Eric Fingerhut turned the Jewish Federations of North America toward two fronts: Israel at war and a Jewish community under siege at home. As president and CEO of the umbrella body for 146 federations across the United States and Canada, he delivered the inaugural State of the Jewish Union address, and pressed for a national, post-9/11 scale effort to protect synagogues and schools.

 

The Israel emergency campaign JFNA has run since October 7 has surpassed $850 million, funding trauma care, and community recovery. He paired the fundraising with advocacy, keeping support for Israel and the hostages bipartisan, and built the partnership that reshaped Jewish philanthropy this year alongside board chair Gary Torgow.

 

For a century, Jewish money moved in one direction, from North America to Israel. This year Gary Torgow helped turn it around. On June 28, the JFNA board chair sat in the Israeli cabinet room as ministers unanimously approved a NIS 200 million first-year plan to strengthen Jewish education in the Diaspora, money flowing from a country at war toward Jewish schools abroad, on the theory that those schools are now a strategic asset for the whole Jewish people.

 

He had pressed Netanyahu on the idea since 2022. In Washington, he lined up a second stream: a 2025 federal tax credit that lets any taxpayer redirect up to $1,700 to a scholarship organization and deduct every dollar. JFNA is building a national body to aim that money at Jewish day schools. A soft-spoken Detroit banker and Orthodox yeshiva president, Torgow has spent his career crossing lines others will not.

 

Read the whole article in The Jerusalem Post.