Short bio

Gil Amminadav is a poet, philosopher, and builder in Jerusalem. He is a co-founder and the COO of BrightLeaf Giving and BrightLeaf Digital, hosts The Z Word podcast, and writes about Maimonidean Judaism, Intergalactic Zionism, and working with AI at amminadav.com.

Long bio

Gil Amminadav grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and made aliyah to Jerusalem about fifteen years ago, where he and his wife are raising their daughters. He speaks English, Hebrew, and a little Arabic.

He is a co-founder and the COO of BrightLeaf Giving, which helps grassroots projects and nonprofits raise money through fiscal sponsorship, and BrightLeaf Digital, which builds the software behind it and the GravityOps plugins for Gravity Forms. He runs both companies with AI systems he built himself, and coaches founders and teams who want to work the same way.

He hosts The Z Word, a podcast about what Zionism is for and what it must become, with Palestinian and Israeli guests. He describes himself as a rational mystic, a post-Maimonidean, a student of sages, and a pro-Palestinian libertarian socialist Intergalactic Zionist, and his essays and poems appear on amminadav.com and The Times of Israel.

Topics

• Maimonides now. A halakha that is rational, practical, and meaningful, without superstition.
• Intergalactic Zionism. From divided rule to shared rule: the eighteen planks of A New Deal for Zion.
• Two sides to a flag. Being pro-Palestinian and a Zionist in Jerusalem, during a war.
• AI at work and in war. The leverage it gives, the judgment it still needs, and the people giving it the power to kill.
• Running a small company on AI. Shared memory, voice agents, and automations, from the inside, starting from LEAD: list, eliminate, automate, delegate.
• Israelite studies. Why it should replace Jewish studies, and what the fuller story of northern Israel and southern Judah changes.
• Fiscal sponsorship. How grassroots projects raise money without starting their own nonprofit.

Formats

Podcast interviews, panels, talks, workshops, and classes, in person in Jerusalem or online, in English or Hebrew.