Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams’ motto is “I am just getting started” — a sign of his can-do attitude and desire to defy expectations. But the real estate mogul and longtime donor to Jewish and Israeli causes is also now “just getting started” on a new path. 

Last week, Adams — perhaps best known for sponsoring large-scale international sports and cultural events in Israel — was appointed the next president of the Israel region of the World Jewish Congress. 

This position gives him new cache and standing as he transitions from “self-appointed ambassador-at-large for Israel” — as he designated himself when he immigrated to Israel in 2016 — to a diplomat backed by a significant international organization. 

Last week, eJewishPhilanthropy spoke with Adams in a wide-ranging interview about his appointment, his plans to revitalize what he called an “underperforming” chapter of the WJC and his plans to help revitalize southern Israel after the Oct. 7 terror attacks.

The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Judah Ari Gross: Congratulations on this appointment. Tell me a little bit how this came about.

Sylvan Adams: I was approached by members of the World Jewish Congress, at the beginning not specifically about taking on a post, but in terms of maybe having a relationship with the World Jewish Congress. I had a lunch with Ronald Lauder, the president of the Congress, and he had heard nice things about me, as he told me, and he offered me the job.

It’s kind of a transition for me. When I moved to Israel, the first week I moved, I had business cards printed with a new title where I called myself the “self-appointed ambassador at large for Israel.” Since then, that’s what I’ve been doing, promoting the Israel that I know and love, the Israel that is so badly misunderstood, badly covered by the media, that doesn’t really address the fact that we are a normal Western democracy with pluralistic, open, tolerant values that we have, and really doesn’t portray an accurate picture of who we are. So in my role as an unofficial ambassador, as the self-appointed one, I took on projects that were intended to show large audiences a different picture of Israel. 

Now, with this in a more official capacity as the president of the Israeli chapter of the World Jewish Congress, I can do that with the power of the World Jewish Congress brand. Mr. Lauder also gave me a specific mandate, which was to work to create a better connection between Israel and the Diaspora communities.

JAG: Your work in terms of Israel advocacy has mostly been on the sort of the cultural side, primarily through music and sports. Do you see that still being where you expect to operate, or are you going to shift to more diplomacy proper, working with other governments and international institutions?

SA: I definitely intend to go in that second direction, but without neglecting what I was doing before because I think it’s important and I think I can continue to do that. As I said, I can do it under the auspices of the World Jewish Congress, which will bring additional prestige to the events and additional visibility particularly to the Jewish communities to take pride in these major events that are happening in Israel. 

Of course being at war at the moment, I was kind of put out of business in terms of creating large international events, and I’m hopeful that once the wars have ended, once we’re able to return to a semblance of normalcy that we can continue and go back to doing those things. 

JAG: In terms of the specific mandate of connecting Israel and Diaspora, what are some ways that you intend to go about that? 

SA: The two subjects that interest me with respect to the Diaspora are Jewish identity and Jewish continuity. I was very active in my former community of Montreal in that regard because I’m a great believer in Jewish education. As I like to say, you cannot love what you don’t know, and for secular Jews, they need to have pride in their heritage. Teaching [the story of the Jewish people], making that connection and engendering Jewish pride will lead to Jewish continuity so I think my focus will be largely on approaching the problem of the loss of our youth, particularly in the United States, from that perspective.

JAG: Have you started looking at organizations that you can partner with on that front? Or are you still getting a lay of the land? 

SA: I have a few projects in mind, which were piloted in Montreal successfully. The idea would be to try to export those. As an example, we came up in Montreal with a very innovative tuition-assistance program for Jewish day schools, and it’s done in a very elegant, anonymous fashion. You log on to a website, you plug in your family income anonymously — you can even have a six-figure income — and it will automatically spit out the tuition assistance that you can expect to receive from the community. We have an endowment — I was one of the founders in creating this endowment — to encourage families to choose a Jewish day school. I was also instrumental in building a Jewish high school, which carries my name, in Montreal. [It was meant to be] the best school on the market, not just best Jewish school on the market, but the best school on the market because Jewish parents are competitive and they want the best for their kids, and unless they feel that the school they’re sending their kids to is the best, they may choose a different option. So we built this wonderful high school; it has state-of-the-art facilities, it has fantastic extracurricular programs and our enrollment has soared by about 50% as a result. So we have we have these two ideas that I think are very exportable to different communities all across North America, and we have some other ideas as well, which again I will be able to — as the no longer self-appointed diplomat — but in this official capacity, to try to sell these ideas to various communities.

JAG: We have previously spoken about your $100 million donation to Ben-Guirion University in Beersheva. At the time, you were looking to get involved in some other sports and cycling-related projects in southern Israel. Are there any developments there? 

SA: We have a project, the mayor of Beersheva and I, we just shook hands on it a couple of weeks ago on a project to develop one of the largest bike parks in the entire world, a state-of-the-art bike park, a multidisciplinary bike park. We would build a velodrome, we would build all kinds of BMX facilities, which don’t exist currently in Israel, pump tracks, mountain biking trails — an entire bike park covering many acres. We are currently doing a feasibility study to establish the budget for the entire project. The mayor and I shook hands that we will be doing this as partners together. It’s part of the same philosophy [as my Ben-Gurion University donation] that you need employment and economic activity to attract families, but once you have them, they need something for the kids to do, they need activities so that they can live a fulfilling and interesting life in the south, and this bike park will be better than anything else anywhere else in the country. It will be as good as anything that exists in the world. 

JAG: I believe you also mentioned at the time about renovating the cycling paths outside of Kibbutz Be’eri.  

SA: Correct, correct. They had these amazing bike paths that were built by this amazing guy, Rami Gold,  who did it all by himself. He built all of those paths, and what happened was when the tanks rolled into Gaza they destroyed all of the cycle paths that were built. 

[During the Oct. 7 terror attacks,] Rami, who is 70-something years old, bravely took a gun in his hand — he used to be on the security force of the kibbutz, but they retired him because he reached retirement age. He and another gentleman, [Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar, another resident of the kibbutz], the two of them defended the community. They were preventing terrorists from penetrating further into the kibbutz. His story was so amazing that I actually brought him to my bicycle teams, to the Israel – Premier Tech cycling team training camp where he talked to the whole team and told his most fascinating story. So when I visited the south, I gave my new friend Rami my commitment that we would help him rebuild his beautiful cycling paths, which he had built for the mountain biking community of the country.

What do we say? “We will dance again.”

JAG: In terms of your relationship now with the World Jewish Congress, have you pledged any financial support for the organization or is there an expectation of that going forward? 

SA: So I will be underwriting the activity of the Israeli chapter, yes. We will hopefully have other collaborators, but I will be responsible for the Israeli chapter, which has been underperforming really of late.

JAG: Do you have any plans in terms of expanding the Israeli branch, not only in terms of your own personal activities, but bringing on more people or otherwise expanding its operations? 

SA: Certainly, we want to beef up the activities of what was happening in Israel and to stand up and be counted, to be one of the strong legs on which the table of the Jewish world stands.”

I don’t know if I told you this the last time, but Judah, I have a personal slogan: “I’m just getting started,” so it’s particularly appropriate as I embark on this new role.