Earlier this summer, Global Jewry — a simultaneously robust though modest international network of Jewish organizations and figures — quietly marked its second anniversary. It was not out of modesty that the occasion went largely unmentioned, but because it fell as the 12-day Israel-Iran war was winding down.

“When the war broke out, we just said, nobody cares really that it’s our second anniversary. It’s a nice thing, but we’re in no rush,” Sandy Cardin, the founder of Global Jewry and a veteran figure in Jewish philanthropy, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

This week, Global Jewry announced the creation of two prizes for Jewish organizations focused on partnership — the Shoshana Shoubin Cardin Prize for Exemplary Collaboration and the Global Jewry Prize for Emerging Collaboration — which Cardin said are more significant than marking the two-year anniversary. 

In the past two years, the network, which was first announced in these pages, has grown to include more than 450 local, national and international Jewish organizations — from Adamah to Z3 — along with nearly 900 advisory board members. Earlier this year, it also absorbed Amitim, an initiative connecting former Jewish federation executives to Israeli nonprofit leaders.

Unlike other umbrella groups, Global Jewry does not purport to speak for, well, global Jewry. It instead strives to be the “rising tide that lifts all boats,” according to Cardin, convening discussions, highlighting initiatives and connecting organizations.  

“We have no agenda of our own. We don’t need to be out front. We’re not looking to be a member of the Conference of Presidents. We’re just looking to help every organization do what they do better and to try and do that in a way that is completely noncompetitive,” Cardin told eJP. (Global Jewry may not be a member of the Conference of Presidents, but the Conference of Presidents is a partner of Global Jewry.)

The two awards, each with a $10,000 cash prize, are designed to encourage partnership and cooperation. The exemplary collaboration prize, which is named for Cardin’s mother, a pioneering woman in Jewish communal life, will be awarded to an existing project involving two or more Global Jewry members, which has been running for at least two years; the emerging collaboration prize will provide seed funding for a new partnership, with 50% paid at the time of the award and 50% at the submission of a six-month progress report.

Projects can be nominated by others or by themselves through Nov. 15. The prize committee comprises Jewish leaders from around the world, with representatives from the U.S., U.K., Israel, Spain, Argentina, Australia, South Africa, Hungary and Hong Kong. The committee is chaired by David Hatchwell Altaras and Jill Smith, with Avital and Natan Sharansky and former Ambassador of the United States to the European Union Stuart E. Eizenstat serving as honorary chairs. The funding for the prizes was provided by Lee Liberman, Rafi Musher and Lara Seligman, Jeffrey Solomon and Audrey Weiner, and Kimberly Miller Rubenfeld.

“Hopefully, this will stimulate a lot of interest and activity, and that’s what we’re looking for,” Cardin said of the prizes.

Global Jewry was launched in mid-2023 at the height of the turmoil in Israel and throughout the Jewish world over the Israeli government’s judicial overhaul, which opponents considered to be a dire threat to the country’s democratic values. 

“When we started this, it was a direct result of what was happening in the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv about judicial reform. It was seeing the language and the rhetoric that Jews were using to talk about other Jews, which had gotten to a level that I had never really seen in my entire life,” he said. “Someone needed to step in and just say, ‘Look, let’s keep reminding that we’re one family. That we don’t always agree on everything. We’ve never always agreed on everything, but we are a family. We need to respect each other. We need to understand each other. We need to tone down the rhetoric. That was the impetus for starting Global Jewry.”

Global Jewry was also created as an homage to Ilia Salita, the CEO and president of the Genesis Philanthropy Group, who died in 2020 and had helped spearhead the initiative Our Common Destiny, which also sought to bring together Jewish organizations from around the world. 

“It came into being because there was a vacuum, a void after the end of Our Common Destiny… of a global enterprise that was really talking about solidarity, talking about unity, talking about Jewish Peoplehood in that way,” Cardin said.

Global Jewry has so far been able to attract such a large number of partners because its scope is intentionally limited. It also helps that it is being run by one of the most influential figures in Jewish philanthropy, who served for 25 years as president of the then-Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, developing deep ties throughout the Jewish world. 

“Many people just said, ‘Sandy, if you’re doing it and it’s not going to make any statements and you don’t want any money and you don’t need any time, great, put my name on it,’” Cardin said. (This was indeed a sentiment expressed by some partners.)

At first, Global Jewry focused on adding new members and advisors. “As we grew, we had more partners and people started saying, ‘OK, but now what are you going to do besides just keep growing?’” Cardin said. “And that’s when we started offering the master classes and putting together global roundtables, starting the WhatsApp groups. The main thing they all share is that they bring people together, in small groups and larger groups — that’s what it’s all about.”

Rabbi Seth Farber, the founder and CEO of the Israeli religious freedom nonprofit Itim, which is a member of Global Jewry, said that for him, the organization both gives him something that he can’t easily find elsewhere and allows him to offer something to other parts of the Jewish world. “What I can get from it is global perspective,” Farber said. 

The other members of Global Jewry’s WhatsApp groups and other roundtables come from all around the world and have all “demonstrated their value to the Jewish community,” he said. By “curating” these groups, Global Jewry offers a more “anchored” forum for discussion than the cacophony of social media. “They’re a good space for multiple voices to be expressed,” Farber said.

For Farber, those fora also allow him to expose other parts of the Jewish world to his work within Israel’s Orthodox religious system. “There aren’t that many Orthodox people involved,” he said. “So it is a good opportunity because a lot of these people miss the kinds of things that I’m working on. And they should be aware of it because it relates to the broader Jewish world.”

For example, Farber said that through Global Jewry, he found a few participants for his organization’s “Love the Convert Shabbat,” an annual event held the Shabbat before the Shavuot holiday (when Ruth the Moabite made the first conversion to Judaism). “A few people — who wouldn’t have otherwise — got to us through that,” he said. 

A brief scroll through Global Jewry’s partners indeed reveals relatively few Orthodox organizations. Cardin acknowledged that it has been challenging to recruit Modern Orthodox and Haredi partners and said that the group is working on it. 

“I would love to be able to say to you a year from now, two years from now, that we have much greater [connection to the Orthodox community],” Cardin said. “And it’s not just the Haredi community. Embedding ourselves in the [Modern] Orthodox community is not so easy either, but we’re going to do the best we can. We’re going to continue to reach out, and the door is always open.”

In general, Cardin said that the goal of Global Jewry is not to reach every single Jewish organization in the world and that the group does have certain “red lines” for members. 

“The red lines are, ‘You must accept the legitimacy and the sovereignty of the State of Israel.’ If you question in any way the legitimacy and sovereignty of the State of Israel, we don’t want you a part of Global Jewry. You want to criticize the government, gey gezunterheyt [go in good health]. But that’s very different from questioning legitimacy,” Cardin said. “The second is a little fuzzier. … You can’t be polarizing. Even if you agree with the safety and security of the State of Israel, if you are an organization that seeks to polarize, that seeks to divide, you’re not invited here.”

Cardin estimated that those criteria, along with some organizations’ general lack of interest in broad collaboration, mean that the farthest 25% of the left and right will not join Global Jewry.  “Our real market is the 50% in the middle of Jewish organizations,” he said.