From the Center for Effective Philanthropy (October 18, 2023)

“You know, there are moments in this life — and I mean this literally — when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world. The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend.  The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas — a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews.  This was an act of sheer evil.” – President Biden, Oct. 10, 2023

On Saturday Oct. 7, I woke up to several alerts on my phone. It took only a minute for the horror of the situation to start to sink in. Women raped. Babies murdered in their cribs. Seniors burned alive in their homes. More than one hundred people were kidnapped at gunpoint. Sheer terror.

My organization, the Jewish Funders Network (JFN), connects over 2,500 members who fund through a Jewish lens, even when their funding is both Jewish and secular. We have an office in Israel, eight staff, and close to 500 members there. Our members lead the philanthropic sector in many areas, from Arab-Israeli coexistence to climate change; from education to democracy. They are left and right, religious and secular, Arabs and Jews. Today, they are all united in grief and shock.

Read the full op-ed by Rabbi Rebecca W. Sirbu in the Center for Effective Philanthropy.