The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot Awarded $10m Grant from the Koret Foundation

The Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot has been awarded a $10 million grant from the San Francisco based Koret Foundation. The grant, the largest awarded to Beit Hatfutsot from a U.S. philanthropic foundation in its forty-year history and one of the largest single grants made by the Koret Foundation to an Israeli institution, will establish the new Koret International School for Jewish Peoplehood.

The Koret International School will dramatically reinvent and expand the work of Beit Hatfutsot’s International School for Jewish Peoplehood Studies. The Koret International School will be the educational centerpiece of the Museum and will offer an extensive range of personal and professional educational programs for visitors, online users, students, educators and community leaders.

Through the grant, The Museum of the Jewish People will develop new approaches to education and will design innovative programs tailored for groups and individuals attending the Museum, learning curricula for Jewish day schools and community centers, traveling exhibits, and professional training and certification schemes for educators from around the world. It will also build on the successful flagship programs already in place, most notably the My Family Story genealogy competition and the G2G volunteer scheme. In order to fully launch these initiatives in Jewish communities around the world, the Koret International School will oversee a global team of full-time associates and representatives.

According to Irina Nevzlin, Chair of the Board of Directors at Beit Hatfutsot, “The Koret Foundation’s grant reflects an exciting and growing convergence of interests around the revised mission for the Museum of the Jewish People, bringing leading foundations into conversation and partnership with our ongoing and much-valued partner, the Government of Israel. With the visionary support of the Koret Foundation, The Museum of the Jewish People will be the unquestioned global hub for a new conversation about what it means to be not just Jewish, but a member of the Jewish people.”

The Koret International School is part of The Museum of the Jewish People’s overhaul, which will culminate in 2019 with the unveiling of an all-new core exhibition. The entire project, which includes four new galleries opened in 2016, has been made possible by a $100 million fundraising campaign, which has reached its latter stages and is set to close in the coming twelve months.