Your Daily Phil: EXCLUSIVE One of Bernie Marcus’ final gifts: $60M to RootOne
Good Thursday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the World Jewish Congress’ award ceremony honoring former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr., and feature an opinion piece by Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy and Rabbi Leon A. Morris about focusing on intensive religious study, and not broad engagement programs, to address the Jewish leadership pipeline crisis. Also in this newsletter: David Brooks, Sarah Eisenman and Eva Zasloff. We’ll start with Bernie Marcus’ $60 million donation to RootOne shortly before his death.
In late September, weeks before his death, Home Depot co-founder and philanthropist Bernie Marcus presented a $60 million donation to RootOne, which subsidizes trips to Israel for Jewish teenagers, in one of the megadonor’s final acts of philanthropy, eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim has learned.
This latest donation brings Marcus’ total support for RootOne to more than $140 million, beginning with an initial seed donation of $20 million in 2020 to launch the initiative, which provides $3,000 vouchers to help cover the costs of sending teenagers to Israel.
“Bernie, even after his passing, is still having a significant impact on what he saw as our future. He decided, before he left this Earth, to ensure that he was doubling down again at a time where people may be doing exactly the opposite,” Simon Amiel, executive director of RootOne, told eJP.
This gift will help the organization expand its efforts and its impact, Amiel said.
According to Jay Kaiman, president of The Marcus Foundation, Marcus has been worried about the rise in antisemitism on college campuses for most of the last 20 years, but this past year it intensified. “[It] was hard for him to watch. It was hard for him to see this happen, because he did see around corners, and he was afraid that this would happen,” Kaiman told eJP.
Marcus viewed Israel trips for Jewish high schoolers as a core part of the solution to the problem of campus antisemitism, according to Amiel. “We’re not going to solve antisemitism and Bernie knew that, but we can ensure that the future of the Jewish people, our young people, don’t wilt in its presence,” Amiel said.
This past year, in light of Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon, travel to Israel dropped precipitously — with participation on RootOne-supported trips down 90% this past summer. But in the next five years, RootOne hopes to support 15,000 students each summer, a lofty goal, according to Amiel, but intentionally so, in order to push the organization to expand.
According to Kaiman, Marcus planned this gift in the midst of turmoil in Israel, both because he believed in RootOne, and because he wanted to send a message to those who respect his philanthropy that Israel education, and especially immersive Israel education, is critical, especially now.
“He wanted to educate our teens, but he also wants other philanthropists to join in doing things that will make a difference, because he did feel that Israel is under attack and threat, and he didn’t feel like there was enough being done, especially in the area of Israel education,” said Kaiman.
PRIZE PRESENTED
WJC honors Jon Huntsman for halting UPenn donations, standing up to ‘the mob’
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder hailed former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. for his decision to halt his donations to the University of Pennsylvania over its handling of campus antisemitism — making him one of the few non-Jewish donors to do so — at an award dinner in Huntsman’s honor this week, reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Nira Dayanim. “Jon Huntsman is one of those rare individuals who is not afraid of facing the mob,” Lauder said as he presented the WJC’s Theodor Herzl Award to the former governor and U.S. ambassador to Singapore, China and Russia.
New priorities: In his speech on Tuesday night, Lauder said the WJC was expanding its area of operations, warning that anti-Western and antisemitic “Marxist indoctrination” was taking place in schools around the world. “For the last 88 years, the World Jewish Congress has focused on politics. But today, we are adding education to our focus and the global fight against antisemitism, extremism and the assault on Western civilization,” Lauder said. “We saw this happening in 1936 when the world would not listen, and we hear the same silence today and it’s deafening.”
Kindred spirits: Accepting the award, Huntsman noted his longtime connection to the Jewish community, highlighting his familiarity — as a Mormon — with being a religious minority. “While I was at Penn in the 1980s, I found myself spending time and attending events at Hillel House,” Huntsman recalled. “And then in the mid 1990s, when I was working with our family business in Utah, along with my brother Paul who’s here, I began to get to know about the work of Chabad-Lubavitch.”
FIXING THE PIPELINE
Focusing solely on scale and access won’t cultivate future Jewish leadership
“The egalitarian, non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian ethos of contemporary culture —for all of its blessings — has undermined the notion of leadership. Correctly suspicious of power and its inevitable abuse, our society is critical of practically everyone in a position of authority,” write Rabbi Meesh Hammer-Kossoy and Rabbi Leon A. Morris, of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Fighting the numbers game: “With such a single-minded focus on accessibility and scale of communal engagement activities, it has become less of a priority in the Jewish community to attract, cultivate and invest in future leaders whose commitments will be far deeper and who require a much greater investment of time and resources.”
Not by bread alone: “Of course, we have a responsibility to serve as many Jews as possible with finite resources. Yet focusing on breadth over depth means our ship will eventually run aground in shallow waters…. The leadership crisis in American Jewish life won’t be solved by Shabbat dinners and challah-baking workshops, despite their effectiveness as forms of Jewish engagement.”
Worthy Reads
Crème de la Crème: In an extended piece in The Atlantic, David Brooks considers the history of the American “meritocracy” in the country’s top universities, how it failed and what can be done to save it. “The challenge is not to end the meritocracy; it’s to humanize and improve it. A number of recent developments make this even more urgent—while perhaps also making the present moment politically ripe for broad reform. First, the Supreme Court’s ending of affirmative action constrained colleges’ ability to bring in students from less advantaged backgrounds… Second, as noted, much of what the existing cognitive elite do can already be done as well as or better by AI… Third, the recent uproar over Gaza protests and anti-Semitism on campus has led to the defenestration of multiple Ivy League presidents, and caused a public-relations crisis, perhaps even lasting brand damage, at many elite universities… Fourth, the ongoing birth dearth is causing many schools to struggle with enrollment shortfalls… The crucial first step is to change how we define merit. The history of the meritocracy is the history of different definitions of ability. But how do we come up with a definition of ability that is better and more capacious[?]… If I were given the keys to the meritocracy, I’d redefine merit around four crucial qualities. Curiosity… A sense of drive and mission… Social intelligence… Agility… After all, what’s really at the core of a person? Is your IQ the most important thing about you? No. I would submit that it’s your desires—what you are interested in, what you love. We want a meritocracy that will help each person identify, nurture, and pursue the ruling passion of their soul.” [TheAtlantic]
Around the Web
Sarah Eisenman,thechief community and Jewish life officer at Jewish Federations of North America, announced that she is leaving her position effective Nov. 29, in order to work with Bay Area donors Mort and Amy Friedkin on “their new philanthropic endeavor”…
Salesforce founder and philanthropist Marc Benioff and his wife, Lynne, are providing $2.5 million to fund projects by Hawaii public school teachers through the Hawaii Department of Education…
The Workers Circle elected Eva Zasloff to serve as its next board president; Andrea Miller, founder of the Center for Common Ground, and Ellen Cassedy, founder of the 9 to 5 Movement, have joined the organization’s board of directors…
Jewish Insider looks into the threat that Hezbollah poses to Jewish targets in Latin America…
The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco will shut down for at least a year beginning Dec. 15, due to declining attendance and the need to develop financial stability…
The Wall Street Journal reports on how the office market’s downturn is prompting some of New York’s multigenerational real-estate families, such as the Rudins and the Kaufmans, to break the cardinal rule of “never sell”…
Cartoonist and storyteller Chari Pere was awarded Artist of the Year at Sunday’s 2024 JewCE Awards for her short film “Miscarried: An ‘Unspoken’ Cartoonmentary,” an exploration of pregnancy loss and resilience through the lens of Jewish storytelling. (Read Pere’s recent opinion piece in eJewishPhilanthropy here)…
UJIA is offering a subsidy of £2,200 ($2,800) to qualified applicants of Israel trips for next summer, through a partnership with the Jerusalem-based Mosaic Teens…
Jnetics, the British nonprofit dedicated to the prevention and management of Jewish genetic disorders, raised more than £760,000 ($962,000) in its fund-matching campaign, exceeding its original target…
Trafford Council in Greater Manchester, U.K., has approved plans to create an eruv in Hale to create a zone in which Orthodox Jews can — among other things — push strollers and carry house keys on Shabbat; the decision concludes a 10-year planning battle and angry local objections…
Howard Lutnick, the co-chair of President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, is pushing to be named Treasury secretary; Trump has reportedly also been mulling investor Scott Bessent for the role…
The University of Arizona will create the Edwin and Alma Lakin Holocaust, Human Rights, and Comparative Genocide Endowed Chair following a $2 million donation from an anonymous donor, plus contributions from Tucson community members, including philanthropists Paul and Alice Baker…
The Times of Israelspotlights Project 24, which has brought 185 members of the emergency response teams that defended communities along the Gaza border during the Oct. 7 terror attacks to the United States to boost ties between Israelis and American Jewish communities…
A solidarity delegation of French and Belgian imams and rabbis arrived in Amsterdam to condemn last week’s antisemitic mob violence against Israeli soccer fans…
The Chronicle of Philanthropy highlights how Bill Conway, co-founder of the private equity giant the Carlyle Group, and his late wife, Joanne Barkett Conway, committed to strengthening the nursing profession in the U.S. by committing $1 billion to student aid, new buildings, and faculty recruitment and retention. So far, he has donated $325.6 million to 22 nursing schools in the Eastern and mid-Atlantic regions…
Former New York Jewish Week staffer Miriam Reinharth died on Tuesday after being hit by an ambulance on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. She was 69…
British-German artist Frank Helmut Auerbach, who fled Nazi Germany as an 8-year-old arriving in Britain on the Kindertransport, died on Monday at 93…
Pic of the Day
Israeli singer Eden Golan speaks yesterday with Kim Hartman, UJA-Federation of New York women’s philanthropy chair, at UJA’s Lions Lunch at the Pierre Hotel on New York City’s Upper East Side.
The lunch honored UJA women leaders Beth Altschuler, Staci Barber and Judy Baum.
Birthdays
Israeli conductor and pianist, he is a conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, Nimrod David Pfeffer…
Cellist and professor at Moscow Conservatoire, Natalia Gutman… Former professional bodybuilder who played for two seasons with the New York Jets, Mike Katz… Los Angeles businessman, community leader and political activist, Stanley Treitel… Retired member of the U.K.’s House of Lords, Baron Jeremy Beecham… Former British Labour party MP who resigned in 2019 in protest of Jeremy Corbyn, Dame Louise Joyce Ellman… Television director and producer, her neurotic text messages to her daughter are the subject of the CrazyJewishMom Instagram page, Kim Friedman… Editor-at-large for Bloomberg View, Jonathan I. Landman… Former Democratic member of the New York State Assembly from Brooklyn, his 22-year term was completed at the end of 2022, Steven H. Cymbrowitz… U.S. secretary of state during the last four years of the Bush 43 administration, now on the faculty of Stanford University and the director of the Hoover Institution, Condoleezza Rice… Senior advisor to President Barack Obama throughout his eight-year term in the White House, she is now president of the Obama Foundation, Valerie Jarrett… Detroit-based communications consultant, Cynthia Shaw… President of Middlebury College in Vermont, Laurie L. Patton… Partner at the Santa Monica-based law firm of Murphy Rosen, Edward A. Klein… Senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and professor of political science at The George Washington University, Sarah A. Binder… Vice chairman of The Atlantic and managing director of media at Emerson Collective, Peter T. Lattman… and his twin brother, SVP at Forman Mills, Brian Lattman… Tel Aviv native, now based in London and Dubai, with interests in real estate, gambling software, payments processing and digital advertising, Teddy Sagi… Member of the Colorado House of Representatives until last year when she became a Colorado state senator, Dafna Michaelson Jenet… Former deputy national security advisor for President Barack Obama, Ben Rhodes… Head of public policy and government affairs for Lime, Joshua Meltzer… Law professor at Fordham University, Pamela Bookman … Actress and comedian, Vanessa Bayer… Chief of staff to the secretary of the Army, Jacob Freedman… Rabbi of the Sha’ar Hashamayim Synagogue in Indonesia, Yaakov Baruch… Executive director of the One Percent Foundation, Lana Talya Volftsun Fern… Actress and producer, Sophie von Haselberg… Infielder for the Toronto Blue Jays, he played for Team Israel in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, Spencer Elliott Horwitz…
