(JTA) — At a recent event to launch a pro-Israel mentoring program at UCLA, the speaker introducing Michael Leven gushed, “He was willing to take his own plane and come here to speak to us.” When it was Leven’s turn to speak, he started with a clarification: “I didn’t take my plane, I took Sheldon Adelson’s….
As the Jewish Federations of North America holds its annual General Assembly this week, newly emerging evidence from the Pew Research Center’s 2013 “Portrait of American Jewry” points to enormous challenges facing federations, Jewish philanthropy and organized Jewish life, more generally. Virtually every Jewish institution is contending with a sharply diminishing base of people who…
When a storm wreaked havoc on East Coast air travel last winter, among the thousands of travelers stranded were several dozen Israeli-American teens from Washington and Philadelphia. But these youths, who were en route to the annual meeting of the Tzofim, the Israeli scouts, were luckier than the many others forced to mill about air…
Sylvia Hassenfeld, a major Jewish philanthropist and the first female president of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, has died. Hassenfeld, of Palm Beach, Fla., died Friday. She was 93. She served as the JDC chair from 1988 to 1992, representing the organization in the then newly disbanded Soviet Union, and overseeing significant Jewish outreach…
Cleveland philanthropists Michael and Anita Siegal have established a $1.25 million endowment to send Jewish children to overnight camp. The endowment in partnership with the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, as well as the Foundation for Jewish Camp and the Jewish Education Center of Cleveland, establishes the Michael and Anita Siegal One Happy Camper Program. The…
The event in New York City in late January looked more like a pitch meeting for venture capitalists than the usual Jewish philanthropic gathering. Several dozen businessmen and women holding booklets with financial balance sheets listened attentively as 17 heads of Jewish not-for-profit organizations took the stage and spoke for 20 minutes each, as if…
Facebook Inc. founder and Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his wife topped a list of the biggest U.S. philanthropic donors in 2013, giving away nearly $1 billion, the Chronicle of Philanthropy said on Monday. The top 50 U.S. donors gave $7.7 billion last year, up 4 percent from the previous year, helped by a surge…
Mayor Bloomberg, the recipient of the first Genesis Prize / Getty Images You know that Jewish charity that gave a $1 million prize to Michael Bloomberg, who can hardly count his billions? A feature in last week’s New Yorker sheds some light on the Russian oligarchs behind the award. For instance: In the early 2000s,…
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