NEW YORK — Nearly every surface in Ronald Lauder’s office on the 42nd floor of the General Motors Building in Midtown Manhattan has a clock on it. Some are brass, some are gold, and there’s a large wooden one with a shining pendulum hanging on the wall.

And all of them were ticking away as he spoke with eJewishPhilanthropy about his past, the Jewish community’s troubling present and his hopes for its future, while sitting on his distressed leather furniture, looking out over the southeast corner of Central Park, in one of his first extended interviews in years.

The clocks, of course, are also a metaphor. Lauder, 82, announced earlier this year that he will not seek reelection when his term as president of the World Jewish Congress ends in 2029, and his mind is occupied with both finding a specific successor for that role and, more broadly, encouraging the next generation of Jewish leaders to step up, particularly in Jewish education.

He was also explicit that this is the reason why he agreed to be interviewed.

“I believe very strongly that we must have young philanthropy. I would say that 80% of philanthropy today is from people over 60,” he told eJP. 

“When I was in my 40s doing this, everyone thought I was crazy. Well, they were right, but the fact is… a future is embedded in this young generation coming up. Because if they don’t feel the same spirit that we felt in the 50s and 60s and 70s about Israel and the Jewish world…” he trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. 

“The thing I need most from you is to say to the people in their 30s and 40s, you have to, have to put money into schools. That’s your future. These people have billions of dollars, and they’re doing bubkes,” he said, using the Yiddish for nothing. “[They have to do] whatever they can do for educating the kids. Because we’re losing a whole generation of kids.”

A worthy successor

With a penchant for European languages, a career in diplomacy, deep ties to American and Israeli politicians — including President Donald Trump — and decades of direct support for Jewish education initiatives around the world, he is one of a handful of people who can credibly be referred to as one of the Jewish community’s elder statesmen. In addition to the clocks, the tables in Lauder’s office are covered with photographs of him shaking hands and embracing American and Israeli leaders. Outside his office is shelf upon shelf crammed with mementos and gifts from the communities where WJC and his eponymous foundation operate — a shofar from the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland, a “Remembrance Award” from Yad Vashem.

Indeed, as we spoke, just after the now-collapsing American-Iranian ceasefire went into effect, our conversation was briefly interrupted by a phone call in which the first names of two senior figures connected to Trump’s were mentioned. (He also got a call from his wife, Jo Carole, during our conversation — just checking in.) And throughout the conversation, Lauder peppered in references to meals shared with top European leaders and conversations that he had with them, in Flemish and German.

Regarding the now-stalled memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Iran, Lauder — a critic of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal — remains skeptical about a diplomatic agreement with the Islamic Republic. 

In true diplomatic fashion, Lauder refrained from publicly commenting on the emerging agreement during our meeting and afterward sent a carefully worded statement: 

“For nearly half a century, the Islamic Republic of Iran has brought instability, violence, and suffering to people across the Middle East and around the world. Its leaders have funded and directed terrorist organizations, targeted Jewish communities far beyond the region, and pursued the destruction of the State of Israel. From the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires to attacks against Jewish targets in Europe and beyond, Iran’s fingerprints and those of its proxies can be found on some of the most devastating acts of antisemitic terror in modern history,” he said in his statement. 

“The threat it continues to pose, even with new leadership, extends far beyond its borders,” the statement continued. “The international community must remain clear-eyed about the nature of the regime. A ceasefire does not erase decades of aggression and nuclear ambition, nor does it change the ideology that has driven Iran’s support for terrorism and regional destabilization. Now is not the time to ease vigilance. The United States and its allies must maintain pressure on Iran, hold it accountable, and remain committed to preventing new threats to global security and the world’s only Jewish state.”

Sitting in his office, Lauder said that his high-level ties and his deep familiarity with international politics — from internal Jewish communal disputes to shifting Middle East dynamics — have made it difficult for him to find someone willing and able to take on the mantle of World Jewish Congress president, as many of the candidates he would want to see in the role feel unprepared to assume the position.

Lauder, who has served as WJC president for nearly 20 years, recalled one potential successor telling him, “‘But I can’t be you.’ I said, ‘I wasn’t me before I did this job.’”

Of course, as a democratic institution, Lauder cannot simply select his successor; the next WJC president will need to first garner broad support from the myriad world Jewish leaders who make up the congress and will vote for the next president in 2029. And yet the support of the sitting president, who has served in the role since 2007, would carry significant weight.

Lauder preferred not to state on record whom he would like to see succeed him, though the handful of names with whom he is in conversation would come as no great surprise — well-known, vocal Jewish philanthropists with deep ties to the business sector, civil society and international politics. While not exhaustive, everyone on his list was from the United States.

Those within the WJC orbit note that it is still a bit early for would-be-candidates to begin jockeying for Lauder’s role.

Lauder the peacemaker

Perhaps one of the most confounding things about Lauder is his vocal, unequivocal support for the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a stance that he not only publicly avows but also personally works to keep alive. Lauder regularly meets with Middle Eastern and Palestinian leaders about the topic, and he actively supports Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian political leader who has been imprisoned by Israel since 2002 for his role in deadly terror attacks carried out by Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, believing him to be the type of figure who could unite and lead the Palestinian people. 

This full-throated support for a two-state solution not only sets Lauder apart from right-wing figures in Israel and in the Diaspora Jewish community, but even from most of Israel’s left-wing politicians, who have all but stopped mentioning the concept as support for it has reached a nadir in Israel. Though the two-state solution is still endorsed by most American Jews, even most mainstream Diaspora Jewish groups have scaled back their support for it in recent years, in light of its current lack of viability.

Though he maintains deep ties to the Trump administration and to Israeli political figures, Lauder said that when he is meeting with leaders in the Middle East — in Egypt, Syria and Qatar, among others — he is not doing so on behalf of anyone or acting under anyone’s orders. He said that he has partners who are “part of different groups,” but would not discuss it further for fear of jeopardizing their efforts. 

“If you weren’t a reporter, we could have a great conversation,” he joked. 

Lauder was once a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, supporting him in Israel’s 1996 national elections and then acting on his behalf in a failed bid to make peace between Israel and Syria in 1998 under then-Syrian leader Hafez Assad. But in recent years, the two have split, in part due to Lauder’s support for the two-state solution as Netanyahu and his governments have opposed the concept, moved away from liberal democratic positions and embraced extremism.

“The vast majority of Jews, both in Israel and throughout the diaspora, reject this form of extremism. They understand that such positions distract from Israel’s legitimate security concerns and move the conversation away from pragmatic, peaceful solutions,” Lauder wrote in an opinion piece in the Arab News last year in response to comments against the two-state solution by Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich. “This is not the vision that Theodor Herzl or the founders of Israel had for the state — a vision rooted in safety, democracy and moral purpose for all its citizens.”

As Israel prepares for a new round of elections, Lauder is not planning to endorse a particular candidate. Though he would not say publicly who he was supporting, Lauder said that he would be involved in the elections and that there were two candidates he was watching closely, believing that, between the two of them, there is a workable vision for a two-state solution and a viable path forward for a democratic, Jewish Israel.

PR disaster relief

While his continued, vocal support for a two-state solution sets him apart, Lauder is firmly in the mainstream in his diagnosis of Israel’s main challenge: public relations. 

“Israel cannot survive alone now. It has to be part of the world. And unless [the Israelis] wake up to public relations, they’re going to be more and more isolated. And they don’t get it,” he said. “It’s a disaster, and they’re allowing our enemies to define us.”

Last month, Lauder called for a $1 billion philanthropic investment in public relations, saying the field is currently dominated by unnamed Middle Eastern countries. 

“We spend no money on [Jewish] education and even less money on public relations,” Lauder said. “[Jews] invented public relations, and there’s no one doing it. [Jewish philanthropists] are not giving money to organizations that do PR. Most PR things are now paid for by Middle Eastern countries.”

As an example of the type of work he would want to see, Lauder said that there should be an academic initiative to support Israel’s public relations efforts run through the Reichman University’s Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy, the creation of which his foundation supported.

Were the university to launch such a program, Lauder said, “I would help.”

Lauder’s awakening

There’s a certain narrative about Lauder that can be found in many of the articles that have been written about him over the years, that he was a non-practicing Jew who suddenly became interested in Jewish communal work while serving as U.S. ambassador to Austria in the late 1980s. And to a certain extent, this description is true, but it also belies his family’s long-standing religious ties.

In his own telling of his religious history, Lauder recalled the moment when, as ambassador to Austria, he decided to boycott the inauguration of its newly elected president, Kurt Waldheim, a former intelligence officer in Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht.

“This was the start of my Judaism,” Lauder told eJP. 

And yet Lauder also noted that his grandparents were Orthodox and that his family celebrated Shabbat on Friday nights. He also recalled visiting Israel for the first time as deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO policy under then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger in the first Ronald Reagan administration, which he described as a transformational experience.

“I used to laugh at people who would get off the plane [in Israel] and kiss the ground,” Lauder said.

“That’s what I felt like doing. I was with a group, with the secretary of defense, Colin Powell [who was Weinberger’s military assistant], myself and maybe five other people,” he said. “We went to see all the military installations, into some place that foreigners usually don’t go to. And the more I saw [of Israel], the more I fell in love.”

And yet despite this draw to Israel years prior, Lauder said that it was his experiences in Austria that awakened his connection to world Jewry.

A short while after boycotting Waldheim’s inauguration, he visited a kindergarten that had been set up for the children of Soviet Jews who had opted to remain in Austria, which at the time functioned as a stopover point for those fleeing the Soviet Union. “About a third went to Israel. A third went to the U.S. But a third stayed because they didn’t want to go to Israel, and they couldn’t go to the U.S.,” he said. “So this was a kindergarten made for them.”

“They caught my heart,” he said. “The next day, I made a decision: I’m going to build a school. I started buying the apartments in the building next door, and… we had a Jewish school in Vienna.”

A short while later, he started receiving requests to build a Jewish school in Hungary. “Over a period of 20-30 years, I opened 30 schools in all of Eastern Europe. [Some of] these were in communities that people thought had no Jews left,” he said.

“They became quite huge. I came back to the United States, and I tried to get people interested and they gave me nothing. As a matter of fact, worse than nothing, they were saying, ‘You can’t do this yourself. You’re not part of any organization,’” he said. “What they were saying is that they couldn’t deduct it. So I said, basically, thank you very much, I’m going to do it myself. And fast forward today, we have graduated probably 50,000 kids, from the most Orthodox to the most liberal.”

All told, Lauder said, he has likely spent roughly $750 million to establish and operate these schools over the years, as well as Jewish camps and elder-care facilities.

n addition to looking to the future for the next generation of Jewish leaders, Lauder said he also wants to prepare those schools for a future without him and his support. “I spent all my money on education. And we’re still looking at new schools. But… I want these schools to be self-sufficient,” he said.

“I’m saying to them, ‘Look, when I first started, no one had money, so I paid the money,’” he said. “But your schools now have parents who are wealthy. So we’re gonna cut down the money we’re giving you. I want you to get used to having parents give you money because I don’t want you to get so caught up that someday, when I’m not here, you’re gonna be in trouble. ”

Education is key

Lauder, who launched an initiative in 2024 to boost non-Orthodox Jewish day schools in North America, recognizes that the playbook he used in Europe will not work as well in the United States. The schools he was opening across the European continent in the 1990s were competing against far inferior ones being run by the state. Even non-Jewish parents were clamoring to send their children to the Jewish schools, he noted. This is not the case in the U.S., where public schools and non-Jewish private schools are comparatively far better, and Jewish day schools have hefty tuitions and are also few in number, making it logistically difficult for many Jewish children to attend. 

Still, Lauder believes that a strong Jewish education is the key to developing a strong Jewish identity.

In the United States, Lauder recommends building more schools, creating “a very good scholarship program” to make them more financially viable and using a powerful tool to encourage parents to send their kids to Jewish day school: “Shame them into it,” he said, and make it an expectation for all Jewish families. 

He credits his Jewish schools with preventing the kind of rise in antisemitism in Eastern Europe that has been seen in Western Europe as it gave Jewish children a sense of pride. “When they saw someone come after them, instead of running away or getting scared, they would take out their yarmulkes and put them on, and they had such power,” he said. “And I learned a valuable lesson: the importance of Jewish education.”

A glance at the many tick-tocking clocks in his office showed that the 30-minute interview we had scheduled had gone on for an hour and a half, and it was time to wrap up. Though there are numerous high-quality photographs of Lauder available, as a former photographer, I asked to take a portrait of the man behind his desk. 

He stood before a wall of books, nearly all of them biographies and histories about statecraft and his other passion, art history, flanked by an Israeli and American flag, with a portrait of that Zionist leader, Theodor Herzl, staring down at him.