crisis,” the Shalom Hartman Institute's Yehuda Kurtzer responds to Ezra Klein’s calls to embrace far-left influencer Hasan Piker, calling it a betrayal of liberal values. "Liberals should commit to build pluralistic societies that include anti-pluralists up until the point where the anti-pluralists begin to destroy that very framework. … Klein is using the liberal principle of pluralism to try to argue that liberals need illiberals like Piker — illiberals who want to destroy liberalism — for the sake of our own political future. He is actually prioritizing the urgency of winning the next election over adherence to liberal principles, and in doing so is savaging those principles along the way." [Identity/Crisis]

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The New Israeli Shekel passed the threshold of NIS 3 per dollar today; the Israeli financial newspaper Calcalist examines the far-reaching implications of this unprecedented currency strength and its wider impact on the Israeli economy…

In a milestone for Israeli sports, Deni Avdija has become the first Israeli basketball player to secure an NBA playoff berth following a career-high 41-point, 12-assist, 7-rebound masterpiece to lead the Portland Trail Blazers into the postseason…

Speaking with Semafor, philanthropist John Arnold expressed deep concern regarding the growth of online prediction markets and sports betting, warning of their negative impact on the public…

Town & Country magazine examines the elite embrace of AI for education, uncovering a new digital gap where the ability to master these tools is reserved for the most well-resourced students…

The National Rifle Association debuted a new partnership with Lox and Loaded, an organization formed in the wake of the post-Oct. 7 rise in antisemitism…

The New York Times covers the recent influx of interest private equity funds have taken in bagel shops across the country…

Three years after its launch, the Holocaust Memorial Monument Database, a joint initiative between the University of Miami, Hebrew University and the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, has documented 3,000 sites, part of a push to catalog an estimated 10,000 memorials worldwide…

The Times of Israel spotlights how the Tel Aviv Museum of Art has moved its galleries into its basements and shelters, creating an unconventional exhibition space that highlights the intersection of fine art and wartime reality…

Inside Philanthropy examines the widening gap between philanthropic rhetoric and actual behavior, exploring why donors’ stated intentions regarding effectiveness often diverge from their practical actions…

The University of Pennsylvania requested a stay of a judge’s order requiring the school to turn over names of Jewish employees of the school to the Trump administration's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission…

The Harvard Crimson reports that the university has yet to release a report on antisemitism that was mandated by its January 2025 settlement with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law…

Dublin Mayor Ray McAdam apologized to the city’s Jewish community for a series of administrative and procedural errors around a failed effort to rename the city’s Herzog Park, which was named after former Israeli President Chaim Herzog, who was born in Belfast and raised in Dublin…

Days after U.K. authorities revoked Kanye West’s permission to enter the country for a now-canceled music festival over his past antisemitic remarks, French authorities are weighing a similar ban on the artist, who is set to perform in Marseille in June…

Hampshire College, the liberal-arts school that pioneered college-level Holocaust studies and helped launch the Yiddish Book Center, announced it will shutter at the end of the year following years of financial instability…

Temple Israel Ner Tamid in Mayfield Heights, Ohio, has donated 200 teddy bears to the children’s center at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., in response to the recent terror attack at the Detroit-area synagogue; this is the Ohio congregation’s latest donation of teddy bears, having previously sent them to communities affected by war, terror and natural disasters throughout the U.S., Israel and Ukraine… 

The Maryland-based Marlene and Stewart Greenebaum Family Foundation has gifted $5.5 million to the University of Maryland Greenebaum Comprehensive Cancer Center…

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has awarded a $70 million unrestricted gift to Meals on Wheels to help the nonprofit expand its delivery capacity and reduce wait-lists…

The Jewish animal advocacy group Shamayim, led by Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz, is expanding internationally, offering a $9,500 (£7,000) grant that will be divided among five U.K. synagogues that commit to a yearlong program exploring plant-based living and animal welfare…

Aaron Mendelsohn was named general counsel at the Jewish Theological Seminary...

Eugene “Gene” Draganosky was hired as interim CEO of York (Pa.) Jewish Community Center after the former CEO, Terri Travers, stepped down last month as the institution lost its childcare license... 

Rabbi Andrew Terkel, the former CEO of Be The Narrative, which was absorbed by Jewish Federations of North America in 2024, is joining the clergy team of Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis this upcoming Shabbat…

DOMINIKA ZARZYCKA/SOPA IMAGES/LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES

Representatives from the American Society for Holocaust Education and Remembrance and other groups march yesterday past the “Arbeit Macht Frei” gate at the Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland as part of the annual Yom HaShoah event. 

Dozens of Holocaust survivors participated in this year’s march, alongside survivors of recent antisemitic attacks.

MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES

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