STRATEGIC WORK
New venture looks to professionalize, diversify Haredi philanthropy, bring in more donors from within and outside the community
Through Charedi Impact Philanthropy, roughly two dozen attendees — some Haredi, some secular — meet to discuss employment in the Belz Hassidic community in the 35th floor offices of a Tel Aviv cybersecurity firm
Courtesy
On the 35th floor of a swanky Tel Aviv skyscraper, a group of philanthropists, foundation executives and community activists gathered last Thursday to discuss the Belz Hasidic community’s approach to employment. The roughly two dozen attendees came from a wide variety of backgrounds; there were men and women; Israelis, Americans, Brits and Australians; some were from the Belz community, others were decidedly secular, and everything in between.
It was the second in-person meeting organized by a new endeavor that is looking to professionalize and diversify the field of Haredi philanthropy.
The expressed purpose of the gathering was to consider the case study of the Belz community, which is often considered one of the more forward-thinking Hasidic groups. But according to the meeting’s organizer, Aaron Kampf, the true goal of the meeting was the meeting itself, bringing together a diverse mix of people all focused on the same ultimate goal.
“Just having the room together of full-on Haredi philanthropists and foundations and so-called secular philanthropists and foundations and getting them to know each other — that for me was the objective,” Kampf, the founder of Charedi Impact Philanthropy, told eJewishPhilanthropy.
Charedi Impact Philanthropy launched earlier this year with support from four main sources: the Wohl Legacy, a British foundation that has — among other things — long supported employment-related initiatives in the Haredi community; Daniel Goldman, an Israel-based private donor, who also supports initiatives in the Haredi community; Raoul Stein, a Haredi philanthropist and the managing director of the BlackRock investment firm’s Israel office; and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies.
Charedi Impact Philanthropy is meant to serve as a platform and community for those interested in donating to Haredi causes, breaking them down into six areas: employment, education, health/mental health, welfare, mesorah (tradition) and civic responsibility.
According to Kampf, the initiative looks to serve as a resource for everyone interested in Haredi philanthropy — both donors from within the community and from without. The overall goal is to raise the level of efficacy and professionalism in the field of Haredi philanthropy, which is considerable — amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars annually according to some estimates — but is generally characterized by donations from individual donors. Charedi Impact Philanthropy then looks to vet initiatives for transparency and outcome assessments, offer expert opinions and maintain relationships with organizations and foundations that are active in those six different areas to allow better networking and synergy. Though the mission is to improve the field generally, most of those involved see Charedi Impact Philanthropy as a way to advance their goal of increasing Haredi engagement with the rest of Israeli society, particularly — but not exclusively — through employment.
Goldman said an initiative like Charedi Impact was needed as Haredi society can be difficult to understand, particularly for outsiders.
“Because of the nature of how Haredi society is structured, the ability to look at it from an outside perspective and understand the dynamics from multiple philanthropic categories is really difficult,” Goldman said. “There is a requirement for a kind of organ that can mediate or translate for those who are looking at Haredi society to understand what the philanthropic challenges and opportunities may be.”
Goldman, who is involved in a number of initiatives in the Israeli Haredi community, told eJP that such efforts are needed now more than ever. He said that he has seen a number of foundations start limiting or even pulling their support for Haredi causes in recent months, largely due to the political turmoil in Israel over state support for Haredi institutions despite a general refusal by Haredi Israelis to serve in the military or perform national service.
Goldman said that this was a mistake. “It’s the moment to double down,” he said. By pulling support for initiatives in the Haredi world, “they are hurting exactly the type of people who are leading positive change in the community.”
Goldman added that bringing in more philanthropists from within the Haredi world would send a message to others that this is a worthwhile endeavor that the Haredi community is taking seriously. “The more excellent Haredi philanthropists join the field, the easier it is for non-Haredi philanthropists to stay in the game,” he said.
Joanne Cohen, the Israel director of Wohl Legacy, said her organization got involved with the project with the hope that it would indeed advance its goal of improving employment in the Haredi community, both for its own sake and for the benefit of wider Israeli society.
“Where we saw real potential and why we wanted to support them is that it’s one of the very few centers that is trying to bring together Haredi donors… and strategic philanthropy,” Cohen told eJP. “The idea of bringing together different people to learn from one another… that’s the exciting thing.”
The board of trustees for the initiative also represents a diverse range of views from the Haredi world: Rabbi Aaron Lopiansky, the rosh yeshiva of the Yeshiva of Greater Washington; Rachel Freier, the first Hasidic female civil court judge in New York City; Rabbi Yaakov Haber, the former national director of the Orthodox Union; Rivka Ravitz, the former chief of staff for then-Israeli President Reuven Rivlin; and Rabbi Shaul Miller, the principal of a large Haredi school in Beit Shemesh and the son of the rosh yeshiva of the vaunted Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak. In addition, Michael Bloch, a former senior partner with the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, who is not Haredi but works closely with Israel’s nonprofit space through his organization Israel Impact Partners, also serves on the board.
Many of those involved in Charedi Impact Philanthropy — including Daniel Goldman and the Wohl Legacy — were also involved in the Haredi Employment Coalition, a group of organizations and funders who are focused on the issue.
Goldman told eJP that the goal of the new initiative was to “take some of the model that we did in employment and bring that to bear in other areas of Haredi [life] — education, welfare, women’s empowerment, civic life, etc.”
Cohen said the initiative’s connection between Haredim and non-Haredim was on display at the meeting last Thursday, where she was heartened to meet and interact with people she didn’t know.
“I more or less know all of the big foundations in this field, but suddenly, sitting around the table with a whole bunch of new people where I don’t know what they’re doing and they don’t know what I’m doing, it is refreshing,” she said.
The attendees included a number of prominent Belz philanthropists, including American architect Aaron Ostreicher; secular Israeli donors, including Idan Tendler — a co-founder of the cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, who hosted the meeting in his offices — and legendary Israeli high-tech entrepreneur Yossi Vardi; and foundations, including UJA-Federation of New York and Beracha Foundation.
This was Charedi Impact Philanthropy’s second in-person meeting; the first was held in July at the David Citadel hotel in Jerusalem. It too featured a diverse group of attendees, people from within the Haredi world as well as secular funders. Kampf said the goal is to have four such intimate meet-ups throughout the year, as well as two larger conferences — one in the U.S. and one in Israel.
Thursday’s meeting focused on an employment initiative within the Belz community known as Michlol, which was started in 2018 at the direction of the community’s leader, known by the acronym ADMOR, which stands for Adoneinu, Moreinu veRabbenu (our master, our teacher and our rabbi), Rabbi Yissachar Dov Rokeach.
Through the program, men from the community are assessed every other year, some are chosen to continue learning full-time in a kollel, or religious higher-learning institutions, and others are directed to find employment.
Kampf described it as a “very cool case study,” noting that Michlol works to find Belz Hasidim high-quality work, which has allowed hundreds of families from Belz to go from requiring welfare assistance to self-sufficiency.
But Kampf — and others who were at the meeting — stressed that the power of the gathering was not in the topic discussed but in the fact that the different groups were willing to sit together and discuss it.
“The discussion really was almost an internal Haredi discussion,” Goldman said. “But the fact that it wasn’t exclusively a Haredi discussion allowed for a discussion about where Haredi society is, especially after Oct. 7. There were some discussions from different angles, which was useful for the Haredim in the room and the non-Haredim in the room.”
According to Cohen, this included subjects that are often deemed too touchy, such as Haredi military service. “Some of those issues were touched upon,” she said. “But to get to the deep stuff, you need to have the personal relations.”
Cohen was impressed by the representatives from the Belz community’s willingness to meet with such a diverse group and what it portends for the future. “You had men from Belz sitting in the middle of Tel Aviv, working with people they’re not used to working with. It shows they’re willing to listen and cooperate,” she said.
However, Cohen stressed that while such meetings are critical, they are not the end goal. “Charedi Impact has a big mission, and I wholeheartedly hope that they succeed. The proof is going to be in the pudding,” she said. “Bringing people around the table to talk is not enough.”
For Goldman, the ultimate goal of Charedi Impact Philanthropy is to expand the group of donors to Haredi causes, particularly philanthropists from within the Haredi world, in order to “bring new money into social investments in the Haredi community.”
If the pool of donors does not expand, Goldman said, then Charedi Impact will just be “recycling money,” in which case, “we’ve just added overhead but not added value.”