Jewish Nonprofits Fear Pressure From Funders — and Young Supporters

A religious school director put on probation after parents spotted her at a protest. Millions in philanthropic dollars yanked from college campuses. A 125-year-old nonprofit kicked out of the association it cofounded for rallying for a ceasefire.

These are just a handful of the tensions that have erupted on U.S. soil during the first month of the Israel-Hamas War. If disagreement over Israeli policy once bubbled under the surface, Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7 and Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza have broken open fierce debate in the American Jewish world, sparking tough conversations between mothers and daughters, grantees and foundations, and rabbis and synagogue trustees.

That is, if those in disagreement are able to have those conversations at all. Amid rumors of retribution from powerful donors and a growing generational divide, many fear the consequences of speaking out about Israel’s military response or the treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, say Jewish nonprofit leaders.

There’s still one thing that almost everyone agrees on: Things will never be the same.

“October 7 is a seismic change in the Jewish people,” said Jeremy Burton, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, which expelled the Boston Workers Circle, a longtime member, for co-sponsoring an October rally with Jewish Voice for Peace, an advocacy group that is explicitly anti-Zionist or opposed to the ideology behind the creation of Israel.

“Fractures that we knew were there have clearly widened,” he said. “We just happened to be one of the first places where that crack became a schism, but I don’t think it’s the last.”

A Growing Wedge

While some fissures have formed in public, including backlash from several pro-Israel mega-donors at elite universities, many others have occurred behind closed doors.

“We’ve been living with this red line approach,” where the “discourse becomes so inflexible” that any disagreement may lead to expulsion, a resignation, or a loss of funding, said Lila Corwin Berman, professor of history at Temple University and author of The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex.

Institutions that might once have represented a range of opinions on what Palestinian statehood or a lasting peace should look like have largely united behind Israel, she said, as they have during previous inflection points like the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.

What’s changed since then is a growing generational divide. Around half of Jewish Americans 65 and older say Israel is an essential part of their Jewish identity, according to a Pew Research Center poll, compared with only 35 percent of those 29 and under. A growing faction of progressive American Jews sympathize with Palestinians, whom groups like Human Rights Watch argue live under apartheid conditions — an assessment shared by up to a quarter of Jewish voters, according to one survey by Democratic pollsters.

Hundreds of young American Jews connected to Jewish Voice for Peace have been arrested in recent weeks for protesting in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza, where Israel’s military incursion has killed more than 11,000 people and kindled a major humanitarian crisis. Israel’s war in Gaza is in response to a surprise attack on October 7 by Hamas militants who killed at least 1,200 Israelis and took more than 200 people hostage.

The demand for a ceasefire has created a painful wedge for many Jewish institutions — from synagogues to large foundations — that seek to connect with young Jews but whose donors might find their criticism of Israel to be untenable, especially now.

“The vast majority of American Jews are fundamentally united in mass grief” after October 7, said Barry Finestone, president of the Jim Joseph Foundation, which has given $800 million to Jewish education causes over the past two decades.

He emphasized that the foundation has been focused on creating safe Jewish spaces amid rising antisemitism, pivoting their educational priorities, and not pulling funding from grantees for their stance. “We don’t police statements,” he said.

As for giving at universities, which have seen a surge in both pro-Palestinian protests and hate speech against Jews, “individual donors have the right to withdraw their dollars should they choose to or the right to keep on supporting these universities,” he said. “We’re just focused on how we can take care of kids on campus.”

Red Lines and Litmus Tests

For years, tensions have built over Jewish Americans’ increasingly polarized positions on Israel, with young people especially likely to criticize its treatment of Palestinians.

“It’s an elephant in the room” that’s become impossible to ignore, says Rebecca Zimmerman Hornstein, executive director of the Boston Workers Circle. The ceasefire rally was a “red line” that the group was willing to cross, she says — even if it meant sacrificing long-standing relationships with peers.

“There’s a real loss when we’re not at the table anymore,” says Zimmerman Hornstein. “It means our institutions aren’t speaking for the whole community.”

In New York City, the 92nd Street Y, a longtime Jewish cultural institution, canceled an appearance by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen for his criticism of Israel. Two staff members at the group resigned from their posts following the cancellation.

And at least one young Jewish school director, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said her job has been threatened since being spotted by parents at a New England rally calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“Being in leadership at times like this is hard,” she said, especially for those who “hold the sacredness of Palestinian life up next to the sacredness of Israeli lives” and whose “politics are now on blast.”

Leaders of the Queer Mikveh Project, a small Jewish ritual initiative, likewise suspect they’ve been blacklisted or rejected from major foundations for their vocal criticism of Israel, even as those same grant makers attempt to court more progressive youth-led Jewish groups. In some cases, the group’s leaders say grants have explicitly prohibited activities related to Israel or the Palestinian people.

“Every time we get rejected, we assume it’s because we’re anti-Zionist,” said Rebecca Maria Goldschmidt, one of the Queer Mikveh Project’s leaders, who herself recently canceled a speaking engagement at a virtual conference whose organizers expressed pro-Israel views.

Selcuk Acar, Anadolu, Getty Images

While the project has partnered with such groups — which include the vast majority of Jewish grant makers — in the past, “at this point, there has to be a very clear line drawn,” says Goldschmidt. “I just didn’t want to have anything to do with it.”

Caught Between Constituencies

For nonprofits with stakeholders across the political aisle, there’s little that won’t risk angering Jewish donors — who insist that now is the wrong time to openly criticize Israel — or alienating young supporters who point to a rising death toll in Gaza.

“Jewish funders are very distressed — and I would say rightfully angry — at many of the folks we considered allies,” said Andrés Spokoiny, president of the Jewish Funders Network, who criticized calls for a ceasefire in Gaza that don’t also demand the release of Israeli hostages or attempt to justify Hamas’s attack. “The Jews are a small people,” he said, and there’s a sense that “we need to take care of our own because nobody else does.”

That doesn’t mean that everyone agrees. “You can go to my social-media feed, and see what I was saying about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on October 6,” said Spokoiny, who referenced the massive protests of the Israeli government that roiled the country earlier this year. Yet this moment calls for a different approach, he said: “I’ve never seen so much unity around supporting Israel.”

For grantees, however, there’s “no viable way to say much of anything right now that won’t result in hate mail, donor exits, and a loss of support for our mission and work,” said one Jewish nonprofit leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal from both donors and progressive young supporters. There’s been little appetite for nuance in the aftermath of October 7, he said.

Rumors of donor retribution have been especially chilling for nonprofits that may already be struggling to get by, said Kellea Miller, executive director of the Human Rights Funders Network, which helped initiate an open letter from hundreds of foundations, individual donors, and philanthropy staff calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

“The fear of losing funding is keeping a lot of people within philanthropy silent,” said Miller. “Not because they don’t care and not because they don’t think they should have a stance — but out of a real concern that they are going to lose funding to continue operating and being effective.”

Not everyone has given up on having difficult conversations, said Leena Barakat, president of the Women Donors Network, another signatory of the ceasefire letter, whose 250 members have been navigating their own disagreements and perspectives on the violence through tough conversations.

Despite the pressures, “more and more people are feeling empowered” to speak out and ask questions in ways that are consistent with their values, she said.

When Keshet, an LGBTQ rights nonprofit, posted a statement last month, some supporters — and staff members — felt the group said too little about Palestinian suffering, while others felt they had said too much, said executive director Idit Klein.

“There were people on staff who wanted to see different things — Keshet wasn’t speaking for them personally,” she said, and since “we’re an identity-focused organization, it’s really hard for people when that gap is there.”

In the lead-up to a staff retreat last month, Klein surveyed staff on their own connection to the violence. Sharing the results on day one helped foster a more open and pluralistic environment during the retreat: “People were able to hold each other in their hearts” despite their disagreements, she said.

Moving Forward

For the past few weeks, Rebecca Balter, a donor who signed onto the ceasefire letter, has been having her own tense conversations with another philanthropist with whom she often collaborates: her mother, whose parents once escaped the Holocaust. Much of the family’s inherited wealth comes from restitution payments made by Germany.

Balter has never spoken publicly about Israel or Palestinian rights. Her giving focuses squarely on environmental justice and grassroots organizing in the South. Yet when many of the Black-led organizations she funds expressed solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, she felt compelled to make a statement herself.

“It’s a moment to practice what I preach,” she said. “If I say that I am going to use my power to support and uplift the voices of these communities — and they are pretty darn clearly saying a specific thing — then as a philanthropist, I have a responsibility to echo that.”

Balter fears for the organizers she supports, who she said have already begun to face backlash from funders over their stance. A tenuous trust with grantees — built slowly as the philanthropy world reckoned with its role in racial injustice — could come tumbling down, she said, as generational divides on the issue “exacerbate a split between progressive funders and progressive organizations.”

“When these movement organizations feel that philanthropy has abandoned them,” she asked: “What will the ripple effects be moving forward?”