WASHINGTON, D.C. — The annual Jewish American Heritage Month (JAHM) luncheon was held May 19 on Capitol Hill, bringing together bipartisan members of Congress, foreign ambassadors, and civic, business, and religious leaders in the historic Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building to honor the enduring contributions of Jewish Americans to the United States.
The event was co-chaired by Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and Eric J. Gertler, Executive Chairman of U.S. News and World Report. It honored entrepreneur and philanthropist Elliott Broidy with the Visionary Award, Nobel Prize winning physician Dr. Harvey J. Alter with the Dr. David Nassy Award, and Rabbi David Baron of Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills with the Creativity in the Jewish Community Award.
In accepting the Visionary Award, Broidy reflected on the values his parents instilled in him — his father a decorated World War II veteran, turned schoolteacher, his mother a nurse — and the lesson they passed down: that success carries with it a responsibility to give back to family, community, and country. He praised Dr. Alter as an embodiment of tikkun olam for identifying a virus that was silently claiming millions of lives, and recognized Rabbi Baron’s work building curricula around altruism and empathy in young people as among the most consequential being done in America today.
Broidy described the luncheon as more than a celebration of JAHM, calling it a reaffirmation of the shared responsibility to confront hatred and protect the values of tolerance, democracy, and human dignity at a moment when antisemitism has risen sharply both in the United States and around the world.
Various U.S. Senators participated in the program, including Richard Blumenthal, John Fetterman, John Hickenlooper , Elissa Slotkin, Ron Wyden, James Lankford, Jacky Rosen, Pete Ricketts, Jeff Merkley, and Tim Sheehy. U.S. Representatives Randi Fine and Ken Calvert also delivered speeches.
Rabbi Pini Dunner of Young Israel of Beverly Hills delivered remarks on the honorees, as did Rabbi Mordechai Suchard of The Gateways Organization and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Executive Vice President of American Friends of Lubavitch.
The celebration traces its roots to the early 1980s, when Jewish Heritage Week was launched following discussions between Malcolm Hoenlein, President Ronald Reagan, and author and humanitarian Elie Wiesel, later evolving into the month-long observance recognized today.
The event was organized by Project Legacy under the leadership of Ezra Friedlander, whose work has made the Capitol Hill JAHM luncheon one of the most visible annual expressions of Jewish American civic life in Washington. Through Project Legacy, Friedlander has built a platform that brings elected officials, faith leaders, and community figures together each year to recognize Jewish Americans whose lives reflect the breadth of that community’s contributions to the nation. “This year’s honorees reflect a deep commitment to public service, innovation, philanthropy, and the fight against hatred and intolerance,” Friedlander said.
This article was originally published on Grit Daily.
On the morning of February 10, 2026, Jesse Van Rootselaar opened fire in Tumbler Ridge, a northeastern district in British Columbia, Canada. Eight people were killed before Van Rootselaar turned the gun on herself. Almost immediately after, a question surfaced that cuts to the center of how AI systems operate behind the scenes: what, if anything, had OpenAI seen before the attack?
The company had surely seen something. Records show OpenAI identified concerning behavior in Van Rootselaar’s ChatGPT account, suspended it months before the shooting, and reviewed the content. It ultimately decided the material did not meet its threshold for referral to law enforcement, a judgment that is now drawing scrutiny.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said OpenAI may have had the opportunity to prevent the shooting, a statement that shifts attention away from the user and toward the system that flagged her behavior, yet decided against intervening. His comments have added urgency to a question policymakers have only recently begun to confront: what are companies expected to do when their own tools surface signs of potential violence?
That concern is not limited to policymakers. Elliott Broidy, who has worked at the intersection of national security, technology, and public safety, describes the issue as a breakdown in system design.
“Thirty-eight flags and no action isn’t an oversight,” he said. “It shows the system was never built to respond. If your AI can detect danger but there’s no protocol to act on it, that’s a structural failure.”
He argues that many companies have built systems that can identify risk without building the processes required to respond to it. Human oversight, often cited as a safeguard, is not consistently integrated into decision-making once a signal is generated.
This question has surfaced before, under very different circumstances. In 1969, a graduate student at UC Berkeley told his therapist he intended to kill a woman named Tatiana Tarasoff. The therapist notified campus police, who briefly detained and released him. No one warned Tarasoff. Two months later, she was killed.
The California Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in Tarasoff v. Regents of the University of California established a standard that still governs parts of mental health law. When a professional determines, or should determine, that a patient poses a serious danger, there is a duty to act. Over time, that obligation spread across most U.S. states, embedding the idea that foreknowledge of violence can trigger legal responsibility.
AI platforms were, of course, not yet part of that framework. They are not licensed professionals, but they now process volumes of personal interaction that no therapist or institution could match. Their systems are built to detect patterns, including shifts in language and behavior that signal escalation. The question is what happens after those signals appear.
In Tumbler Ridge, the signals did appear. OpenAI’s systems flagged the account and took the step its policies required, suspending access. What did not follow was any escalation beyond the platform. There was no external referral, no independent review, and no clear standard governing whether further action was required.
Broidy sees that gap as symptomatic of an industry-wide failure to learn from sectors where the stakes are equally high.
“Every sector where lives are at stake has learned the same lesson: detection without escalation is theater,” he said. “The aviation industry didn’t stop at warning lights and nuclear facilities didn’t stop at alarms. Both built chains of accountability that force a human decision at every critical juncture. AI companies have the detection capability. What they are missing, and what the law has not yet demanded, is the chain.”
In industries where failure carries immediate consequences, that gap is not tolerated. Aviation systems route alerts to trained operators under defined procedures. Nuclear facilities tie automated warnings to escalation protocols that cannot be ignored. Emergency medicine relies on triage systems that trigger immediate human review. In each case, detection is only the first step in a chain that leads to action.
Consumer AI platforms operate at comparable scale, but without comparable requirements. Internal thresholds determine whether behavior is escalated, but those thresholds are set by the companies themselves and are not subject to external standards. Decisions not to act can remain internal, undocumented outside the platform, and shielded from scrutiny.
Existing law offers limited guidance. Section 230 has long protected platforms from liability tied to user-generated content. Traditional products liability frameworks do not map easily onto systems that continuously learn and adapt. And duty-to-warn doctrines were developed for licensed professionals, not systems that mediate millions of interactions at once.
Legal scholars have begun to outline possible paths forward, including extending a duty of care to platforms that possess documented evidence of credible threats and requiring defined escalation procedures when certain thresholds are met. Those proposals remain largely theoretical, even as the underlying technology is already in widespread use.
The response to the Tarasoff case took years to develop, eventually reshaping expectations around professional responsibility. AI systems have advanced on a much faster timeline. They are already embedded in daily life and already capable of identifying patterns that resemble foreknowledge of harm.
The gap between what these systems can see and what companies are required to do about it is no longer hypothetical. It is already visible in the record. The question now is whether the law will move quickly enough to close it.
This article was originally published on JBizNews.
A rare convergence of Jewish American religious leaders, civic organizations, business executives, and foreign diplomats gathered on Capitol Hill on May 19 during Jewish American Heritage Month to recognize Nobel laureate Dr. Harvey J. Alter — whose discovery of the hepatitis C virus and the screening protocols it spawned have saved millions of lives — underscoring the urgency of scientific preparation at a moment when the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola is spreading rapidly across the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda, prompting major airlines to suspend or reduce service to affected regions.
The event, the annual Jewish American Heritage Month celebration organized by Ezra Friedlander’s Project Legacy, drew nine U.S. Senators, three U.S. Representatives, and ambassadors and trade ministers from Canada, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Germany, and South Korea. The gathering was co-chaired by Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Eric J. Gertler, Executive Chairman of U.S. News & World Report. Held in the historic Kennedy Caucus Room of the Russell Senate Office Building, the event demonstrated the depth of Jewish American institutional reach across government, finance, philanthropy, religious life, and international commerce.
The timing is acute. As of May 24, the World Health Organization had recorded more than 1,000 suspected and confirmed Ebola cases and at least 231 deaths in the outbreak. Airlines including American Airlines, United Airlines, and Air France have suspended or sharply reduced flights to Kinshasa and other Central African hubs, citing operational and safety concerns. The flight suspensions are already disrupting trade and threatening to isolate the region from international commerce and medical supply chains.
The honorees — Dr. Alter, entrepreneur Elliott Broidy, and Rabbi David Baron — represented the breadth of Jewish American institutional contribution. Dr. Alter, the 2020 Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine for identifying the hepatitis C virus, embodied the Jewish American role in science and public health. His decades of work at the National Institutes of Health in the 1970s and 1980s proved that an unknown virus was driving post-transfusion hepatitis. The screening systems his research enabled have driven transfusion-transmitted hepatitis in the United States to near zero. His discovery spawned pharmaceutical franchises at Gilead Sciences, Merck, AbbVie, and Bristol Myers Squibb. Broidy, recipient of the Visionary Award, reflected the Jewish American entrepreneurial and philanthropic tradition. Rabbi David Baron of the Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills, honored with the Creativity in the Jewish Community Award, represented the religious and cultural institutions anchoring the community’s identity.
The religious leadership present was notably diverse and unified. Rabbi Pini Dunner of Young Israel of Beverly Hills, Chairman of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce West Coast, delivered remarks alongside Rabbi Mordechai Suchard of The Gateways Organization and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Executive Vice President of American Friends of Lubavitch. This constellation — Orthodox, Modern Orthodox, and Lubavitch leadership appearing together on a Capitol Hill stage — demonstrated institutional cohesion across religious movements.
U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal, John Fetterman, Tim Sheehy, John Hickenlooper, Elissa Slotkin, Ron Wyden, James Lankford, Jacky Rosen, and Pete Ricketts addressed the gathering, alongside Representatives Randi Fine, Ken Calvert, and Jeff Merkley. Senator Blumenthal emphasized that Dr. Alter could have monetized his hepatitis C discovery for enormous personal gain but instead released findings to the public-health system. Senator Fetterman delivered what attendees described as an unusually passionate bipartisan statement of support for the Jewish American community. Senator Sheehy framed scientific generosity as a uniquely American strength. The bipartisan presence — nine senators from both parties — signaled political consensus around the value of Jewish American institutional power.
Jewish American Heritage Month, observed each May since 2006, traces to 1980 when Congress designated April 21-28 as Jewish Heritage Week through conversations between Malcolm Hoenlein, President Ronald Reagan, and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel. President George W. Bush expanded it to a full month of May in 2006, recognizing over 370 years of Jewish American contribution to science, business, law, and public service since 1654. The Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History now stewards the observance with more than 200 organizations.
Ezra Friedlander, organizer of the event through Project Legacy, said: “This year’s honorees reflect a deep commitment to public service, innovation, philanthropy, and the fight against hatred and intolerance.”
The commercial dimension was substantial. Duvi Honig, Founder & CEO of the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce and co-founder and secretary of the Multicultural Business Coalition, who chaired World Trade Week NYC on Wednesday, spoke to the gathering’s purpose. “Building bridges through unity is what speaks to me most,” Honig said. “Each attendee walked away with new or reinforced relationships to help build a better tomorrow.” The ambassadors and trade ministers represented nations with which the United States maintains multi-billion-dollar trade flows in life sciences, defense, semiconductors, energy, agriculture, and finance.
Elliott Broidy, in accepting the Visionary Award, reflected on lessons from his parents about the responsibility that accompanies success. He praised Dr. Alter as an embodiment of tikkun olam — the Jewish concept of repairing the world — for identifying hepatitis C. Broidy framed the luncheon as a reaffirmation of shared responsibility to confront hatred and protect the values of tolerance, democracy, and human dignity at a moment when antisemitism has risen sharply.
The Capitol Hill gathering serves a dual purpose: honoring specific achievements, but also functioning as a high-level networking forum where ambassadors, senators, business leaders, and religious figures reinforce relationships that undergird international commerce, diplomatic coordination, and policy alignment. For the Jewish American community, the event demonstrates that institutional unity across Orthodox and non-Orthodox Judaism, business and nonprofit sectors, and civic and religious leadership remains a competitive advantage.
The recognition of Dr. Alter arrives as the global health system confronts the Ebola outbreak, making his innovation as a Jewish American leader who helped save millions of lives through epidemic-related medical breakthroughs even more meaningful amid the growing health and commercial disruption now unfolding. His career — patient, federally funded basic research conducted over decades for public good — produced breakthroughs that created entire pharmaceutical industries and prevention systems now viewed as essential global infrastructure. It also reflects the very purpose of Jewish American Heritage Month: recognizing the extraordinary contributions Jewish Americans have made to science, medicine, public service, innovation, and humanity as a whole.
A dozen members of Congress participated in an annual Jewish American Heritage Month lunch in the Russell Senate Office Building, held this year on May 19.
Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), John Fetterman (D-Pa.), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.), and Reps. Randi Fine (R-Fla.) and Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) took part.
“I am proud to be here as a Jewish American woman,” Slotkin said. “It’s just never been a harder time in my lifetime to be a Jew in America.”
“As a Democrat, it’s my responsibility to call out antisemitism in my own party, just as I hope that Sen. Lankford calls out antisemitism in his party,” the senator said.
Elliott Broidy, a businessman and philanthropist who was presented with a visionary award, told the audience that he is motivated to give back to his country because his parents taught him that success comes with responsibility.
Dr. Harvey Alter, a Nobel-winning physician, and Rabbi David Baron, of Temple of the Arts in Beverly Hills, Calif., also received awards.
“After years of intensive research, I’ve understood now why there’s such a preponderance of Jewish scientists. It’s because they all had Jewish mothers,” Alter said.
Elliott Broidy and Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) at a Jewish American Heritage Month celebration on Capitol Hill, May 20, 2026. Credit: Lenchevsky Images. Picasa
Malcolm Hoenlein, CEO Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Eric Gertler, executive chairman of U.S. News and World Report, co-chaired the event. “Jewish Heritage Week gives us an opportunity to celebrate the 250th anniversary of this great country,” Hoenlein told attendees.
“This year’s honorees reflect a deep commitment to public service, innovation, philanthropy and the fight against hatred and intolerance,” stated Ezra Friedlander, who organized the event.
By Jewish Heritage Celebration Committee, May 19, 2026
The annual Jewish American Heritage Month celebration on Capitol Hill will be held in the month of May on 19, bringing together members of Congress, foreign ambassadors and leaders from across the civic, business and religious communities. The Congressional Honorary Host Committee includes US Senator Tim Scott, US Senator Jeff Merkley, US Senator Pete Rickett, US Representative Grace Meng.
During Jewish American Heritage Month, we honor the countless contributions of Jewish Americans throughout the United States 250 years of independence, and we celebrate their unwavering commitment to the values that make our country great.
President Trump, in his proclamation for May 2026 as Jewish American Heritage Month, calls upon Americans to celebrate the heritage and contributions of Jewish Americans and to observe this month with appropriate programs, activities, and ceremonies. “I further call on all Americans to celebrate their faith and freedom throughout this year, during this month, and especially on Shabbat to celebrate our 250th year.”
The Capitol Hill event will honor Elliott Broidy, entrepreneur, public safety expert, and philanthropist, who will receive the Visionary Award during Jewish American Heritage Month on Capitol Hill for his leadership in national security, education, cultural philanthropy, and efforts to combat antisemitism, extremism, and intolerance.
Rabbi David Baron, spiritual leader of Temple of the Arts, will be receiving the Creativity in the Jewish Community Award for his contributions to Jewish cultural and religious life, Holocaust education, and public service through media, philanthropy, and international remembrance initiatives.
Dr. Harvey J. Alter will be presented the Dr. David Nassy Award in Medicine for his Nobel Prize-winning research leading to the discovery of hepatitis B and C viruses, breakthroughs that revolutionized blood safety and transformed the treatment of chronic liver disease.
“I am deeply moved to be recognized at the Capitol during Jewish American Heritage Month,” said Broidy. “Jewish Americans have helped build this country, and today, as antisemitism rises at an alarming rate, it is up to all of us to stand up to hate and advance the Judeo-Christian values on which America was founded.”
The event, organized by Project Legacy under the leadership of Ezra Friedlander, honors leaders whose lives and work reflect the enduring contributions of Jewish Americans to the fabric of this nation. Celebrating Jewish Heritage began in the early 1980s when Malcom Hoenlein, Executive Vice Chairman Emeritus of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, a prominent figure in American and world Jewry, accompanied by author Elie Wiesel, met with President Ronald Reagan in the White House to launch the National Jewish Heritage Week, which has since evolved into a month-long celebration accords the country.
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz was the primary legislative leader behind the establishment of Jewish American Heritage Month. In 2006, she led a bipartisan congressional effort resulting in George W. Bush’s first presidential proclamation of May as Jewish American Heritage Month.
Once again, this year U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-25), Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01), Troy A. Carter, Sr. (LA-02) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (IA-01) introduced a bipartisan Jewish American Heritage Month Resolution to recognize the significant contributions of Jewish Americans to the society and culture of the United States.
Malcolm Hoenlein, along with Eric J. Gertler, Executive Chairman of U.S. News and World Report will chair this year’s event.
“Jewish American Heritage Month is a moment to reflect on where we’ve come from, to celebrate what we’ve built and to recommit ourselves to protecting our most meaningful values,” added honoree Mr. Elliott Broidy. “I’m proud to stand alongside my fellow honorees and to carry that message into the halls of Congress.”
The Los Angeles-raised philanthropist is being honored for decades of work in public safety, Jewish communal life, and the fight against antisemitism.
Elliott Broidy will be among three Jewish Americans honored at this year’s Jewish American Heritage Month luncheon on Capitol Hill, receiving the Visionary Award at a ceremony on Capitol Hill on May 19th.
The annual event, organized by Project Legacy under the leadership of Ezra Friedlander, has honored Jewish American leaders since the early 1980s, when Jewish Heritage Week was established following discussions between Malcolm Hoenlein, President Ronald Reagan, and Elie Wiesel. Broidy will be recognized alongside Nobel Prize-winning physician Dr. Harvey J. Alter and Rabbi David Baron of Beverly Hills’ Temple of the Arts.
Broidy, 68, grew up in Los Angeles, the son of a World War II veteran who was awarded a Purple Heart and later became a schoolteacher, and a mother who worked as a nurse. He started working at age eleven – paper routes, Fuller Brush sales, plumbing jobs, salmon fishing in Alaska – and at 18 used his savings to buy a coin-operated laundromat to help put himself through the University of Southern California, where he earned a degree in accounting.
After becoming a CPA and working at Arthur Andersen, he spent nine years running the family office of Glen Bell, founder of Taco Bell, advising on investments in more than 120 companies. He later founded Broidy Capital Management. By his mid-thirties, he had begun making significant charitable contributions to hospitals, synagogues, social services organizations, and educational institutions across the United States and Israel.
The September 11 attacks drew him deeper into public life. He served three years on the Homeland Security Advisory Council, six years as a commissioner of the Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension Fund, and six years on the board of the Simon Wiesenthal Center-Museum of Tolerance.
The October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel prompted a further expansion of his giving. He has since directed significant support toward Holocaust remembrance, countering extremism through organizations including the Counter Extremism Project, and strengthening Jewish communal infrastructure in the United States and Israel.
“This celebration is an opportunity not only to honor the contributions of Jewish Americans throughout our nation’s history, but also to reaffirm our shared responsibility to confront hatred and protect the values of tolerance, democracy and human dignity.”
This year’s event is chaired by Malcolm Hoenlein and Eric J. Gertler, Executive Chairman of U.S. News and World Report.
In early April, Anthropic announced the release of Claude Mythos Preview, its most advanced AI model to date.
Though trained as a general-purpose large language model, Mythos quickly distinguished itself through a notable capacity for complex, multi-step cybersecurity work – autonomously parsing massive codebases, detecting critical-severity software defects and identifying vulnerabilities that have eluded human researchers for decades. Anthropic describes its cybersecurity capabilities as “substantially beyond those of any model we have previously trained,” including its prior flagship, Claude Opus.
The numbers back up that claim. When Anthropic ran the model against CyBench, a benchmark measuring autonomous vulnerability discovery and exploitation across sandboxed challenges, Mythos achieved a perfect 100% pass rate, a score Anthropic says no other AI model has achieved. On CyberGym, a separate cybersecurity evaluation site, Mythos scores 83.1% compared to 66.6% for Claude Opus 4.6. Across 17 of 18 total benchmark measures, Mythos led the field.
In practice, the model has already produced results that underscore its potential. During a preview period, Mythos found thousands of major bugs across every major operating system and browser, flaws that even the most skilled researchers had missed for years. Among the most striking findings was a vulnerability in OpenBSD that went undetected for 27 years.
“We are looking at an AI system that does not merely assist human researchers but autonomously outperforms them at scale,” said Elliott Broidy, Chairman and CEO of Broidy Capital Holdings, LLC, a seasoned entrepreneur and investor with extensive experience in national security technology and defense tech. “What Anthropic has built with Mythos is a tool that, in the right hands, could protect millions of people from attacks that would otherwise go undetected for years. The question is now whether our institutions are moving fast enough to deploy it responsibly before our adversaries find a way to use it against us.”
Given both the power and the risks that such a model entails, Anthropic decided to roll it out to a limited group of tech companies rather than the general public through a controlled defense initiative called Project Glasswing. Among the major tech companies forming the coalition are Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Nvidia and Cisco, along with 40 other organisations that build or maintain critical infrastructure software. To support the effort, Anthropic committed $100 million in usage credits and $4 million in direct donations to open-source security organisations, enabling these partners to use Mythos exclusively for defensive security work, finding and fixing vulnerabilities before adversaries can.
Anthropic was direct about the stakes in its announcement, writing that “no one organisation can solve these cybersecurity problems alone: frontier AI developers, other software companies, security researchers, open-source maintainers, and governments across the world all have essential roles to play.”
However, the model’s very strengths are what make experts uneasy. Cybersecurity professionals have warned that if Mythos can identify and exploit vulnerabilities faster than companies can patch them, the consequences of misuse could be severe. A single AI agent scanning for flaws at this speed and scale, well beyond normal human capacity, represents what many describe as a sea change in the threat landscape.
The model has also become a flashpoint in the relationship between Anthropic and the U.S. government. The Pentagon designated Anthropic a “supply chain risk,” ordering companies working with the military to remove its software from their workflows.
The situation is evolving rapidly. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last month to discuss Mythos and pathways for renewed government collaboration. The White House is now reportedly developing an executive action that would allow federal agencies to work around the supply chain risk designation and onboard Anthropic’s models, including Mythos.
This push and pull reflects a deeper shift, raising broader questions about how emerging technologies are regulated as AI systems like Mythos begin to occupy a space between commercial tools and strategic infrastructure.
“Concerns related to government use of AI technology are reasonable,” said Broidy. “But it’s imperative to consider how technologies that today seem too dangerous or non-feasible may be life-saving tomorrow.”
Broidy added that while the safe deployment of these advanced capabilities must remain a top priority, heavy-handed regulations may prevent important technologies from developing as quickly as they may be needed.
“Solving such complex cybersecurity issues is a joint effort,” said Broidy. “Economic industries, government agencies and technology companies must work together to balance AI innovation and safety.”
There is a tendency to equate education with credentials. Degrees, certifications, and institutional affiliations are often treated as proxies for knowledge and capability. They have value, but they are not the same as learning.
Real education begins with curiosity. It is driven by a willingness to ask questions, test assumptions, and engage directly with the world rather than observe it from a distance.
That mindset cannot be conferred by a diploma. It has to be developed through experience.
Some of the most valuable business lessons are learned in the simplest settings. Running a lemonade stand for a summer teaches pricing, customer behavior, supply management, and accountability in a way that no textbook can fully replicate. When you are responsible for every decision, even on a small scale, the feedback is immediate and unfiltered. You learn what works and what does not because the outcome is yours to own.
Experience has a way of clarifying priorities. It forces you to confront tradeoffs, manage uncertainty, and adapt in real time. There is no curve to rely on and no abstraction to hide behind. Results are not theoretical. They are tangible, and they matter.
This does not diminish the importance of formal education. Structured learning provides a strong foundation and exposes individuals to ideas they might not encounter on their own. But it is only one part of a much larger process. Without practical application, knowledge remains incomplete.
The most effective builders, operators, and leaders tend to share a common trait: they engage directly. They take on responsibility early, seek out real-world challenges, and treat every experience as an opportunity to refine their judgment. Over time, that accumulation of hard-won experience becomes a form of expertise that is difficult to replicate in any classroom.
Curiosity initiates the process, but action sustains it. The willingness to get your hands dirty, to try, to fail, and to try again is what ultimately transforms information into understanding.
Education, in its most meaningful form, is not something you complete. It is something you continue.
Your word is a contract that doesn’t need a lawyer.
That idea may sound outdated in a world defined by fine print, negotiated carveouts, and carefully structured exit clauses. But in practice, it has only grown more valuable. When everything is hedged, qualified, and contingent, the rare individual who simply does what they said they would do stands out immediately.
Too often today, commitments are treated as flexible. Deadlines slip without much notice, expectations shift midstream, and agreements are framed in ways that leave room for reinterpretation. Over time, that mindset creates friction in places where there should be momentum. It slows decision-making, complicates partnerships, and introduces unnecessary uncertainty into even straightforward transactions.
The people who operate differently tend to move faster and build stronger relationships. They take their commitments seriously, not as aspirational statements but as obligations. When they say something will be done, it gets done. If circumstances change, they address it directly and early, rather than allowing small issues to become larger problems. There is a clarity to how they operate that others come to rely on.
In my experience, that kind of reliability compounds. When people know your word is solid, they stop second-guessing. Conversations become more efficient because less time is spent managing risk. Opportunities surface more quickly because there is confidence on the other side of the table. Over time, that trust becomes an asset in its own right.
That is why I view reliability as one of the most powerful forms of differentiation-arguably the most powerful. Strategies can be replicated and products can be improved upon, but a reputation for consistency and follow-through cannot be duplicated. It shapes how others evaluate you before a conversation even begins.
Of course, no one gets everything right all the time. What matters is how you respond when something falls short. Taking ownership, correcting the issue, and reinforcing the standard going forward does more to build credibility than avoiding mistakes altogether, because without risk there can’t be success.
Ultimately, your word is more than a statement of intent. It reflects how you approach your work and the level of respect you have for the people you engage with. Over time, that consistency defines your reputation-and determines the opportunities that come your way.
Elliott Broidy is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Broidy Capital Holdings, LLC, a private equity investment firm specializing in AI-driven public safety software. He is also the Co-Chair of the Fund to End Antisemitism, Extremism and Hate which supports theAuschwitz Research Center on Hate, Extremism and Radicalization (ARCHER) at House 88, an initiative of The Counter Extremism Project.
This essay, written by author, artist, and filmmaker Inna Rogatchi, is the second of two parts and was originally published in The Times of Israel. Part I can be found here.
Thought-provoking and unusual exhibition The Birdman of Auschwitz: Science and Faltered Conscience has been opened at House 88 in Oswenziem, Poland, in a direct proximity to Auschwitz camp. The exhibition which evokes fundamental questions that has become acutely relevant today again, is located at the house in which Rudolf Höss’ family was happily thriving during his years as the Auschwitz Commandant, and even during his absence there. Since 2025, the house has become a site-specific awareness and education point of ARCHER Project that fights antisemitism and terrorism.
The Birdman of Auschwitz exhibition at ARCHER in House 88, Oswienciem, Poland. April 2026. Photo: Michael Bojara. (C) CEP?ARCHER. With kind permission.
The Story of Moral Creeps, Their Actions & Traces
The Birdman of Auschwitz exhibition presents in documents, photos, and artifacts the story that if it would be first laid out as a script , it might not get far as the Hollywood script-gatekeepers would think that the imagination of the script writer was too wild. Once again, history itself has proved to be the most surprising author. In this case, it happened through a very able and thorough British historian Nicholas Milton on whose book The Birdman of Auschwitz ( 2025) the current exhibition at ARCHER at House 88 is based.
The visitors of the exhibition and the readers of the book will learn the story of a very well-known and highly esteemed scientist in the pre- and post- WWII Germany and Austria, Gunter Niethammer, who was the head of the Department of Ornithology at the Museum of Natural History in Vienna just on the brink on WWII.
At the same time, the man was a devoted Nazi. Like many of his scientific colleagues, Niethammer did rush to prove his loyalty to the Nazism and join the party early, to guarantee the smoothness of his career. At the same time, he actually belonged to the Nazi elite, via his family circle.
Niethammer was the nephew of an ultra-nationalist writer Hans Grimm, the one who invented and created a concept of Volk onhe Raum, A People Without Space, at the early moment of the formation of the Nazi ideology, in 1926, next year after publication of Mein Kampf.
nuFiD-vYSZviVYUb_rj3ij__anPXDTzYgA.woff2The cover of two volumes of the Nazi expansionist ideology, the novel by Hans Grimm. First edition, 1926. Credit: Creative Commons.
Not only that line, Volk onhe Raum, has become the title of Grimm’s very well-known novel, but because of that, the novel was probably the most-read book in Germany and Austria all the years from its release throughout the war, until 1945, at least. There is statistical data with this regard. Grimm’s 1345-page novelized ideology has become the backbone of the explanation of the necessity of expansionist global war. And its author has been very well-known in the top-layer of the Reich. So his nephew Gunter, who has been quite close to his writer uncle, had a very solid and far-stretching backing in his career and life in general, too.
Niethammer joined the Nazi party in 1937, when he was 25. Two years later, he joined the SS. Immediately after, he joined the Secret Field Police. He knew exactly what he was doing, why and what for. He was turned away from the Luftwaffe, mostly likely due to his age (he was over 30 at the time), and also due to the fact that he had no military background. He ended up as a guard in Auschwitz, staying there on duties at the main entrance. The most inviting point for bird-watching, naturally for the Nazis.
In a half of a year, he started to use his family and academic connections to get transferred from under that huge Arbeit Macht Frei sign over his head while on duty. At the same time, he tried hard to be useful for Rudolf Höss, who did not mind having a freshly-hunted game for his family dinners. There is an existing statistic, for example, that only during one month between September and October 1942, Niethammer provided over 100 wild ducks for Höss household for an upscale nutrition.
In demonstrating his patronage, Höss assigned Niethammer to ‘special ornithological duties’ in Auschwitz. It is thanks to the Nazis’ punctuality in maintaining their documentation that we have the documents about it. Otherwise, it would be too kitschy to believe in such sick fantasies of these humanoids.
As a proof of his usefulness and existence of those ‘special ornithological duties’, methodical Nazi Niethammer cared for publishing a scientific paper on his effort in Auschwitz. It also exists, and the copy of it is one of the stunning exhibits at House 88. There is the photo of the scientific ornithological paper from Auschwitz in 1942, with a proud SS stamp in the headline.
The copy of the Niethammer’s scientific paper published in 1942, exhibited at The Birdman of Auschwitz. (C) CEP/ARCHER. With kind permission.
The degree of perversion of those supposed-to-be humans was, in fact, far higher than it has been known publicly for decades after WWII. Importantly, it was a focused, deliberate effort by far too many people after the war to diffuse the scale of crimes against humanity committed by all those ‘white-color Nazis’, such as architects, scientists, engineers, and anyone else who did make the Shoah happen in the industrial scale or was such a willing Nazi fellow traveller. This is the shameful and screaming fact of history which has to be addressed in full detail, today and tomorrow. There is no statute of limitation for covering up the crimes against humanity.
Nicholas Milton, the author of The Birdman of Auschwitz book ( 2025) which has provided the material for the ongoing exhibition at ARCHER House 88 in Oswenciem, has shared with me one of his surprises while researching for his very thorough book: “Can you imagine that when the Red Army has liberated Auschwitz and went through the premises, including the Höss house, what did they find in his safe? The copy of that scientific publication of Niethammer, with his hand-written dedication and gratitude to Höss. The point is that Höss actually kept it in his safe, it was something important and meaningful for him”, – emphasized Nicholas.
If there would be any ornithologist who hunted delicacies for the Auschwitz commandant and his family, Höss most likely would not give a damn to whatever paper his private hunter might publish. But in the case of Niethammer, his family was well-known politically, and his uncle was literally an ideologist-at-large for the very core of the Nazi Germany’s expansionist zealotry. Höss’ guard on his special ornithological duties in Auschwitz belonged to the Reich elite. No wonder that his hand-written gratitude was regarded as something of value and perhaps something potentially useful by one of the Reich most notorious criminals.
While Niethammer was thoroughly enjoying his scientific activities in Auschwitz and elsewhere, his happy family, an exact version of Höss idyllic monsters, frau and four sons, were living all the time from 1940 through May 1945 in Vienna, in a large house of a Jewish family, whose owners were kicked off from their property unceremoniously, and later on, the owner of the villa and her mother were sent to their death in the concentration camps. The 83-year old mother of the owner, Sofia Grunspann was murdered in Treblinka in 1942. And the owner of a lovely villa Rudolfina Liatcheff has vanished without trace, somewhere in the one of the camps that the bastard whose family has seized and occupied her house, was so busy with his scientific ornithological observations. The murky irony did stop there: nowadays once forcibly seized by the Nazis Jewish villa in Vienna houses the Embassy of Libya.
Villa, confiscated property of Liatcheff family, in Vienna, at Blaasstrasse, 33. (C) Creative Commons.
Entertainment, Auschwitz Style
To add to all this mounting macabre, the exhibition at House 88 tells about ornithological museum, or show-room, in the extermination camp, that has been set there by Niethammer with backing by the special order by the camp’s commandant Höss, in one of the barracks, for the entertainment of the Auschwitz officers and personnel. It is not black humor.
As it is known, Auschwitz has become the place of the worst of moral perversity, additionally to its monstrous mass extermination. The Nazis set up three orchestras there, two male ones and one female one, of which my great-aunt Alma Rose after her arrest and deportation to Auschwitz from the Drancy in July 1943 was forced to lead. They also have a cinema for the officers and personnel, as it is known. And as it transpires from the exhibition at ARCHER at House 88 and Nicholas Milton’s book, they also cared enough to set up an ornithological museum in the extermination camp. According to Milton, during his inspectional visit to Auschwitz on July 17-18, 1942, Himmler visited the museum as well. The Zone of Interest, indeed.
There is one telling episode of the kind of ornithology that Niethammer exercised in Auschwitz. Nicholas Milton has told me about it specifically, and since that, the episode pierces my mind. “Among the species of the Niethammer’s hunted and stuffed birds that are on display at the current exhibition, there is sadly not the Black redstart, which does exist and belongs to the Niethammer Auschwitz trophies at the Vienna Natural History Museum collection. It is a nice bird that looks like a robin. In Niethammer’s papers, there is a specific description regarding the Black redstart, in his own handwrite”.
The Nazi ornithologist’s observation was the following: “June 25, 1941. The nest is found in a brickyard at the camp where amongst the bricks piled up by the prisoners the female (Black redstart bird) had built a loose cup of grass lined with hair, wool and feathers’, the hair and wool once belonging to the prisoners, the wool coming from the prisoners clothes and uniforms”. This kind of ornithology. This kind of science. This kind of conscious behavior of a humanoid in the midst of the engineered genocide.
Authentic prisoner robe from Auschwitz exhibited at The Birdman of Auschwitz at ARCHER in House 88 exhibition. Photo: Michal Bojara. (C) CEP/ARCHER, with kind permission.
That humanoid, after a brief, due to the intervention of his international scientific colleagues, just three years imprisonment in Poland after the war, has lived thirty more years, flourishing in his career and being recognized at many levels, both in Germany and internationally. He was elected as President of German Ornithological Society, the Chairman of German Zoological Society, Director of museums, professor of universities. There are as many as nine bird and other species officially named after him, still today. Of course, he was such an expert on the bird’s nests made with ‘formerly human hairs’. Shame is not enough for all those people and institutions who have blurred and covered up the Niethammer’s complicity in the crimes against humanity both in Germany and anywhere else for good three decades. This is actually co-complicity from all those individuals and institutions, and it has to be understood and known this way, for the sake of normality of this and next generations.
Expanding the Painful Lessons
Probably, with this in mind, the people who are leading the Ornithology Department of the Vienna Natural History Museum nowadays, have become alerted with regard to their Niethammer collection of more than 90 species hunted by him in Auschwitz during WWII. Based on ongoing dialogue with them, Ambassador Mark Wallace has told me about them re-visiting the collection, and their plans to expand the Museum’s loan to ARCHER project with more species to be shown publicly, and also possibly in the expanded tour of this stunning exhibition.
That would be sobering and highly important.“Can you imagine, all these birds who were hunted and stuffed by that beast Niethammer personally, and which all bears his own nitty hand-written labels with the SS stamps of each of them, during past 85 years had been never shown to anyone, not for once, none of them. Now they, the material witnesses of the Nazi evil, will be shown internationally, and hopefully, will evoke people’s attention to the evil that has ruled that darkness that was the Shoah, and by seeing it as it is, and learning the story behind it, people will become more vigilant to the same-creed of evil which has been awakened so ugly today. This is one of the ways to show the wide public one of the dark faces of hate and crime, and to make people think about it, in general as well This is what we are aiming for at CEP and ARCHER Projects, fighting the hate of today by evoking the understanding and compassion by the authentic means of history for which we are looking tirelessly”.
It is quite uneasy and demanding emotionally and mentally, but an absolutely necessary thing to do today. Because tomorrow it might be too late.
From the left: historian Nicholas Milton, Ambassador Mark Wallace, director of ARCHER in House 88 Jacek Purski at the preview event of The Birdman of Auschwitz exhibition in Oswienciem, Poland. April 2026. Photo: Michal Bojara. (C) CEP/ARCHER. With kind permission.
Birdsong from Silence, Light from Darkness
In their determination to fight the evil of yesterday and today, Ambassador Wallace, his colleagues, principle co-funders of the ARCHER projects, such as Robin and Elliott Broidy, Dr. Thomas S. Kaplan and Dafne Recanati Kaplan, the CEP and ARCHER team, are going further than exhibiting artifacts. They are determined to fight the evil at its very housing. It can be done in different ways, what matters here is the principle and the intention.
In the case of the theme of birds over Auschwitz, the ARCHER team has placed four bird-houses in the garden made in part from wood from the Höss fence. As the exhibition’s curator Nicholas Milton has told me, “We plan to use the bird boxes to bring back birdsong to Auschwitz in memory of the victims.”
Nicholas also mentioned that in mid-April this year, the birds already sang at the premises, quite vividly so. It looks like the famed architect Daniel Libeskind who in early 2025 was telling his friend Ambassador Mark Wallace that the birds will sing there again, was right.
The birds that in Jewish tradition symbolizes Jewish souls and are connected to it directly, in their behavior also always feel human warmth, and the character of human activities, in a primary meaning, good or bad it is, roughly. This is a scientific fact, too.
In this first major awareness and educational, historic exhibition at ARCHER in House 88, we can see embodiment of the idea that Mark Wallace was graceful to share with me in one of our conversations: “Birdsong from silence, Light from Darkness”. Simple and clear, as moral clarity and determination to act for its sake should be, to be efficient and worthy.
