Good Monday morning!

Thousands of people — organizers estimate between 1,800-3,200 — participated in “No Fear: A Rally in Solidarity with the Jewish People,” in Washington, D.C. yesterday. 

Elisha Wiesel, a primary organizer of the rally and the son of Holocaust icon Elie Wiesel, told eJewishPhilanthropy. The American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Federations of North America, Republican and Democratic Jewish groups and the three major Jewish denominations also participated. The global response against Israel in May during and after the 11-day conflict with Hamas, which included attacks on American Jews, first inspired Wiesel with a desire to unify the American Jewish community in a condemnation of antisemitism, he said.

“Antisemitism needs to be a bipartisan issue for all Jews, whether they wear black hats or bikinis,” Wiesel said, evoking the garments worn by traditional and more modern Jewish communities. “Only the left can fix antisemitism on the left, only the right can fix it on the right.”

More than 1,000 people have signed the Jewish Future Pledge, which commits signatories to bequeathing at least half of their charitable donations to causes that support either the Jewish people, the state of Israel or both, pledge co-founder Mike Leven told eJewishPhilanthropy.

Announced in May 2020, the pledge attracted several early high-profile signers, such as Charles Bronfman; the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies and Bernie Marcus, the Home Depot co-founder who also signed Warren Buffet’s Giving Pledge that committed him to giving the majority of his wealth to philanthropy. By December, at least 200 donors had signed the Jewish Future Pledge.

The pledge aims to reach smaller foundations and individual donors by creating partnerships with Jewish organizations. Six federations, including Minneapolis Jewish Federation and UJA Federation of Greater Toronto, are now working with the pledge, bringing the total number to 18. The Orthodox Union and the Alpha Epsilon Pi Foundation have also signed on as partners.

Youth groups like the non-denominational BBYO and the Orthodox NCSY recently committed to help spread the word about the Jewish Youth Pledge, which asks teens and young adults to commit to strengthening the Jewish community.

EXCLUSIVE

Marcus Foundation grants $60 million to teen Israel travel program RootOne

RootOne

The Marcus Foundation will announce a $60 million grant today to RootOne, the Israel teen travel program it created in 2020 with a $20 million seed gift, Simon Amiel, RootOne’s executive director, told eJewishPhilanthropy’s Helen Chernikoff. The funding will support a plan to grow participation in the program, which subsidizes the cost of a trip to Israel for teenagers.

Ambitious plan: By the end of this summer, about 4,500 students will have traveled to Israel with financial help from RootOne, barring any significant disruptions to Israel travel caused by the COVID-19 pandemic or an outbreak of violence. RootOne plans to help bring 7,000 teens to Israel in the summer of 2022 and 9,000 by the summer of 2024, Amiel said. “This grant is our direct response to the studies saying teens’ connection to Israel is waning, or that Jewish identity among youth has declined,” said Bernie Marcus, a Home Depot co-founder, in a statement. “Especially as antisemitism on campuses and across the globe increases, we must develop a generation of proud Jews connected to Israel and the Jewish people.”

The cost calculus: The program doesn’t offer its own Israel trips, instead working through established trip providers. Many are national youth groups, such as the non-denominational BBYO; the Orthodox NCSY and Reconstructing Judaism’s Havaya Israel. Some are local programs, like Kehillah High in Houston, and a B’nai B’rith camp on the coast of Oregon. The providers in turn convert the funds into vouchers for teens entering 10, 11 or 12 grade that can lower the price of an Israel trip — which can cost $5,000 or more — by $3,000. “Teen travel is an incredibly competitive marketplace,” said BBYO CEO Matt Grossman. “RootOne has made the economic decision a lot easier.”

More than a subsidy: However, Amiel said, the $60 million will not be spent only on vouchers. Most of the current trip participants are already involved in Jewish life through synagogue attendance or JCC membership. To meet its goals, RootOne must reach beyond those existing connections to students on the periphery of Jewish life. “This funding is about having the right level of resources for marketing this experience to a population of Jewish teens who have little to no connection to Israel,” Amiel said.

Read the full story here.

ENDURING DILEMMA

Seven strategies for meeting the challenges of reopening

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“The relief of finally being able to reopen after more than a year of pandemic shutdowns and the resulting uncertainty and caution constitute what we call an ‘Enduring Dilemma,’” write HUC-JIR faculty Dr. Lesley Litman and Dr. Michael Zeldin in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

Enduring dilemma: “Enduring Dilemmas are managed; unlike problems, they cannot be solved. This means that when an issue arises again, it does not happen because you have not adequately addressed it the first time or because the leader has failed in any way. Rather, it is baked into the nature of the issue because it is an Enduring Dilemma. Adopting this way of perceiving issues as we move to reopen reveals seven leadership strategies.”

Two notes, two pockets: “This thinking is deeply congruent with Jewish thought and action both ancient and contemporary. The rabbis nearly two millennia ago expressed this as ‘elu ve’elu divrei Elohim chayim’ – ‘Both this and that are words of the living God.’ In more recent times, this idea is captured in a Hasidic maxim: ‘We all should have two notes, one in each pocket.’

Read the full piece here.

MAKING MUSIC LIVE AGAIN

The year music almost died

Courtesy

“As a lifelong Jewish choral singer, weekly rehearsals and periodic concerts have been a life-giving and stabilizing part of my life,” writes Rabbi Danny Freelander in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.

The year that was: “[I]n March 2020, COVID-19 descended and eliminated this normalizing and inspiring force in my life. I tried Zoom rehearsals but singing alone in front of my computer was just not motivating. (The chat, on the other hand, helped me remember how much I missed — and appreciated — my fellow choir members.) Seeing their faces was lovely, but I wanted to hear them, sing with them, blend with them.” 

Looking forward: “[N]ow we finally have the opportunity to recapture the special Jewish choral experience. But first, we have to overcome our anxieties about singing face to face with others – without masks. We need to overcome our fears and assemble in close proximity in outdoor and eventually indoor places.”

Read the full piece here.

Worthy Reads

 Busy Work: Writing in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Joan Garry issues a wish list from a community nonprofit to funders that aims to remind them that while some nonprofits are high-profile and enjoy bountiful resources, most operate on a shoestring even as they do work that’s essential to their communities. Nearly half of U.S. nonprofits have budgets of less than $500,000, she states, which means small staffs who struggle to cope with intricate applications and other administrative requirements. “You know the College Common App? Can we build one for the nonprofit world — and get every foundation to use it?” Garry asks. [ChroniclePhilanthropy]

 Capital Flows: About a third of assets under professional management in the U.S. can be categorized as “sustainable” or “impact” investments, report Judith Rodin and Saadia Madsbjerg in Stanford Social Innovation Review, which nonprofits should understand as an opportunity to both raise money and generate influence in new ways. Nonprofits that can’t yet offer a suitable investment opportunity should leverage their expertise and networks to create one in cooperation with investors, while others probably already can offer such opportunities, and just don’t realize it yet. “Nonprofits with programs that solve environmental and social challenges can turn some of their initiatives into investable propositions,” write Rodin and Madsbjerg. [SSIR]

 Inevitable Tradeoffs: As philanthropy’s aspirations evolve from the creation of incremental change to the transformation of entire systems, funder collaboratives are gaining momentum worldwide, writes Ipshita Sinha in a blog post on the Center for Effective Philanthropy website. However, funders accustomed to steering their own ship need to embrace a shift in mindset in order to get the most out of this new way of working, including an acknowledgement that the process might move more slowly than they’d like, and a need to set aside the strategic plans they’ve painstakingly hammered out in their own foundations. To those considering setting up or joining a funder collaborative, know that it will be a long journey with its peaks and troughs, but you will gain many new friends to share them with,” Sinha concludes. [CenterEffectivePhilanthropy]

Pic of the Day

ARIEL KATZOVER/GPO

Isaac Herzog was sworn in as the 11th president of the State of Israel last Wednesday.