Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) spoke yesterday to the Jewish Federations of North America’s board meeting about her recent trip to Israel and the other signatory countries to the Abraham Accords, addressing concerns surrounding the new Israeli government as well as prospects for regional peace, an individual in the room told Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod. JFNA’s board came together on Sunday and Monday to approve the federations’ policy agenda for the year, with about 150 board members in attendance, half of whom participated virtually.

On Israel: The New York senator, who visited Israel last month with members of the Abraham Accords Caucus, told JFNA that she does not agree with Israel’s proposed judicial reforms — which critics say would erode the separation of powers and the judiciary’s ability to act as a check on other parts of the government — but added that it was not her place to discuss Israel’s internal processes, the individual said. However, she said, “I can tell you when I met with Israeli civil society members and local leaders, they’re very worried. They were very worried that it would destroy the democracy of Israel, and that it would change the balance of powers that they believe Israel has always had.”

Peace prospects: Gillibrand echoed comments she has made publicly about the prospects for regional peace, saying that she has “never been more optimistic.” “I’ve never seen Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu have a path for peace in his mind before. In fact, every meeting I’ve had up until this one, he didn’t have one; he just said, ‘I can only protect my people,’” Gillibrand told the federations’ leadership. “But right now he has a vision about what it would look like, how it could be done, and what allies he needs right now to get that done. And that started with the Abraham Accords.” Gillibrand elaborated on opportunities she sees for progress for the Palestinians under the Abraham Accords, arguing, “We should ask that these Arab countries invest in the Palestinians,” because the Palestinians would accept the Arab nations’ aid even if they will not accept Israel’s help.

Campus conversation: Gillibrand touched on rising antisemitism on college campuses, noting, “If you are a college kid on a campus today and you are Jewish, there might be efforts to make sure you can’t be in student government and their efforts to make sure you don’t have a voice, their efforts to demean you and to diminish you, and for college kids that has a lot to handle.” She also more broadly addressed the “prolific and prevalent and wide-ranging” rise in antisemitism and reiterated her support for the nonprofit security grant program. The New York senator is up for reelection in 2024.

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Ayelet Shaked was once the darling of Israel’s right-wing, secular political camp. Rising to power alongside former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and serving first as minister of justice and, more recently, as minister of interior, the 46-year-old was a high-profile – and sometimes controversial – member of the country’s governments for the last seven years. Now Shaked, who failed to make it into the Knesset following November’s national election, is putting her skill set to use: explaining the chaotic and often theatrical world of Israeli politics to Diaspora Jews, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports.

Beyond the headlines: “Basically, I have been explaining that most of what is being said about matters of religion and state is just politicians looking to create headlines,” Shaked told JI, referring to sentiments expressed by some members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s new government that Israel needs to tighten Jewish immigration laws and reverse decisions to recognize the Reform movement’s conversions to Judaism. Speaking to JI from Boca Raton, Fla., where she was wrapping up a series of lectures to organizations including the Jewish National Fund and the Jewish Federation of Montreal, Shaked said she did not believe the government would really make any big changes in these areas, though contentious plans to overhaul the legal system would likely go ahead.

Strengthening ties: Post-politics for now, Shaked is gearing up to work in the business world – she was recently appointed as chairwoman of Kardan Real Estate, one of the largest such companies in Israel – and, she told JI, she also has high hopes of “conquering America, talking to American Jewish communities and explaining Israel, as a way to strengthen the relationship between Israel and the United States. When I was a minister, I also tried to strengthen the Israel-Diaspora relationship, but I did not have as much time to focus on it,” Shaked admitted. “Now I am delighted to work to strengthen ties; this is something that is very important to me.”

Above politics: “The relationship between Israel and U.S. is an alliance that rises above political interests,” she explained. “It does not really matter who is in the White House or who is the prime minister of Israel, the relationship between Israel and the U.S. is deeper than one government or another, and the fact there is a strong Jewish community in the U.S. undoubtedly stabilizes and strengthens that relationship.” Shaked said she recognized there is a lack of awareness in Israel about the diversity of Jewish communities around the world but pointed out that politicians must strive to educate themselves about the importance of Israel-Diaspora ties.

Safe haven: Among the points she said she raised during her recent series of presentations in the U.S. was a realization she reached not long after Russia invaded Ukraine nearly a year ago. “I had no end of conversations with the Ukrainian ambassador in Israel – he was always pushing for Israel to take in more non-Jews, saying that the conditions for refugees in Israel were the best,” recalled Shaked. “It was then I realized something amazing: During the Second World War, the Jews had nowhere to go, but now, they are the most privileged. They have a place to go that will give them citizenship, a passport, social welfare and everything.”

Read the full interview here.

Shahar Brukner was a student at the Harvard Kennedy School, getting his master’s degree in public policy analysis, when he started his own nonprofit, a fellowship that aimed to bring financial resources to Israeli students studying in the U.S. But in order to do that, Brukner had to raise the money. “Right from the beginning, there’s so many difficulties that fundraisers face in this world around basic questions,” Brukner told Melissa Weiss for eJewishPhilanthropy last week. “Like, ‘What funders care about what I’m doing? How could I get to know about them? How can I connect with them? Are there any other nonprofits that are doing what I’m doing? Maybe I can collaborate with them?’ Answering these questions took a lot of time. It was extremely hard and [there was] nothing [in terms of] really centralized data in one place.”

Origin story: Brukner, alongside co-founders Simon Dickson, a HKS classmate, and Tom Huberman, an alum of the IDF’s elite 8200 intelligence unit, set out to create a solution. What resulted was impala, a platform that serves as a database for publicly available data on millions of foundations and nonprofits. The platform scrapes details from the IRS 990 forms — mandatory paperwork for U.S.-based nonprofits — as well as the websites and annual reports of nonprofits and foundations.

Partnership perk: When it launches this week, more than 20,000 entities — all JFN members and their grantees, both Jewish and non-Jewish — will receive free access to impala’s premium edition for two years. Support for the project came from the Jim Joseph Foundation, the Glazer Foundation, DARE Foundation and the Jewish Funders Network’s board chair, Marcia Riklis, who collectively are providing $525,000 over two years. “With impala, we finally have visibility into the entire Jewish philanthropic sector and can better understand JFN’s place in it, reveal opportunities for collaboration and unite everyone — Jewish foundations and nonprofits — in one place,” Riklis said in a statement.

Read more here and subscribe to eJewishPhilanthropy’s Your Daily Phil newsletter here.

The novels of Philip Roth, the protean Jewish author who died in 2018 at the age of 85, have spawned so many mediocre film adaptations that a frustrated critic once called for a moratorium on using the author’s notoriously unforgiving oeuvre as a source to make movies. While episodic television has perhaps been recognized as a more obliging medium for interpreting Roth, his sexually transgressive and psychologically febrile works have, it seems, rarely if ever been tested in a major theatrical production. Next month, however, a new stage adaptation of one of Roth’s most acclaimed novels, Sabbath’s Theater, will make its U.S. debut at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, the city where he grew up and which informed much of his literary output, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Sneak peek: The play, announced earlier this month, is scheduled to premiere in a one-time showing that will coincide with Roth’s 90th birthday on March 19, as part of a broader, weekend-long celebration of the writer’s legacy called “Roth Unbound.” Billed in promotion materials as a “sneak preview,” the play remains “a work in progress” and is still “very much at the beginning stages,” the author and journalist Ariel Levy, who adapted Roth’s novel with the actor John Turturro, told JI in an email exchange on Monday where she revealed new details about the production.

Common ground: The creative pairing may seem unusual to those familiar with Levy, a Jewish staff writer for The New Yorker whose 2005 nonfiction debut, Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, was followed by a best-selling memoir, The Rules Do Not Apply, in 2017. Her magazine reporting has often focused on gender politics and other feminist issues that sit uneasily beside Roth’s corpus, which has been accused of depicting women in an uncharitable light. But Levy, 48, said that she and Turturro, who initiated the project, “were both fixated on the same elements of the novel,” pointing “above all else” to what she described as “the love story between” Mickey Sabbath, the titular protagonist, and Drenka Balich, his Croatian paramour. 

Artistic collaboration: Levy recalled that she was initially introduced to Turturro, who could not be reached for comment, when he asked one of her colleagues at The New Yorker, the theater critic Hilton Als, “for a suggestion.” The prospective collaborators “hit it off immediately,” Levy said, working on the adaptation “for about two years” in mostly virtual writing sessions “over the pandemic.” The process of “trying to condense Roth’s sprawling, brilliant novel into a play,” Levy quipped, was “sort of like cooking one of the world’s great soups down to a bouillon cube.” For his part, Turturro has described the colorful source material as “a raging, splendidly funny and profound journey on loss,” according to a press release. “Mickey Sabbath is a life force in its purest form.” 

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