Good Tuesday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the Melton Conference of Learning in Chicago. Also in today’s newsletter: Raoul Wallenberg, Amb. Tom Nides and Helen Kahan. We’ll start with an interview with Amy Spitalnick, the incoming CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs.
The Jewish Council for Public Affairs announced that Amy Spitalnick, who rose to national prominence with a successful multimillion-dollar lawsuit against neo-Nazis, will take the helm of the umbrella organization as it charts a new course following its recent pivot away from the Jewish Federations of North America, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross reports.
Spitalnick’s appointment was widely seen as an indication that the newly independent advocacy group would maintain a more progressive policy agenda as part of a restructuring strategy that it unveiled late last year.
Speaking to eJP, Spitalnick said she planned to focus on two areas in her new position: combating hate, discrimination and extremism, and “protecting and expanding democracy.”
“I think the two issues that are going to be at the core of this new chapter for JCPA are direct reflections of what I think the most urgent issues of the moment are for the Jewish community and for so many others. The first being protecting and expanding pluralistic, inclusive democracy,” she said. “And I think that that work will go hand in hand with the other core priority, which is fighting bigotry, hate, discrimination and extremism. And I think those two issues are inextricably linked.”
When JCPA distanced itself from JFNA, it did so with a slight cushion as it got on its feet, receiving a three-year grant from the UJA-Federation of New York, as well as significant gifts from JCPA Chair David Bohm and Lois Frank, the previous JCPA chair and a member of the restructuring team. In addition to any policy objectives, one of Spitalnick’s priorities going forward will also have to be securing funding to sustain JCPA.
Rori Picker-Neiss, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of St. Louis and a member of the committee that led the restructuring of JCPA, told eJP that she and her fellow JCRC heads are excited about Spitalnick’s appointment but that it remained to be seen how it would affect the future of the organization. “A lot of it is going to be really shaped by Amy in this new role,” Picker-Neiss told eJP. Citing private conversations and emails with directors of other JCRCs across the country, Picker-Neiss added: “I can just say that the JCRC heads are incredibly excited about the energy that she’s bringing. There’s enthusiasm mixed with curiosity.”
JCPA’s restructuring in December was met with criticism from conservative commentators, with Jonathan Tobin writing it off as “redundant” and “another left-wing group.”
Spitalnick told eJP that the need for coalition-building was both an end in itself and also a necessary means of ensuring the safety and representation of the Jewish community. “We as Jews know, in our kishkes [guts], that we are safest in a society that is inclusive and pluralistic in which people’s fundamental civil rights and human rights are protected,” she said.
Read the full story here.
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