‘Jewish Nobel’ Cancels Ceremony Over Syrian Refugee Crisis

Image by Facebook
(JTA) — The Genesis Prize will not hold its annual award ceremony at the request of 2017 recipient Anish Kapoor, a refugee advocate who deemed a celebration inappropriate in light of the worsening Syria crisis.
Kapoor, an influential artist and social activist, and the Genesis Prize Foundation “agreed that in light of the escalating war in Syria and the resulting deterioration of the refugee situation there, it would be inappropriate to hold a festive ceremony to honor Mr. Kapoor and his work on refugee issues while children are being killed with chemical and other horrible weapons on Israel’s doorstep,” according to a statement by the foundation awarding the prestigious $1 million prize.
The statement cited a chemical attack and a bus bombing in April that led to a total of more than 200 casualties. The foundation said that it would instead raise funds to aid Syrian refugees.
The foundation announced in February that Kapoor, the son of a Baghdadi Jewish mother and Indian father, would receive the so-called Jewish Nobel. Previous recipients include violinist Itzhak Perlman, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and actor-director Michael Douglas.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 3
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 4
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
In Case You Missed It
-
Culture In a time of tariffs and uncertainty, this is the Jewish word we need to soothe our minds and souls
-
Opinion As Zionist Jews, we must condemn Trump’s campaign to deport students
-
Opinion Trump is cracking down on universities — just like Hitler targeted academics who didn’t bow to his will
-
Fast Forward As Netanyahu arrives in Budapest, Hungary announces exit from International Criminal Court
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.