Data scientist and venture capitalist David Magerman has awarded another $1 million donation to an Israeli institute of higher learning — this time Bar-Ilan University — as the one-time University of Pennsylvania donor now looks to encourage young American Jews to study in Israel.

Last year, even before the outbreak of anti-Israel and antisemitic incidents at Penn in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, Magerman announced he was cutting ties with the school, which was his alma mater and where two of his sons had studied. (One graduated from there; the other transferred.)

“This is a critical moment for Jewish American philanthropists,” Magerman said in a statement. “If even a fraction of the funds to our alma maters in America were to be invested in Israeli universities such as Bar-Ilan University, just imagine what is possible. There is tremendous potential, and a place like Bar-Ilan will accomplish so much with a gift like this.”

In June, Magerman told eJewishPhilanthropy that he had donated $1 million to the Jerusalem College of Technology (JCT) to help the school develop a program to integrate English speakers into its Hebrew programs. He told eJP that discussions were in the works for several other $1 million donations to other Israeli schools for similar initiatives.

“I had originally had a multimillion-dollar gift that was supposed to go to Penn, and I’ve decided to halt that gift. So instead of just saving the money, I decided to reinvest it in Israeli colleges,” Margerman told eJP at the time.

The agreement between Magerman and Bar-Ilan University was signed relatively soon after the one with JCT — on June 20 — but it took several weeks to announce it because of “finalizing details and coordinating between multiple organizations, staffing changes and summer vacations,” a spokesperson for Bar-Ilan said.

Magerman, who was in Israel on Oct. 7, said in June that he had been looking to find a way to help the Jewish community, specifically around supporting aliyah. “I’m not looking to support Israel as an exit strategy for America. I don’t think we should be trying to run away from or escape [the United States],” he said. “At the same time, I think that our place is in Israel.”

Both the donation to JCT and to Bar-Ilan University will help advance programs that gradually integrate English speakers into Hebrew-speaking programs — as opposed to supporting English-language degree programs.

Bar-Ilan University has had such a program for several years, but Magerman’s donation will allow the school to strengthen it, according to Jessica Feldan, CEO of the American Friends of Bar-Ilan University.

“This will help expand some of the majors that these young adults go into. It will help expand the number of students that we can take,” Feldan told eJP.

“It’s a viable alternative for them to get a degree in Israel, strengthen their Hebrew and be able to slowly and in a methodical way move into the [Hebrew-speaking] faculties that will make the biggest impact both in their own careers and in the Israeli economy,” Feldan said. “You can go into humanities, but… you can also move into [the hard sciences] once you start up this program.”

She said that the funding can allow Bar-Ilan University to do more to advertise the program and recruit students from the United States.

“I think David understood that this was a game changer at one of Israel’s top universities and wanted to invest in it,” Feldan said.

“He also heard about some transformational gifts — that $260 million that we announced a few months ago — and he actually said to me, ‘People want to be on a winning team,’” Feldan said. “He understands that people are investing in Bar-Ilan because it’s a winning team, as he said.”