San Diego philanthropists Ernest and Evelyn Rady have pledged a $10 million matching gift to Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America, funding three pediatrics programs at the group’s Hadassah Hospital Ein Kerem in Jerusalem that will together form the Rady Pediatric Center, eJewishPhilanthropy has learned.

For Rady, who founded the real estate investment firm American Assets, Inc., and Insurance Company of the West, the connection with the Jerusalem hospital traces back more than eight decades. “My mother was the president of Hadassah in Winnipeg, Canada, and I heard about Hadassah for many, many years,” Ernest Rady told eJewishPhilanthropy. “I followed Hadassah and the good work they do; what they do in Israel is really important. The thing that is most important for me is taking care of children.”

The pledge, which is being made through the couple’s Rady Foundation, is structured as a challenge grant: Hadassah must raise an equal sum to unlock the Radys’ full commitment. The couple used the same mechanism in 2025, providing $10 million that was matched by other Hadassah donors — also for pediatrics.

Rady said he hopes these matching gifts will inspire more philanthropic support for the Jerusalem hospital.

The couples’ donations — both the current one and the $10 million from 2025 — will fund three pediatric programs at Ein Kerem: renovating a pediatric inpatient surgery department that treats more than 3,600 children a year; expanding a fortified neonatal unit to double its capacity to 56 incubators; and creating a combined pediatric-adult pulmonology center to handle more than 500 bronchoscopies annually.

Rady’s philanthropic and lay leadership record in San Diego spans Jewish and non-Jewish causes, though he has said that he prefers to keep a low profile. “You know, if I had my druthers, I’d just as soon be less prominent and visible,” he told San Diego Magazine in 2024.

Rady chaired the San Diego region of Israel Bonds and the board of the Jewish Federation of San Diego. Yet the centerpiece of his giving has been Rady Children’s Hospital-San Diego, where the family is the largest funder. In 2006, the Radys donated $60 million, giving twice that in 2014, and then $200 million in 2019 to fund new facilities, genomic research and a master-plan expansion.

Rady, who signed the Giving Pledge, was characteristically unsentimental about his decision to fund pediatrics in Jerusalem. “It was no big effort because that’s what we were going to do anyway,” he told eJP. “It was not a big emotional thing for me. A friend of mine asked me to do it so I did it.”

He declined to draw broader lessons for Israeli hospitals like Hadassah, offering only: “[For Israelis,] it’s a task to exist and God only knows I can do what I can to help, and that’s why I did what I did.”

Through his support for Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego, where he has been involved since the 1980s, Rady has transformed the healthcare landscape in San Diego. With this pledge, Rady has his eyes on Jerusalem. 

“The Radys’ remarkable investment in pediatric care at Hadassah hospital is an investment in hope, healing and the well-being of countless children and families,” Hadassah’s national president, Carol Ann Schwartz, said in a statement. “They will benefit from Hadassah’s lifesaving work for generations.”

Rady waved off the credit. “Don’t thank me; thank the people who do the work; thank the people at Hadassah.”