An emotional Judy Gross recently pleaded with thousands of Jewish community leaders to help free her husband from a prison in Cuba, marking a public shift in what has been, up to now, a strategy of quiet diplomacy on his behalf. “Let the Cuban government know that the Jewish community wants Alan home,” Gross implored…
The national umbrella organization for Jewish philanthropic federations has abolished its historic commitment to fund the Jewish community’s two largest overseas recipients by using a fixed longstanding formula. The move, taken by the Jewish Federations of North America at its annual General Assembly conference, will force the Jewish Agency for Israel and the American Jewish…
Leaders of federated Jewish philanthropies agree almost unanimously that younger, under-50 Jewish donors—even those already committed to giving to Jewish causes—have little interested in giving to Israel, reports Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev in a blog post from the General Assembly of Jewish federations, now meeting in Denver. There is a general unease about giving to Israel,…
The annual meeting of Jewish federations kicked off exactly one year to the day before the 2012 general elections. But politics seemed to be an unwelcome guest at the event. The 3,000-strong audience gave a tepid response to a call from top Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz for the Jewish community to speak out on behalf…
The national umbrella organization for Jewish federations has removed harsh critics of Israel from an online voting contest designed to identify “heroes” within the Jewish community. One of the excluded nominees, Jewish Voice for Peace Deputy Director Cecilie Surasky, was among the top 10 vote getters in the Jewish Community Heroes contest when Jewish Federations…
Harold Grinspoon, the Jewish philanthropist who founded the PJ Library — a program that distributes free Jewish children’s books to families across the country — invites 50 or 60 of his closest friends and philanthropic collaborators to go hiking with him in Aspen, Colo., each summer. For some reason, this time he has invited me…
When one of our favorite blogs, Jacob Berkman’s The Fundermentalist, over at JTA, throws down the gauntlet, we at The Sisterhood are happy to take it up. In his post announcing that the Jewish Federations of North America-run Jewish Community Heroes contest has selected its five finalists, he notes that they are all male. Nominees…
What do Jewish boxer Dmitriy Salita, ophthalmologist Stephen Kutner and Rabbi Celso Cukierkorn have in common? They are among 20 semifinalists in the second annual Jewish Community Heroes campaign. Organized by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the campaign celebrates men and women who selflessly and wholeheartedly devote their lives to helping others. Over…
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