Michael Bloomberg To Be Awarded the $1M Genesis Prize
Outgoing New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg will be the first recipient of the Genesis Prize, an award aimed at inspiring young Jews. Image by getty images
By Josh Nathan-Kazis October 21, 2013
Billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg will be the first recipient of a new $1 million prize meant to inspire young Jews.
The Genesis Prize, backed by a group of Russian Jewish oligarchs, right-wing Israeli politicians, and American Jewish communal leaders, will be awarded to the outgoing New York City mayor on October 21, the New York Times reported.
Prize organizers have high hopes for their award, which early press releases likened to a Jewish Nobel Prize. Wayne Firestone, the former director of Hillel International and the current president of the foundation created to give out the prize, told the Forward in April that he saw the prize as away to get young Jews excited about being Jewish.
“What I’m hoping to do is to build an engagement platform for young adults, to allow them to meet these individuals, hear their stories, potentially interact with them directly,” Firestone said at the time.
It’s unclear whether the mayor of New York City, whose net worth is estimated by Forbes to be $31 billion, will meet with young Jewish adults on behalf of Genesis.
Genesis Prize organizers faced criticism before the prize was announced over the small number of women on the prize committee and the rightward slant in the political affiliations of prize committee members. Others expressed skepticism as to whether such a prize was necessary.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
