Why I’m Optimistic About the Jewish Future in America

This article was originally published in The Jerusalem Post on February 27, 2018. Jewish history teaches us that it takes great leaders to overcome major challenges. At the turn of the century, Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, founder of Revisionist Zionism Ze’ev Jabotinsky, World Zionist Organization president Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first female prime minister Golda Meir, and Hadassah founder Henrietta Szold saw growing antisemitism and acted to lay the foundations for an independent Jewish state. During World War II, Mordechai Anielewicz led Jews to fight Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, at the same time that Peter Bergson (a disciple  Read More…

You Can Now Experience Israeli Tour Spots On Virtual Reality

If you haven’t had the opportunity to visit major Israeli tour spots, you can now experience some of them through virtual reality tours on the Virtually Israel 2.0 website. A project of the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation and the MERONA Leadership Foundation, Virtually Israel 2.0 features the following videos: Beaches Bible Land Museums Dead Sea Scrolls Independence Hall Jerusalem & the Dead Sea Sarona Market Startup Market Taglit Innovation Tel Aviv & Jaffa Tel Aviv Balloon Ride Tower of David Museum Philanthropist Adam Milstein told the Journal in a phone interview that the idea for virtual reality videos came about three  Read More…

Pride and Courage: Gifts for our Children in 2018

This month, we recounted the heroic story of the Maccabees, the Jewish rebel group that lived in the Land of Israel in the second century BCE, which makes clear that we must have pride, courage, and passion to fight for our survival and freedom as a people. During the time of the Maccabees, the Land of Israel was dominated by Greek armies. Many Jews, especially the cosmopolitan elite, sought to assimilate into the Greek culture as a road to political and economic power. The Maccabees – a small group of Jews determined to protect their Jewish identity and homeland –  Read More…

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…