A few weeks ago, I reached out to a family foundation about Holocaust education programming, including an upcoming webinar for educators. I expected a routine exchange about programming, students and funding.

Instead, it quickly turned into something else entirely: a test of how organizations connected to Jewish causes are increasingly expected to answer for Israel, Gaza and American politics.

This foundation sits outside the Jewish philanthropic world. Over the years, it has supported a range of education-related initiatives I have worked on across different nonprofits. The relationship had always been defined by mission and impact. This time, however, a routine donor update shifted into a set of assumptions about what Jewish organizations are presumed to represent.

Then came the response from the foundation’s director that changed the nature of our relationship entirely. He said its board members had begun questioning their support for Jewish nonprofit work because of concerns related to Israel and broader regional conflict. They wanted to know how these organizations viewed Israel’s “relentless war/destruction/genocide in Gaza,” and whether or not they were affiliated with or supportive of AIPAC and its lobbying efforts on behalf of U.S. support for Israel.

The reference to AIPAC stood out immediately. It blurred the distinction between organizations with very different missions. One focused on combating antisemitism and protecting Jewish communities, and the other engaged in political advocacy related to U.S.-Israel relations.

In that moment, Jewish organizations appeared to be viewed through a single lens, with little distinction between very different roles.

I clarified that the work in question focuses on protecting Jewish communities and others affected by hate, and that it is not a foreign-policy effort. The foundation director then responded, adding that the “bloodshed inflicted on the Palestinians” by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “seems to contradict the Jewish ‘never again’ point of view.”

In invoking “never again,” he used a Holocaust-rooted expression of Jewish resistance as the basis for his critique.

His message implied that Jewish organizations fighting antisemitism and supporting Jewish communities were now, through Israel, being held responsible for the kind of mass violence they said they would never allow to happen again.

What struck me was the inversion. “Never again” was no longer a statement of Jewish determination. It had become a reason to question whether a U.S.-based Jewish organization should be supported at all.

This dynamic is part of what novelist, essayist and literature professor Dara Horn explores in her book People Love Dead Jews. She argues that people are often comfortable expressing sympathy for Jewish suffering when it is safely in the past, but less comfortable with Jews acting on their own behalf in the present.

Here, the Holocaust was invoked as a historical lesson, while a contemporary Jewish organization addressing antisemitism was judged through assumptions about Jewish identity, influence and power.

This reflects a broader double standard in which Jewish organizations are often expected to carry responsibility for Israel’s actions in defending itself and protecting its citizens in ongoing security and military conflicts. Even when people insist that criticism of Israel can be separated from Jews as a people, in practice, that distinction often collapses in moments like these.

The common thread is not only disagreement about Israel, but a broader pattern of external definition, where Jews are judged and categorized through assumptions imposed from the outside rather than through their lived reality.

A similar line of thinking has surfaced in other conversations.

Several years ago, during a discussion about intersectionality with a foundation that approached its work through a strong social-justice framework, I was asked whether I considered Jews to be “white.” I felt blindsided. It didn’t feel like a neutral question so much as one with an expected answer, and I understood that getting it wrong could affect future funding decisions.

From my experience living in Israel, Jewish communities come from many ethnic backgrounds, including the Middle East and North Africa. I answered as honestly as I could: Jews are a diverse people with different histories, cultures and backgrounds.

Later that day, I researched the question more closely and found that this framing is common in some academic and activist spaces, where Jews are often categorized as “white,” and therefore associated with power and privilege. Whatever the intent, it can flatten Jewish identity into a simple binary of oppressor versus oppressed.

Only afterward did I realize that I had given what may have been the “wrong” answer. The conversation made clear that Jews were expected to be understood in a particular way within that framework. It felt like I had failed a test I didn’t know I was taking. The irony is that Jews have historically been persecuted precisely because they were seen as outsiders, not as members of a privileged majority.

These patterns do not remain confined to individual conversations. Increasingly, they shape how foundations and donors evaluate nonprofit organizations, shifting the basis of judgment away from mission and outcomes, and toward questions of identity, representation and ideological alignment—a trend noted by The Economist in its analysis of pandemic-era philanthropy.

The relationship between funders and nonprofits is especially vulnerable to this dynamic because it depends on trust, discretion and informal networks. That relationship is a strength, but it also leaves room for subtle expectations to take hold. Over time, organizations can begin anticipating what may raise concerns with funders, narrowing language, avoiding certain topics or partnerships, and making decisions less on outcomes and more on what feels safe to say.

While donors and foundations have every right to support whatever organizations they choose, philanthropy works best when organizations are judged by mission, impact and integrity—and when donors can ask hard questions without turning nonprofits into proxies for broader political or ideological debates.

What gets lost is not just trust, but the ability to have an ordinary conversation about the work itself on its own terms, without it becoming something else entirely.