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With Israel at war, what counts as a worthy Jewish cause?
(JTA) — Moving Traditions is a small Jewish organization with an unusual name and a mission that can be hard to describe on one foot. Working through synagogues, Hebrew schools and its own programs and curricula, it helps Jewish kids navigate their teen years in healthy, safe, appropriate and socially conscious ways.
When the Hamas attacks in Israel on Oct. 7 threw the Jewish world into crisis, Moving Traditions created curricula to help teachers and teens talk about the conflict. And its CEO, Shuli Karkowsky, ordered up a “worst-case scenario” plan in case some of her reliable funders decided to hold back on their support and direct more money to Israel.
“We need to be humble and realize that we are an organization that serves North American teams. And so I don’t think we can put ourselves out there as the people who are going to be solving the Middle East crisis,” she said earlier this week.
To her relief, at a time when the Jewish philanthropic community is mobilizing around the war, her funders said they are going to “make the pie bigger”— that is, continue supporting groups like hers and expanding their giving in Israel.
As they have during previous crises in Israel, American Jews are pouring dollars into Israel to support people displaced by the war, to bolster nonprofits whose employees are headed to the front and, in a newish twist, to defend both Israel in the court of public opinion and Jews abroad who are seeing an uptick in antisemitism.
Jewish Federations of North America has raised $638 million among its network of local Jewish community chests. UJA-Federation, the largest of these, has so far allocated more than $38 million for work on the ground in Israel. Israel Bonds said it sold more than $200 million worth of bonds in the week following the Hamas attacks.
Jewish nonprofit execs celebrate this outpouring, but are quietly anxious. As priorities shift to the defense of and support for Israel, what will happen to the bottom line of the schools, social services agencies, cultural centers and other Jewish institutions that don’t have an obvious Israel portfolio?
An adjacent question is one of discretion, even tact: With many nonprofits dependent on the end-of-the-year gifts that allow donors to claim tax benefits, should they go ahead with their own fundraising appeals and perhaps attach their “asks” to the current crisis?
“What irks me particularly is an emergency campaign now when they’re not related to the crisis,” said Andres Spokoiny, the president and CEO of the Jewish Funders Network, speaking generally. “If you’re a school that is not affected by the crisis, just tell the truth that despite the crisis, you need to continue operating, and that having a strong community means that institutions and organizations like yours need to be strong and healthy.”
Spokoiny, whose organization’s “How You Can Help” Israel page lists “trusted agencies and nonprofits,” has been recommending to the private foundations and philanthropists under his organization’s umbrella that they give “above and beyond,” supporting their traditional grantees as well as the emergency campaigns for Israel. “Otherwise,” he said, “you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.”
Hundreds gather for a pro-Israel rally in Philadelphia’s Independence Square, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, Oct. 16, 2023. (Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia)
Spokoiny also knows that the pot of funds allocated for Jewish giving is not bottomless. He is hoping the current crisis serves as a “wake-up call to the many Jewish donors that give, you know, token gifts to the Jewish community and huge gifts to their alma mater or to the hospital to give more to Jewish and Israeli causes.”
Barry Finestone, president and CEO of the Jim Joseph Foundation, recommended a similar approach in a recent essay in eJewish Philanthropy. Finestone prefers “yes, and” to “above and beyond,” and he also calls on Jewish donors to divert more of their secular giving to Jewish causes.
“Yes, we absolutely need to support Israel and Israelis. We need to contribute mightily to the multitude of needs Israel has,” he writes. “But unless philanthropy steps up in the U.S. as well, there is a genuine chance that much of the organizational structure we have spent generations building will be stretched to its limits.”
Normally, the San Francisco-based Jim Josephs Foundation funds Jewish education in the United States. (70 Faces Media, JTA’s parent company, has been a grantee.) In an interview, Finestone said he wrote the article partly in response to colleagues and friends who called him in recent weeks unclear where to send their donations.
“They ran the risk of being forgotten,” he said of the Jewish organizations that don’t directly serve Israel. “And please God when this is over, and we know there’s going to be a long tail both literally and psychologically, we’re going to turn back to our camps, and to our synagogues, and to our JCCs and we’ve got to make sure that they’re there, or else the fabric of Jewish life that we’ve built over the years has the potential to crumble.”
Yehuda Kurtzer, president of the Shalom Hartman Institute, says the outpouring for Israel has been inspiring, but also worries that the shift toward what he calls, in a Facebook post, “defensive, protective, and supportive” causes will come at the expense of “foundational” and “constructive” philanthropy.
Foundational giving, he said in an interview, is about “keeping the lights on in the synagogues and Jewish institutions that do the core work of Jewish life. Deeply unsexy.”
As an example, he points to the flood of giving that is expected in response to the pro-Palestinian and antisemitic activism on college campuses. “Jewish students feel vulnerable on college campuses, so dollars are going to go to, quote, unquote, fighting antisemitism on campus,” said Kurtzer. “But there’s another set of dollars that Hillels need right now: They have record turnout for students coming to Shabbat dinner over the past month. They’re looking for foundational dollars so they can support [that] or provide counseling services, whatever students need.”
Constructive giving, meanwhile, is about developing new ideas. “What would be the next major play for college students,” asks Kurtzer, “that can help them build resilience and knowledge and relationships and all of the stuff that might grow out of a moment of crisis like this?”
Past crises have shaped Jewish priorities for generations. In response to the Six-Day War in 1967, American Jews donated more than $100 million — close to $1 billion in today’s dollars — in a little over two weeks. Six years later, when the Yom Kippur War punctured Israel’s aura of invulnerability, American Jews contributed $700 million in emergency aid, or $6.4 billion in today’s money. Both wars also cemented Israel as a central component of American Jewish identity, politics and philanthropy.
At the time, however, Israel was still viewed as a developing country, the historian Lila Corwin Berman points out. “For quite a while, Israel has been economically a fairly well-to-do nation and hasn’t needed American Jewish dollars in the same sort of fundamental way,” said Corwin Berman, the chair of American Jewish History at Temple University. As Israel prospered and the military threats against it appeared to recede, donors’ priorities shifted to the American Jewish “intermarriage crisis,” which led to the creation of the Birthright trips for young people and a push for affordable Jewish day schooling.
UJA-Federation of New York led a rally in support of Israel and calling for the release of Israeli hostages, Manhattan, Nov. 6, 2023. (Luke Tress)
Corwin Berman acknowledged that Israelis still have genuine needs — for example, those who lost their homes and loved ones in the Oct. 7 attacks. But she notes that money going into less material needs — like the fight against antisemitism — will ultimately shape Jewish priorities, perhaps in unexpected or unwelcome ways. Some on the Jewish left have already complained that many groups fighting antisemitism have a right-wing agenda, while others worry that too many groups are fighting the same fight.
“The concern that I have about putting lots and lots of money into this fight against antisemitism is that it might develop a very, very blunt set of tools to use,” said Corwin Berman, who has written a critique of what she calls the “American Jewish Philanthropic Complex.” “I would say the tools at this point lag well behind what would be required to deal with an extraordinarily complex phenomenon.”
UJA-Federation, for example, is allocating $600,000 to responding to antisemitism on campus, normally a sizable allocation if only a fraction of the money raised for the emergency campaign. Mark Charendoff, the president of the Maimonides Fund, said the board of his grantmaking organization is also focusing on fighting antisemitism, along with what he calls the “internal refugee crisis” — Israelis displaced and traumatized by the war — and “strategic communications,” or advocating for Israel to politicians and the public.
Charendoff said the Maimonides board does not intend to cut back on any of its current grant-making, which supports education and issues-oriented programs in North America and Israel, like Hadar Institute for Jewish learning, an L.A.-based organization that encourages Jewish filmmaking and the fund’s own journal of ideas, Sapir. But that they do intend to focus on “anything that we can do to respond to the current crisis. We should be looking for those options on both sides of the ocean. And this would be over and above our current budget,” he said.
And yet he knows that pivoting to new priorities can come at a cost in attention to other needs.
“Human beings only have so much bandwidth,” he said. “And on both sides of the ocean, our staff are single-mindedly focused on the current crisis, obviously. Which means that we’re not focused on new opportunities, new ways of engaging in the elements of our portfolio that are not related to or not affected by the war.”
Karkowsky, at Moving Traditions, said her organization doesn’t intend to do significant fundraising around the emergency in Israel, but that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer to a Jewish world in crisis.
“I do think there’s an enormous need for work with North American Jewish teens right now who feel confused and lonely,” she said. “They’re not sure what their political opinions are, or they do and they feel abandoned by their friends, or they do and they disagree really strongly with their parents who are coming back and saying, ‘How do I connect with my kid who’s saying things I really don’t agree with?’ So I do think there’s a small role for us to play as part of the work we would be doing anyway.”
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The post With Israel at war, what counts as a worthy Jewish cause? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israeli Foreign Minister Says Not Ruling Out Diplomacy to Stop Iran Nuclear Weapon
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar attends a joint press conference with Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani (not pictured), in Rome, Italy, Jan. 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
Israel is not ruling out a diplomatic path to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Thursday, adding that there were signs that there could be indirect talks between Tehran and the United States.
“We don’t hold discussions with the Iranians, as you know, but they made it clear they are ready to an indirect negotiations with the US, and I will not be surprised if such negotiations will start.”
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, but Israel, the US, and several European countries have argued there is no civilian-use justification for the Iranian regime’s enriching large amounts of uranium to near weapons-grade levels.
The post Israeli Foreign Minister Says Not Ruling Out Diplomacy to Stop Iran Nuclear Weapon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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This Book on the Jewish Connection to Israel Is a Must Read
An aerial view of the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
Ben M. Freeman’s The Jews: An Indigenous People deserves a spot on every Jewish person’s bookshelf, but especially Jews engaged in fighting the war in defense of Israel on campuses and elsewhere.
As the latest installment in his Jewish Pride trilogy, this book builds upon his previous explorations of Jewish identity and internalized anti-Jewishness, presenting a compelling argument for Jewish indigeneity to the Land of Israel — stressing this concept not only as essential to rebutting charges that Israel is a “settler-colonial” endeavor, but also as essential to Jewish identity and self-understanding.
The book is not only a historical analysis, but a call to action for Jews to reclaim their indigenous status with pride and conviction.
Freeman establishes his central thesis at the start: Jews are an indigenous people of the Land of Israel, and systematically dismantles the misconceptions that frame Jews solely as a religious group or as a people defined by exile and victimhood. Instead, he presents them as a distinct ethnonational group whose cultural, spiritual, and historical roots are deeply embedded in their ancestral homeland.
Importantly, his approach aligns with the framework actually used by global indigenous movements everywhere else, which assert indigeneity based on historical continuity, cultural persistence, and connection to the land, among other factors. Without the double standards that are all too frequently applied to the Jews, the case for Jewish indigeneity is actually quite cut and dry.
In particular, Freeman dedicates significant attention to the United Nations’ criteria for indigeneity, demonstrating how Jews meet these standards nearly perfectly. I say “nearly” because of the seven key criteria, one does fail to apply — namely the criterion that the “indigenous” people must be a minority in that land. But, as he rightly points out, this criterion is absurd: should an indigenous people who manage to reclaim their land suddenly no longer count as indigenous?
One wonders — although the book does not address this — if that criterion was adopted specifically to exclude Jewish indigeneity to the Land of Israel.
Freeman backs up his argument with historical discussions that are both thorough and accessible. He takes the reader on a journey through Jewish history, from the early origins of the Israelites in the land that would become Israel, through the ancient Jewish kingdoms, the destruction of the Second Temple, and the subsequent diasporic experiences. His discussion of the Hasmonean period and the Bar Kokhba revolt highlights the Jews’ continuous struggle to maintain sovereignty over their homeland. This history directly refutes the Anti-Zionists’ claim that Jewish connection to Israel is a modern political construct rather than an intrinsic and ancient reality.
And this isn’t just a history book. Freeman demonstrates how the denial of Jewish indigeneity fuels contemporary Jew-hate. He critiques the ways in which colonial frameworks have been misapplied to Israel and Zionism, showing how anti-Zionist rhetoric relies on distortions of Jewish history. He argues that rejecting Jewish indigeneity is not only intellectually dishonest, but also serves to weaken Jewish identity and agency.
Through this analysis, he makes a compelling case that reclaiming Jewish indigeneity is an act of empowerment and resistance against anti-Jewish erasure. This is one of the book’s most powerful contributions: it does not simply present historical facts, but actively seeks to reshape Jewish consciousness and self-perception.
Freeman’s writing is both scholarly and deeply personal. He weaves personal anecdotes and reflections into the broader historical and political discussion, grounding the text in a lived Jewish experience. Most originally (and refreshingly), he closes the book with a half-dozen personal interviews of people with quite varied Jewish identities, ultimately reinforcing his main theoretical points. The book’s balance of scholarship and emotional resonance means it has something to offer to scholars and laypersons alike. It fills a crucial gap in Jewish discourse, providing Jews with the language and framework to articulate their identity in a world that often seeks to erase or distort it.
At a time when Jewish history and rights are under increasing scrutiny and attack, The Jews: An Indigenous People offers a powerful and necessary response. Every Jew should read it, and every Jewish university student should have it in their toolkit.
Andrew Pessin is a philosophy professor and author, most recently, of Israel Breathes, World Condemns: The Trajectory of Campus Antisemitism to October 7, and the Aftermath. More information about him and his work is available at www.andrewpessin.com.
The post This Book on the Jewish Connection to Israel Is a Must Read first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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How the Red Cross Is Facilitating Palestinian ‘Pay-for-Slay’
Palestinian terrorists and members of the Red Cross gather near vehicles on the day Hamas hands over deceased hostages Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, seized during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, to the Red Cross, as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The International Committee of the Red Cross continues to facilitate rewards to imprisoned Palestinian terrorists, thus playing a central role in providing an “economic incentive” for terrorism.
Last week, the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs alerted families of Palestinian terrorist prisoners about the need to obtain Red Cross documentation to prove the terrorists’ eligibility for Pay-for-Slay salaries.
What is shocking is that when the terrorists’ families approach the Red Cross for the document, the Red Cross knows that the sole purpose of this document is to enable the terrorists to receive their terror rewards. And yet the Red Cross cooperates.
The following is the announcement that the Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs posted on its Facebook page:
Posted text: “The period of financial aid for the prisoners [i.e., terrorists] whose names appear below ends in March 2025.
The families of the detainees among them must bring a document from the [Red] Cross or the most recent court session for those who have not been issued a Red Cross document.
As for the administrative detainees, they must bring the administrative extension together with the [Red] Cross document, if it was issued.
This is [to be done] by April 5, 2025 at the latest.
[PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs, Facebook page, March 20, 2025]
Over a year ago, Palestinian Media Watch exposed that PLO Prisoners’ Affairs Commission Director Qadura Fares said that the Red Cross document is “the document that we established in our [prisoners’ law] as a main document [to confirm salary eligibility]” [Official PA TV, January 31, 2024].
Since the Red Cross plays such a central role for the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its terrorists, the Red Cross has great leverage. It could certainly condition its assistance to the PA’s terrorist prisoners on having the PA/Hamas permit it to visit the Israeli hostages. This should be a fundamental Red Cross demand and condition to the PA, as well as a basic demand by Israel to the Red Cross.
Itamar Marcus is Palestinian Media Watch (PMW)’s Founder and Director. Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
The post How the Red Cross Is Facilitating Palestinian ‘Pay-for-Slay’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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