Israeli Americans can be the glue that builds a stronger Jewish community

The Israeli-American Council’s Fourth Annual National Conference in Washington, D.C., held last month felt like a long-overdue family reunion. Enveloping warmth and a powerful sense of togetherness, the love for Israel was infectious, radiating to and from all the participants. In the corridors of the Washington Convention Center, teenagers spoke with unique pride about their hybrid Israeli-American identity, rooted in the idea that they are deeply connected to their home in America while maintaining a strong affinity to their Jewish homeland in Israel. Groups of Jewish-American and Israeli-American young professionals exchanged business cards and then headed to a packed dance floor, moving  Read More…

Milstein Meme Competition Launches Today

The Milstein Family Foundation will award cash prizes to meme creators who show the fun and funny side of pro-Israel activism by creating entertaining and shareable images. The Milstein Meme Competition will give a chance for hundreds of pro-Israel meme creators to show off their skills and win cash prizes. This contest is a fun and funny way for us to express our love and support for Israel. Our panelists are young people who are the foremost authorities in making and sharing memes. LOS ANGELES (PRWEB) NOVEMBER 28, 2017 The Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation began accepting submissions to its worldwide  Read More…

Ascending Israeli-American group seeks to be the ‘glue,’ not the ‘wedge,’ for US Jewry

As Jewish communal organizations throughout the U.S. struggle to maintain membership levels and hefty annual budgets, a rapidly growing group with the energy of a well-funded Israeli start-up is challenging the Jewish communal world and its relationship to the state of Israel. Earlier this month, the Israeli-American Council (IAC) hosted its fourth annual national conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center—the D.C. venue known well to many pro-Israel Jewish and Christian advocates for hosting the larger annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and Christians United for Israel (CUFI) conferences. While IAC’s 2,700 participants are dwarfed by the numbers  Read More…

A Dangerous Deceit

It seems that anti-Semitic views are increasingly being accepted in mainstream American political discourse. Anti-Semitism can currently be found among three different groups, two of which recently joined forces. The first is the radical Right, which almost everyone recognizes and denounces. Rooted in traditional Christian anti-Semitism, its legacy stretches from the Spanish Inquisition through the Nazis to the Ku Klux Klan. The second is radical Islam, which has harbored anti-Semitic beliefs as part of its traditional hatred of infidels, in particular, the Jews, for thousands of years. This hatred took on greater significance with Israel’s founding and as a result  Read More…

Understanding the unlikely radical alliances spreading antisemitism today

Radical Muslims are focused on destroying and delegitimizing Israel – the historic homeland of the Jewish People — and they fan the flames of antisemitism wherever they can. Vicious antisemitism has long been present on the radical Right. It has been growing also on the radical Left. And it’s a cornerstone of radical Muslim movements. Although these three sources of antisemitism in our world today come from very different traditions, they are increasingly sharing ideas and tactics, reinforcing a wave of hate, bigotry, and racism. In recent years, North America has joined Europe to witness a growing alliance between radical  Read More…

Here’s how to fix the Jewish community

Today, the collective strength of the Jewish people may be greater than at any other time in our history. We have an independent Jewish state with a booming economy and one of the world’s most powerful militaries. The American Jewish community has reached the heights of success in politics, business, arts and culture, and science, becoming perhaps the most influential Jewish diaspora community in history. Yet, despite our strength, the challenges facing global Jewry are growing and multifaceted—in some cases posing an existential danger to our future as a people. Anti-Semitism is rapidly rising on the right and the left.  Read More…

The Fight Against the New Anti-Semitism

The 20th century began with a series of pogroms targeting Jews that swept across Eastern Europe and Latin America, the most infamous of which was in Kishinev, Russia. A poisonous anti-Jewish campaign culminated on Easter 1903, as gangs of men, 10 to 20 apiece, stormed through the Jewish areas of the city armed with hatchets and knives. They went block to block and house to house, slaughtering every Jew and raping every woman in sight. Over the next two days they wrought a path of destruction that would be heard around the world, with 49 Jews murdered, thousands wounded and  Read More…

Three Secrets to Being an Effective Philanthropist

After decades of involvement with more than 100 non-profit organizations, I have learned that philanthropy is about much more than writing checks. In fact, I found that it is actually much harder to give away money as a philanthropist and obtain a high return on your investment than it was to make money as a real estate investor. There are a range of practices that you must employ to ensure that your philanthropic investments are making an impact. Here are three principles I have learned over the years about being an effective philanthropist. 1. Philanthropic work is a lifetime labor  Read More…

Boots on America’s Campuses

Over the past several years, the harassment and intimidation that the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) groups have brought to America’s college campuses have grown by leaps and bounds. For years, many worthy Jewish and pro-Israel organizations worked to counter this hate, but the problem has only seemed to grow worse. At UCLA, a Jewish student was almost prevented from joining the student government’s Judicial Board following accusations that her Jewish identity meant she had dual loyalties. At Stanford, a young Jewish woman running for the Student Senate was subjected to a barrage of hostility due to her open support  Read More…