At the end of last year, as the Madoff scandal and the economic crisis rocked the Jewish philanthropic world, a sense of near panic erupted within the Jewish community. It turns out that the big revelation was not that we were suddenly faced with a drastic reduction of communal resources; it was that there was…
It?s a popular blessing, or curse, depending on your viewpoint, often attributed to Confucius: ?May you live in interesting times.? Well, we in the world of Jewish philanthropy are certainly living in interesting times. That?s because for years, North American Jewry has faced nearly existential questions. We are older than the general population, and also…
I first encountered Hosts for Hospitals last year when a volunteer for the group promoted the program at my synagogue, the Germantown Jewish Centre, in Philadelphia. Hosts for Hospitals provides host homes to families with sick relatives so that they can avoid expensive and impersonal hotel stays while they travel to be near their loved…
The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan By Charles Bronfman and Jeffrey Solomon Jossey-Bass, 288 pages, $29.95. ‘The Art of Giving: Where the Soul Meets a Business Plan,” the new book penned by billionaire philanthropist Charles Bronfman, and the man who runs his foundation, Jeffrey Solomon, is something of a self-help…
Tara Lyn Gordon, the 26-year-old founder of Artists 4 Israel, says she averages three dates a week from the fundraisers she’s been attending for three years. “Last week [I had] five: two in the same day,” she said. Gordon goes to the fundraisers as a way both to network and to meet potential matches, and…
This past January, Rochelle Shoretz had just celebrated her son’s bar mitzvah in Israel and returned home, when she had a routine MRI, necessary after she’d been successfully treated for Stage 2 breast cancer seven years earlier. She wasn’t particularly concerned about the scan, having already made it past the critical five-year mark with no…
In advance of a trip that he took with his grandfather to Africa two years ago, Eric Feldman, 18, wanted to do something good. “I’ve always been raised not just to enjoy the beautiful sights, but to give back wherever you go,” he said. He was going to volunteer to serve food at a homeless…
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