Sami Rohr, a major philanthropist whose giving created and sustained hundreds of Chabad Lubavitch houses around the world, died at the age of 86. Rohr, who died Sunday in South Florida and was buried Tuesday in Jerusalem, reportedly gave some $250 million to Jewish causes, especially Jewish education and culture, throughout the world through his…
A month ago I attended an event on Russian-Jewish philanthropy. The big name speakers — Russian leaders of major Jewish organizations — explained that we were witnessing a watershed moment. The Russian-Jewish community in America, which had over the past few decades lived off of the welfare of others, had risen to a considerable position…
Sheryl Sandberg is about to become a very rich woman — and I’m really happy about it. The world needs more rich women, especially women who understand the importance of empowering other women. The New York Times called Sandberg the “$1.6 billion woman,” based on the anticipated public offering of Facebook, where Sandberg is COO….
Donor-advised funds are the fastest growing method of philanthropy that you’ve probably never heard of. Nationwide last year, these funds had assets totaling $30 billion. Almost $3 billion was held by Jewish institutions, the largest of which — the Jewish Communal Fund of New York — had assets of almost $1 billion, making it among…
An American immigrant to Israel received today one of the country’s great honors, the Knesset Speaker’s Prize for Quality of Life. In 1990, three decades after immigrating to Israel, Hebrew University academic Eliezer Jaffe set about taking the old shtetl idea of a free loan society and building it on a national scale in Israel….
Remember that little cardboard or plastic (and if you are even older, metal) tzedakah box that you used to drop coins into at home or at Hebrew school? Well, so does the American Jewish World Service, which is using it as the inspiration for a new design competition to be launched in January. “Where Do…
While attending a Jewish Funder’s Network conference 15 years ago, I received a monograph on Jewish social justice. The powerful essay, written by Leonard Fein, lifelong champion of many social justice issues, had a major flaw. It did not refer to a single woman activist. When I challenged Fein on this, he responded with a…
It’s not quite worthy of a Sherlock Holmes story, but the mystery continues: Who censored Steven Spielberg’s name at a movie theater in Lebanon? In a piece picked up by The Washington Post, the country’s Blog Baladi reported yesterday that the director’s name had been covered up on a poster for his next movie, the…
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