In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we cover the opening of the USC Shoah Foundation’s new office in Washington last night. We report on Helmsley Charitable Trust’s $3 million donation to Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee, and on the first meeting of the congressional commission weighing whether the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History should join the Smithsonian Institution. We feature an opinion piece by Adina Mermelstein Konikoff about communal responsibility, education and the Haredi community in Israel and the U.S., and a piece by David Cygielman highlighting insights from the Jim Joseph Foundation’s Project Prism about Jewish engagement among young adults. Also in this issue: Seth J. Katzen, Georgia and Jesse Feldman and Karen Rivo.

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What We're Watching

This evening in Tel Aviv, eJewishPhilanthropy and Jewish Insider are hosting an elections panel at ANU — Museum of the Jewish People, in partnership with the museum and the Peoplehood Coalition. eJP’s Judah Ari Gross will moderate the panel, which is set to include candidates from nine parties, discussing their policies on world Jewry at a fraught moment in Israel-Diaspora ties. Register here. 

The Blue Card, a nonprofit supporting Holocaust survivors, is hosting its annual event this morning honoring New York-area survivors age 90 and older, giving them “mini makeovers” and party treats.

New York’s Central Synagogue is hosting IsraAid CEO Yotam Polizer in conversation with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl to discuss the humanitarian aid group’s expansion of its work in recent years to meet evolving needs.

What You Should Know

The USC Shoah Foundation inaugurated its newest office, in Washington, yesterday with a gala dinner featuring CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, reports Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy from the event. Speaking at the event, Shoah Foundation CEO Robert Williams said that “the American Jewish community has avoided the trials and travails of life in Europe” for much of its history, but “that is no longer the case.”

Jenna Leventhal, the foundation's COO, emphasized the ways in it has pivoted to respond to Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, including collecting survivor testimonies as well as changing its longer-term plans to address the new environment of rising antisemitism. “That sense of urgency is what brings us here tonight,” she said. “It’s also a part of what makes our presence in Washington so important. Washington brings us closer into contact with people making those consequential decisions, with governments, diplomacy, education, technology, journalism and across civil society.”

Read the full report →

News

EXCLUSIVE

In its continuing push to strengthen Israel’s North, the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust donated $3 million toward a new science building at the Tel-Hai University of Kiryat Shmona in the Galilee, the school announced exclusively to eJewishPhilanthropy's Justin Hayet. The building, expected to be completed in 2028, will be located on the Roadburg Campus of the northern Israeli university — previously known as Tel-Hai College — about 1.2 miles from the Lebanese border.

Concrete commitment: Strengthening the periphery has been a core Helmsley priority since the trust began giving in Israel in 2010, Helmsley trustee Sandor Frankel said. Frankel called Tel-Hai’s new status as Israel’s 11th university, and the only one north of Haifa, “a cornerstone in the country’s strategy” for the region’s recovery and growth.

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SMITHSONIAN STUDY

A congressionally created commission studying the potential transfer of the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia to the Smithsonian Institution held its first meeting on Tuesday, the start of a two-year process to produce recommendations for Congress and the Trump administration on whether to move forward with the merger, reports Marc Rod for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.

Combating ignorance: In an interview last week with JI, commission member and author Dara Horn said that “this is a time when there’s a new urgency to this topic,” given the “ignorance” about American Jewish history and American Jews today. “I am excited to be part of this process and also delighted that this is a possibility that Congress is taking seriously.”

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Opinion

A HIGHER STANDARD

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Adina Mermelstein Konikoff, executive director of YAFFED (Young Advocates for Fair Education), sees a discrepancy between American Jewry’s vocal support for Haredi integration in Israeli society, including participation in military service, and the lack of comparable outcry over poor standards for secular education at Haredi and Hasidic yeshivas in the U.S.

“These are not identical problems. Israel's obligations are not America's. Military service is not the equivalent of a secular education. But both raise the same fundamental question: What does a community owe its children, and what does it owe the society in which it lives?”

Read the full piece →

SURVEY SAYS

In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, David Cygielman, founder and CEO of Mem Global, identifies points of alignment between the findings of Project Prism, a study of Jewish young adults released last month by the Jim Joseph Foundation, and his organization’s approach to engaging that demographic.

“Peer-led spaces like Moishe House and others can open or even reopen that first, critical door to Jewish community by giving young adults an opportunity to connect in an environment that feels natural to them: a friend's home. We have to be careful not to over-institutionalize these spaces so they become so rigid and formal that they lose their home-based and welcoming feel.”

Read the full piece →

Worthy Reads

Trust First: In Association of Fundraising Professionals, Seth J. Katzen, the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Delaware, draws lessons from the Madoff crisis — which cost his then-employer, the Palm Beach federation, about $6 million in 2009 — and says trust has to be built before any emergency. “The memory of that challenging period remains vivid. But so do the lessons it taught me: trust matters, relationships endure and strong communities are built not during times of abundance, but during times of adversity.”

Archive Under Fire: In The Atlantic, Gal Beckerman visits Kyiv’s leaky library, which holds part of the folk-culture collection of S. An-sky, the Yiddish writer and revolutionary behind “The Dybbuk,” as the New York-based YIVO Institute for Jewish Research moves to digitize the papers and Russian strikes continue.“There was a terrible feeling of continuity, heading into Ukraine right now for this purpose. An‑sky was desperate to save all that was strange and beautiful about his people; Ukrainians have been dying for four years by the tens of thousands for largely the same reason.”

Conversion Therapy: In the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Joseph Strauss examines the creation of new anti-Zionist and non-Zionist institutions, including a deliberate push to attract Zionist funders. “Three left-wing Jewish donors — Liana Krupp, Deborah Sagner and Kathleen Peratis — spoke on Monday about the limited landscape of funding for Jewish anti-Zionist organizations. ‘If we don’t flip liberal Zionists we’re not going to grow, because that’s where the money is,’ Peratis said.”

Lean, Mean Nonprofit Machine: In The Times of Israel, Rabbi Daphne Lazar Price reflects on renewed debate about executive salaries, affirming people’s rights to liveable wages but noting that compensation is not always evenly distributed. “I once had a donor tell me how much they appreciated that the organization where I worked was so ‘lean.’ I appreciated the compliment. But I also wanted to tell them what lean sometimes looked like. It meant that when I took a donor to coffee or breakfast, I often paid for it out of my own pocket. … Sometimes ‘lean’ just means someone else is absorbing the cost.”

Community Comms

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Major Gifts

Georgia and Jesse Feldman pledged $3 million to the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts & Sciences to endow a Jewish studies professorship…

Transitions

Karen Rivo has been appointed chair of the North American board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies…

Word on the Street

Jewish Insider examines how the main Israeli political parties running in the Oct. 27 election are planning to improve and repair ties with the United States, particularly with Democrats…

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday rejected calls from his socialist allies that he force out NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, a rare pro-Israel figure in his administration and an outspoken voice on Jewish issues, Jewish Insider’s Will Bredderman reports…

Mark Levine, New York’s comptroller, told The New York Times that he would not be investing in Israel Bonds, despite saying he planned to do so on the campaign trail, maintaining that the decision was not political but based on “technical challenges” and “financial considerations”… 

A new survey from the Honan Strategy Group found that 56% of New York City Jewish voters say criticism of Israel’s government is often a cover for antisemitism, even as 85% reject calling such criticism inherently antisemitic…

Foundation for Jewish Camp is launching a new three-year, $1.8 million research project, known as Voices of Hope, focused on how camp “builds hope, resilience and responsibility in young Jews”; the project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the American Camp Association and the Jim Joseph Foundation…

The Samis Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle are urging Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, to join a new federal scholarship tax credit program that would keep local donations supporting Jewish day school families…

Inside Philanthropy examines why hedge fund billionaire Israel Englander’s public giving looks small beside a fortune Forbes puts near $30 billion…

Jewish community groups in the Bay Area released a joint statement expressing concern about the “growing normalization of antisemitic and hateful rhetoric in Berkeley in the discourse surrounding the upcoming election,” citing incidents including “a social media post by a local activist group using the term ‘zionazi’ to describe a former council member” which “received likes from several candidates for office”...

Actor Sydney Sweeney received the celebrity treatment on the season premiere of Israeli satire show “Eretz Nehederet,” with Israeli actress Mishel Pru playing her in a sketch that referenced rumors that Sweeney is converting to Judaism, her controversial “great jeans” campaign for American Eagle and her current Novig commercials…

New Jersey regulators are seeking a $1,000 penalty against the Kibitz Room, a deli in Cherry Hill (N.J.), for billing itself as Jewish without a disclaimer that its food isn’t kosher…

The Anti-Defamation League and Gratz College launched a free online course that teaches college administrators and faculty to recognize campus antisemitism and meet their legal obligations, reports Haley Cohen in Jewish Insider...

Photo of the Day

GERMAN FEDERAL PRESS OFFICE

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (left) meets with an American Jewish Committee delegation yesterday in Berlin that included AJC President Robert Lapin (center) and Jason Isaacson, the organization's chief policy and political affairs officer.

Birthdays

BRYAN BEDDER/GETTY IMAGES FOR NEW 42

Isaac Mizrahi, fashion designer, turns 65

Bernie S. Siegel, retired Yale professor and pediatric surgeon, he is the author of many books including Matzo Balls for Breakfast: And Other Memories of Growing Up Jewish, turns 94

Shula Marks, emeritus professor of history at the University of London, turns 88

Ralph Lauren, fashion designer and business executive, turns 87

Art Shamsky, former Major League Baseball player for the Reds, Mets, Cubs and Athletics, turns 85

Alan Blinder, economic professor at Princeton, he was former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve, co-founder and a vice chairman of the Promontory Interfinancial Network, turns 81

Ira Shapiro, international trade attorney who held senior posts in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, turns 79

Norman Ornstein, author, political scientist and emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, turns 78

Steven Richard Rothman, former member of Congress (D-NJ-9) where he served for 16 years until 2013, turns 74

Suzanne Bonamici, member of the U.S. House of Representatives (D-OR-1), turns 72

Gary Barnett, president and founder of Extell Development Company, turns 71

Aaron Kotler, president emeritus of Lakewood's Beth Medrash Govoha, the largest yeshiva in the U.S., turns 63

Jim Rome, sports radio host, his talk show is syndicated by Westwood One, turns 62

Sharon Nazarian, vice chair of the National Board of Directors at the Anti-Defamation League

Michael Feldman, founding partner and managing director at FGS (Finsbury Glover Hering), turns 58

Esther Panitch, only Jewish member of the Georgia House of Representatives, turns 55

Eli Lehrer, president and co-founder of the R Street Institute, a D.C.-based free-market think tank

Shira Ovide, AI reporter at The Washington Post

David Leichtman, senior director of global elections at Microsoft

Eve Lieberman, executive director of the Colorado office of economic development and international trade

Samantha Katz, creative director and curator, now serving as VP of programming and experience at Summit, turns 41

Chana Yemini, independent fundraising and nonprofit consultant

Ariela Barer, actor and singer, best known for playing the role of Gertrude “Gert” Yorkes in the Hulu original series “Runaways,” turns 28

Quinn Hughes, defenseman for the NHL's Minnesota Wild, he won the 2024 award as the NHL's best defenseman, turns 27

Benjamin Kapelushnik, entrepreneur and sneaker reseller, known as Benjamin Kickz or the Sneaker Don, turns 27

Marsha Grossman

Jason Epstein

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