Your Daily Phil: Lauder Foundation sunsetting support with $75M send-off gift for seven flagship school systems in Europe
Add EJP on GoogleGood Thursday morning!
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on the beginning of the end of an era for the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation’s role in Jewish education in Europe and on Alex Luxenberg joining Sefaria as its new CEO. We feature an opinion piece by Harley Lippman on what Diaspora Jewry owes its dead, and a piece by Rabbi Zalman Duchman urging Jewish philanthropy to place food insecurity higher on its agenda. Also in this issue: Josh Kushner and Karlie Kloss, Assaf Horowitz and Abby Black Elbaum.
Today’s Your Daily Phil was curated by eJP Managing Editor Judah Ari Gross, Opinion Editor Rachel Kohn and Israel Editor Justin Hayet. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
The Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and StandWithUs Northwest are hosting IDF lone soldier Ira Kohler, who will share his front-line experiences defending Kibbutz Be’eri during the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas and discuss his new memoir, Once a Paratrooper.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD FROM eJP’S NIRA DAYANIM
When the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, which has spent hundreds of millions of dollars since 1987 to found and support Jewish schools across Europe, revealed on Wednesday that it will sunset that support in seven cities in 2027 and send the network off with a final $75 million gift, it was new news in the sense that it was just announced, but also old news in the sense that this moment had been coming for years.
In a wide-ranging interview with eJewishPhilanthropy in July, Ronald Lauder spoke of his hope for his eponymous foundation’s flagship school systems across Europe to become self-sufficient, with the foundation’s support ultimately replaced by support from the parents and philanthropists within the communities it incubated. While Jewish education would continue to play a foundational role in the future of the Jewish people, he said, handing off the torch to next-generation philanthropists would be equally imperative for that continuity.
The foundation is sunsetting funding for programs in Athens, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Vienna, Budapest, Hungary and Sofia, Bulagria, according to yesterday’s statement. Of the $75 million send-off gift, $40 million is earmarked for new school facilities, and the remainder is intended to cover operations through 2028 and additional resources to prepare the communities for the transition.
“The transition aims to enable the schools to become fully equipped to sustain themselves for generations to come and reflects Mr. Lauder’s long-held view that philanthropy should empower and strengthen those it supports, rather than creating permanent dependency,” a statement from the foundation said.
Read the rest of ‘What You Should Know’ here.
News
TRANSITIONS
Meta’s Alex Luxenberg announced as Sefaria’s next CEO
Meta’s Alex Luxenberg will serve as the next CEO of Sefaria beginning Sept. 1, the open-source digital library shared exclusively with eJewishPhilanthropy. He succeeds Daniel Septimus, who left the organization in June after 13 years, eJP’s Jay Deitcher reports.
AI opportunities: Luxenberg has deep roots in the Jewish community — he is an alumnus of both The Ramaz School in Manhattan and Yeshiva University, serves on multiple boards and leads Meta’s Jewish employee resource group — and described Sefaria’s open-source library of Jewish texts as “one of the most important pieces of Jewish infrastructure of our time.” ??He told eJP: “The printing press changed Jewish learning, as did new forms of publishing, the internet and mobile technology. We are now at another major inflection point as AI changes expectations around access, translation, discovery, personalization and conversation. Sefaria has the opportunity not simply to adapt to that change, but to help shape it, to help define how people encounter and engage with Jewish texts and ideas for generations to come.”
Opinion
A DEBT OWED
No grave left unmarked
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, businessman and philanthropist Harley Lippman, a passionate advocate for locating and preserving sites where Jews were murdered without record, sees a lesson for Diaspora Jewry in Israel’s commitment to honoring its dead.
“Israel has shown, across 78 years and every war since, that a nation can decide, as policy, that no missing person is ever quietly written off; that the search continues after the headlines fade and the people who remember have themselves passed away. Jewish philanthropic institutions abroad should study that model and fund accordingly: endow the forensic and archival work; formalize partnerships with local governments and historians across Eastern Europe; and treat the last unmarked grave with the same seriousness Israel brought to the last missing tank crewman.”
READER RESPONDS
Food insecurity deserves a seat at the table
In an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Zalman Duchman, executive director of Colel Chabad, responds to eJP’s recent coverage of landmark study on food-aid in Israel (“New paper mapping Israel’s food-aid network finds glaring waste, inefficiency,” Aug. 14). Colel Chabad operates Israel’s National Food Security Initiative, in partnership with the Israeli government and municipalities, alongside a network of food-security and social-welfare programs.
“Those of us working every day on food security should welcome serious research into this issue. The study raises important questions about efficiency, nutrition, geographic gaps and coordination. We should be willing to ask difficult questions and improve wherever we can. But having examined the underlying research more closely, I came away with a larger question: Why isn’t food insecurity itself a much bigger topic in Jewish philanthropy?”
Worthy Reads
Village People: In The Wall Street Journal, David Cohen, the CEO of The Algemeiner, reflects on the communal response to the recent death of his brother, Jonathan. “The people filling the mourning house weren’t merely responding to Jonathan’s death. They were responding to Jonathan’s life. A few weeks later, my wife put it succinctly: ‘To have a village, you have to be a villager.’ We talk about the disappearance of community. Americans report loneliness despite technology that lets us reach anyone, anywhere, instantly. … Perhaps we have the equation backward. A village isn’t something we find when we need one. It’s something we build long before that.”
Difficult Truths: In The Times of Israel, Neshama Carlebach, a singer and daughter of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, shares what she has learned from people reaching out to her with stories of struggling with the legacies of their own family members. “We grow when we learn to live in the uncomfortable space between truths, resisting the urge to turn people into saints or sinners. … And yet complexity must never become an excuse for moral confusion.”
Major Gifts
Following his daughter’s recovery from a catastrophic brain hemorrhage, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and his wife, Neri Oxman, are pledging $400 million to build a Manhattan-based research center dedicated to advancing brain injury rehabilitation, neuroscience and brain-computer technology…
The Joshua Kushner and Karlie Kloss Foundation donated $2.5 million to open a maternal health center at Jackson Memorial’s Women’s Hospital, the Miami hospital where the couple’s three children were born…
Transitions
Assaf Horowitz joined the Israel Innovation Authority as vice president of artificial intelligence…
Abby Sterensis was appointed board chair of Gulf Coast Jewish Family and Community Services in Clearwater, Fla…
Ben Suster was hired by the Jewish Federation of Palm Beach County as a senior donor officer…
Word on the Street
Family members of former Israeli hostages and of soldiers serving in Gaza launched a petition urging the Israeli-American Council to drop former Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer as a speaker at an upcoming conference…
An Israel Channel 12 investigation alleges Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael-Jewish National Fund workers’ committee leaders rented discounted apartments to insiders and pressured hundreds of employees to vote Likud in primaries, prompting a review by the fund’s new management; the committee called the claims baseless…
Two months after the June 24 earthquakes that killed three Venezuelan Jews and displaced at least 15 families, U.K.’s Jewish News reports more than 100 Jewish households still await repairs as World Jewish Relief and the Hebraica community center work to bring survivors home…
New research from the Anti-Defamation League finds that a single 45-minute classroom lesson measurably reduced teenagers’ endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories…
A federal lawsuit filed against the Palo Alto Unified School District by a group including two Jewish parents, a Jewish alumna and a Jewish resident accuses the district of religious coercion over a field trip to the Muslim Community Association mosque in Santa Clara, Calif., where girls were allegedly offered hijabs and students received Qurans…
New York financial regulators are warning Holocaust survivors about a fraudulent group posing as the “Jewish Holocaust Claims Center” looking to scam Holocaust survivors…
The Rabbinical Assembly launched the Tzedek Center as its new movement-wide policy institute after a pilot year that engaged more than 80 congregations and camps and helped secure a federal clarification letting synagogues seek up to $200,000 in security grants…
The ADL and Academic Engagement Network found that activist factions have exploited low-turnout elections in higher education unions to push anti-Israel positions, sidelining Jewish faculty and grad students who report targeted harassment, Haley Cohen reports for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider…
The U.K. government threatened targeted sanctions against Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion, signaling a significantly tougher diplomatic stance toward Israel under its new Labour government…
Columbia University announced it will award its Alexander Hamilton Medal, the college’s highest honor, to real estate executive Abby Black Elbaum, a newly named co-chair of the university’s board of trustees, at a dinner later this year…
The surf therapy nonprofit HaGal Sheli brought together some 60 Jewish and Arab children with special needs to surf off Jaffa in a therapy program in partnership with the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality…
Larry Montes, the Bronx man accused of attacking congregants at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue during last week’s Shabbat service, is due in Manhattan criminal court today, where he will face federal hate crime charges…
Pic of the Day
Former hostages Alon Ohel (left) and Eli Sharabi (second from right) celebrate with former hostage Eliya Cohen (right) and his bride, Ziv Abud, who campaigned tirelessly for his release, last night at Ronit Farm in central Israel.
Birthdays
Rabbi Elhanan Miller, Israeli teacher and writer, founder of People of the Book, which is focused on communicating about the Jewish faith with the Arab world, turns 45
Phoebe Bryan, Laguna Hills, Calif., resident
Connie Chung, news anchor and reporter for ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and MSNBC, turns 80
Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council during the Trump 45 administration, now a commentator for Fox Business, turns 79
Lana Gordon, former Kansas secretary of labor, turns 76
Steven Klinghoffer, immediate past chair of the Golda Och Academy in West Orange, N.J.
Sam Katz, mayor of Winnipeg, Manitoba, from 2004 until 2014 and the owner of minor league baseball’s Winnipeg Goldeyes, turns 75
Jay Knopf, managing director of equity derivatives at Rice Financial Products
Bradley Schneider, U.S. representative (D-IL), turns 65
Suzanne Grant, Wilmington, Del., resident and former treasurer of the board of the Jewish Federations of North America
Michael Froman, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was the U.S. trade representative during the Obama administration, turns 64
Steve Daines, U.S. senator (R-MT), turns 64
Patrick Drahi, founder and controlling shareholder of the Altice Group, he acquired Sotheby’s during 2019, turns 63
Etgar Keret, Israeli writer known for his short stories and graphic novels, turns 59
Mark Levin, film director, television producer and screenwriter, turns 58
Matthew Gould, British ambassador to Israel from 2010 to 2015, the first Jewish U.K. ambassador to be posted to Tel Aviv, and former CEO of the Zoological Society of London, turns 55
Asher Fentahun Seyoum, Ethiopian-born, former member of the Knesset for Kulanu, turns 55
Ari Goldberg, chief communications officer at Nova Ukraine
Abigail Michelson Porth, executive director of Lisa Stone Pritzker’s LSP Family Foundation
Karen Brunwasser, co-CEO and one of the founders of the Jerusalem Season of Culture, a summer music festival that showcases Jerusalem
Rachel Fish, co-founder of Boundless Israel
David Adelman, partner in the Iowa office of Cornerstone Government Affairs and foundation president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Des Moines
Meghan Ory, Canadian television and film actor, turns 44
Josh Flagg, real estate agent, author and television personality as an original cast member on the show “Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles,” Josh Flagg, turns 41
Simon Shnapir, ice skating professional at The Skating Club of Boston, turns 39
Gianmarco Soresi, stand-up comedian, actor, podcaster and internet personality, turns 38
Roy Ziv, Canadian guitarist, YouTuber, producer and music teacher, turns 35
Sella Sharlin, triathlete and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Miss Israel 2019, turns 30
