Jamie Simon - Jewish Identity Takes Root at Camp

Episode 86 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Jamie Simon, CEO of the Foundation for Jewish Camp, which supports a network of 340 nonprofit Jewish camps across North America.  Research consistently backs up what many of us have long suspected about Jewish camp: creating the space for Jewish belonging gives campers the confidence to make Jewish practice and community feel like their own. A 2026 peer-reviewed study from FJC found that a camper's sense of belonging is one of the strongest predictors of the life skills and character strengths they walk away with, and their 2011 Camp Works study found that people who felt that sense of belonging as kids are significantly more likely to be engaged Jewish adults, from synagogue membership to a stronger connection to Israel. Jamie and Andrés talk about what makes Jewish camp such a powerful setting for building that identity, why affordability and bed capacity are the two biggest obstacles standing between FJC and its goal of doubling camp attendance, and how camps are navigating conversations about Israel and Zionism with staff and teens in this pivotal moment. Take a listen.

Episode 85 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, Senior Rabbi of Central Synagogue in New York and author of the New York Times Best Seller Heart of a Stranger. Rabbi Buchdahl leads one of the most influential pulpits in the country. In this episode, she talks about what it takes to lead a community through a moment this divided. She and Andrés talk about what courageous leadership costs when you cannot afford everyone's approval, and how she addressed a charged election season without telling any young Jew there was no longer room for them in the tent. Angela’s career grew out of a life spent feeling like an outsider in every community she belonged to, and looking for home in all of them. But rather than treat it as something to overcome, she argues it may be the most Jewish thing about her, and she makes a case for why that has everything to do with how we lead and who we let in. Take a listen.

Episode 84 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Eric Goldstein, who, after more than twelve years at the helm of the largest local Jewish charity in the world, is stepping down this fall as CEO of UJA-Federation of New York. Eric came to the role by an unusual path, spending thirty-one years as a litigator before he ever sat behind a federation desk, and he arrived already knowing the organization from the inside as a board vice chair and a major donor. In this conversation, Andrés and Eric reflect on a tenure that ran through COVID-19, October 7, and a run of once-in-a-generation crises that arrived almost yearly. They talk about what all of this revealed about the Jewish community and the institutions meant to hold it together. Eric makes a full-throated case for the federation model in an age that loves to root for its disruptors. He speaks about the way UJA draws its boundaries while funding a community that includes both the Haredi world and LGBTQ Jews, and why he believes the widening animosity between the Jewish right and left, along with the drift of younger Jews away from organized Jewish life, may be the most urgent problem he leaves behind. Take a listen.

Episode 83 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Jonathan Gottschall, literary scholar and author of The Storytelling Animal. Jonathan has spent his career studying why human beings are wired for narrative, which he explored with attendees in a fascinating keynote at this year's JFN Conference in San Diego. In this conversation, Andrés and Jonathan explore the idea that we are not only Homo sapiens but Homo fictus, a species that lives its whole life inside stories. They talk about how stories bind people into groups far larger than kinship ever allowed. We talk about why human communities, whether a nation, a family, or the Jewish people itself, are held together by the stories they share even more than by borders or bloodlines, and what happens when those stories begin to fracture. They also get into the darker side of narrative: how stories can quietly replace reality, why antisemitism is one of the oldest and most destructive fictions ever told, and why the hardest discipline is turning our skepticism on our own stories. Take a listen.

Episode 82 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Mark Tooley, President of the Institute on Religion & Democracy and editor of the journal Providence, who has spent decades thinking and writing about the relationship between Christianity, democracy, and American public life. In this conversation, Andrés and Mark set out to do something that too rarely happens: offer Jews, and frankly a lot of Christians too, a clear and non-caricatured map of the American Christian world. They talk through the real differences between mainline Protestants and evangelicals, where the religious right fits and where it doesn't, why denominations are collapsing into non-denominational and megachurch Christianity, and what actually separates these traditions theologically rather than just politically. They also touch on the defense of democracy, the future of Christian support for Israel, the corrosion of our political discourse, and why the older biblical arguments for standing with the Jewish people may need to be rebuilt on the more basic ground of human dignity. Take a listen.

Episode 81 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Dr. David Bryfman, CEO of The Jewish Education Project and author of the new book Heroism and Hope: Recharging Israel Education in a Post-October 7 World. David and Andrés ask whether October 7 genuinely changed Jewish education or simply forced into the open questions many educators had been wrestling with privately. David makes a provocative case: when adults demand to know why their children don't feel about Israel the way they do, they often reveal more about themselves than about the education their children received. He argues that young people need to arrive at their own understanding in their own way and their own time, even when they land somewhere different from their parents, while insisting that Israel belongs at the core of serious Jewish education rather than at its margins. Also discussed are the points where Andrés and David part ways, including Andrés's discomfort with the idea that education should stay neutral about the conclusions students reach, and David's argument for teaching the hard parts of Jewish history honestly so that students don't encounter them for the first time on a hostile campus.  Take a listen.

Episode 80 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Mitch Silber, CEO of the Community Security Initiative and former Director of Intelligence Analysis for the NYPD. Mitch and Andrés talk about the changing security landscape facing Jewish communities in New York, across the United States, and around the world. Mitch shares how 9/11 led him from corporate finance into counterterrorism, what he learned helping build the NYPD’s intelligence and counterterrorism capacity, and why the American Jewish community’s approach to security changed so dramatically after the attacks in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City, and Monsey. Also discussed are the range of threats facing Jewish institutions today, from white supremacists and Islamist extremists to violent anti-Israel actors, and the difficult questions that follow: what volunteers can and cannot do, when armed security is necessary, how local and national security organizations coordinate, and where philanthropy can make the most concrete difference. Take a listen.

Episode 79 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Naomi Firestone-Teeter and Elisa Spungen Bildner of the Jewish Book Council, an organization that has spent a century championing Jewish books, Jewish writers, and the readers who find themselves through Jewish stories. In this conversation, Naomi, Elisa, and Andrés talk about why books remain such a powerful entry point into Jewish life, especially at a time when Jewish identity, Jewish culture, and Jewish authorship all feel newly urgent. They explore the history of the Jewish Book Council, from its beginnings as Jewish Book Week in 1925 to its current role as a convener, advocate, and ecosystem-builder for Jewish literature. And they discuss the challenges facing Jewish writers and publishers after October 7, the need to make room for Israeli voices and a wider range of Jewish stories, and why funders should see culture as central to Jewish continuity rather than peripheral to it. Take a listen.

Episode 78 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove, Senior Rabbi at Park Avenue Synagogue and a leading voice in American Jewish life. Through his writing and public leadership, Elliot has been deeply engaged in some of the most contentious debates shaping the Jewish community right now. Andrés and Elliot take a close look at the questions raised about the role of rabbis in political life that arose during last fall’s New York City mayoral campaign. They explore how Jewish leaders decide when to speak out, where the boundaries of communal discourse should be drawn, and how questions around Zionism, anti-Zionism, and internal disagreement are playing out across synagogues and campuses. They discuss the pressures facing today’s rabbinate, the challenge of holding communities together amid deep division, and what responsible leadership looks like in a moment that resists easy consensus. Take a listen.

Episode 77 of What Gives?—the Jewish Philanthropy Podcast from Jewish Funders Network, hosted by JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny. In this episode, Andrés speaks with Mijal Bitton, spiritual leader of the Downtown Minyan in New York City and scholar in residence at Maimonides Fund, and Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute. This episode takes on one of the hardest questions facing Jewish communities right now: how we think about boundaries, belonging, and the obligations we owe one another. Using their two recent essays as a point of departure, Andrés, Mijal, and Yehuda explore the tension between kinship and consent in Jewish life, the legacy of radical inclusion in liberal Jewish institutions, and the ways October 7 forced many American Jews to reconsider what peoplehood actually asks of them. They also get into the difficult questions that follow from there: when disagreement becomes rupture, whether some forms of Jewish dissent cross a line, how institutions should think about red lines without becoming consumed by policing them, and what role funders can play in clarifying values without shrinking the tent beyond recognition. Take a listen. Click here to read Mijal's piece. Click here to read Yehuda's piece.