No. 38: Doron Almog, Yaakov Hagoel, Mark Wilf: Uniting Israel, world Jewry in a year of challenge

Almog’s vision for the Jewish Agency is driven by the values that shaped Israel: mission, love, respect, mutual responsibility, and unity. His is a love that leaves no one behind, shaping the agency’s work to forge connections between Israel and world Jewry.

Almog founded and chairs the ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran Rehabilitation Village, named for his son Eran, who was born with a severe disability and died young. Eran was named for Almog’s brother, who fell in the Yom Kippur War.

In 2026, Almog’s story of service and loss reached wider audiences through the documentary From October 6 to October 7, which premiered at the Israel Film Festival in Beverly Hills in February and screened in New York that June – reframing his personal tragedies as a message of action, responsibility, and rebuilding. In a world too often defined by despair, Almog continues to deliver a much-needed modicum of hope.

Since the Israel-Hamas War, the WZO has coordinated Diaspora donations of essential supplies to soldiers on the front lines, provided mobile shower facilities, and helped more than 500 vacant apartments open to evacuees, displaced families, and relatives of hostages. At the government’s request, it assisted the Hostages and Missing Persons Command in supporting returning hostages and their families, and through its Settlement Division established seven new neighborhoods to temporarily house kibbutzim attacked on October 7.

Hagoel also convened the Jewish People Challenges Conference, bringing together 500 Jewish leaders from 38 countries to confront the war and the surge in antisemitism.

In early 2026, Hagoel traveled to Australia with President Isaac Herzog’s delegation to stand with a Jewish community shaken by the deadliest antisemitic terror attack in the country’s history, and publicly challenged New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani to march alongside tens of thousands of Jews at the annual Israel Day Parade in New York.

Since assuming the role in 2022, Wilf has brought his decades of Jewish communal leadership to the agency’s mission of strengthening Israel, supporting Jewish communities worldwide, and deepening the bonds that connect Jews to Israel and to one another.

Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel, Wilf has played a key leadership role in mobilizing world Jewry to support Israel’s recovery and strengthen the bond between Israel and Jewish Communities worldwide. Wilf previously served as chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, and has long championed Jewish communal responsibility, including efforts to support Holocaust survivors living in poverty. The son of Holocaust survivors, he has carried his family’s legacy forward through significant philanthropic support for institutions, including Yad Vashem and Yeshiva University.

At a defining moment for the Jewish people, Wilf’s leadership reflects a commitment to collective responsibility and a conviction that Israel and world Jewry share not only a common history, but a common future.