Good Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a new effort to unionize employees of Mazon: A Jewish Response to Hunger, and feature an opinion piece from Stuart Himmelfarb, David Elcott and Rabbi Laura Geller. We’ll start with Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to Congress.
Speaking before a joint session of Congress yesterday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog made an impassioned argument in defense of Israel’s “vibrant democracy” at a time that internal divisions at home and left-wing criticism of Israel in Congress threatened to overshadow his speech, reports Gabby Deutch for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
Herzog’s speech was peppered with statements about the strength and importance of the U.S.-Israel partnership, earning bipartisan standing ovations throughout. But at its core, the address was an assertion of Israel’s liberal and democratic values, with lines that appealed to both pro-democracy protesters back home and progressive lawmakers in the U.S. “The intense debate going on back home, even as we speak, is the clearest tribute to the fortitude of Israel’s democracy,” said Herzog, whose 41-minute speech garnered approximately 30 standing ovations.
For Jewish Americans, the several hundred seats in the gallery of the House chamber were the hottest ticket in town this week.
Herzog also highlighted the legacy of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, whose daughter, Susannah Heschel, was invited by the president to the speech, and his role in the civil rights movement. “After escaping from the Holocaust, Rabbi Heschel publicly advocated interfaith dialogue. He fought for civil liberties in America and marched alongside Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, in March of 1965,” Herzog said.
The guest list also included a diverse array of American Jewish leaders — among them the top Reform, Conservative and Orthodox rabbis, and the leaders of the Jewish Federations of North America, AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Agency for Israel.
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidentsof Major American Jewish Organizations, told eJP that he had met with Herzog at the Capitol and would meet with him again today, as the president travels to New York for meetings at the United Nations and for a reception with UJA-Federation of New York.
Read the full story here and sign up for Jewish Insider’s Daily Kickoff here.
Follow eJewishPhilanthropy’s Haley Cohen for updates from Herzog’s New York visit today.
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