Your Daily Phil: Remembering Bernie Marcus
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s edition of Your Daily Phil, we report on a recent court ruling regarding an antisemitism lawsuit against Harvard University. We feature an opinion piece by Steven Windmueller considering what yesterday’s elections portend for American Jewish politics, and another by Bishop Robert Stearns and Rabbi Joshua Stanton about how Jews and Evangelical Christians can better cooperate. Also in this newsletter: Yehuda Kurtzer, Dov Ben-Shimon andJohanna and Eduard Arnhold. We’ll start with friends, colleagues and grantees remembering Bernie Marcus.
Bernard “Bernie” Marcus, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia who co-founded The Home Depot and became a major donor to a wide variety of causes, including many Jewish ones, died on Monday in Boca Raton, Fla., reports eJewishPhilanthropy’s Judah Ari Gross. He was 95.
Marcus served as chairman of The Marcus Foundation, through which he and his wife, Billi, have donated to a wide array of organizations. These include Jewish ones and non-Jewish ones, as well as many in his adopted hometown of Atlanta, such as the Georgia Aquarium, which he helped construct with a $250 million donation. He also helped fund the construction of the Marcus Jewish Community Center in Atlanta, which bears his name.
“His mother taught him at a very young age about the concept of tzedakah, about giving back. He carried that with him his whole life,” Jay Kaiman, president of The Marcus Foundation, told eJP’s Nira Dayanim, who spoke with several of Marcus’ colleagues and grantees.
According to those who knew him, his legacy will be the impact that he had on the many people who were touched by his life’s work. “He’s somebody who did this work and invested in this, not for any self-aggrandizement… but truly for the sake of helping others and ensuring the future of the Jewish people,” said Simon Amiel, executive director of RootOne, which subsidizes trips to Israel for Jewish teens and which received $20 million in seed funding from the Marcus Foundation in 2020, followed by $60 million a year later.
Over the last 30 years, The Marcus Foundation has given billions to hundreds of nonprofits in the United States and Israel. “Whether it’s business or philanthropy, Bernie didn’t do anything small. He was always shooting for the moon and beyond. And he had an ability to bring other people with him,” Elias Saratovsky, president and CEO of the Birthright Israel Foundation, told eJP.
Marcus was a longtime donor to the Republican Party, but when it came to the Jewish community and to Israel, his philanthropic work encompassed a big tent. The Marcus Foundation supported Jewish initiatives across the religious and political spectrum, from the Zionist Organization of America to the Union for Reform Judaism.
“As a devoted member of URJ congregation The Temple in Atlanta, Bernie believed that Jews need our modern, relevant and inclusive Reform expression of Judaism,” the URJ wrote in a statement.
In 1991, Marcus helped found the Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem-based nonpartisan think tank, and served as its international chairman, as well as chairman of its “American Friends of,” which has raised millions of dollars each year for the organization.
“Israelis from all walks of life owe a debt of gratitude to Bernie for all that he has done to make Israel a stronger, freer, and more hopeful place,” IDI President Yohanan Plesner said in a statement. “We are at a moment of grave, existential peril, and in our last conversation Bernie expressed to me his profound concern for the future of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Marcus viewed investing in the Jewish community as necessary and obvious, and expected the same of his peers, according to Amiel. “His default was, if you’re Jewish, of course you care about the Jewish people. If you care about the Jewish people, of course you invest in its future. If you didn’t, you were going to hear it from him,” Amiel told eJP.
Kaiman described Marcus as a natural problem solver, and ascribed both his success and his investment in the Jewish future to his unique ability to “see around corners,” providing the example of the Marcus National Blood Services Center in Ramle, Israel, which he had helped fund. The reinforced blood bank went into operation within hours of the Oct. 7 attacks. “That kind of sums up Bernie’s visionary way of looking at his giving,” Kaiman told eJP.
The Marcus Foundation and Marcus family invited those interested in making donations to some of Marcus’ top causes — RootOne, the Avalon Action Alliance, the Marcus Autism Center, the Marcus Stroke and Neuroscience Center at Grady, the Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital and the Israel Democracy Institute — in lieu of flowers or other gifts.
“Bernie left us a great legacy. In order to honor that legacy, we all can be philanthropists. We all can give back,” Kaiman said. “I think that’s the best way to remember this guy.”
SEE YOU IN COURT
Split preliminary ruling on Harvard antisemitism case
A federal lawsuit against Harvard University that alleges the school has ignored the harassment of Jewish students for more than a year is set to begin after a U.S. District Court judge on Tuesday rejected Harvard’s request for dismissal, but denied claims that the school directly discriminated against Jewish and Israeli students, reports Haley Cohen for eJewishPhilanthropy’s sister publication Jewish Insider.
‘Deliberate indifference’: The lawsuit, which was first reported by JI in May, states that Harvard allowed student protesters to occupy and vandalize buildings, and interrupt classes and exams. In yesterday’s decision, Judge Robert Stearns wrote that to prove deliberate indifference, the plaintiffs must make the case that the school “either did nothing or failed to take additional reasonable measures after it learned that its initial remedies were ineffective.”
Deal with it: “Harvard has to realize that with this lawsuit pending, they need to take much more seriously the problems that Jewish students are facing on campus,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JI. Following a recently released congressional report on campus antisemitism, it’s “all too clear that major universities aren’t responding effectively enough to antisemitism,” he said.
PULSE CHECK
First thoughts: The 2024 election and American Jewry
“We are living through an extraordinary moment in the American political drama, as few election cycles have been as emotionally tense and uncertain as this one. In some measure what we are experiencing aligns what we have seen taking place across the political spectrum, as election results among democracies in recent years have shifted nations to the political right, and that is what America is encountering!” writes Steven Windmueller, an emeritus professor of Jewish communal studies at HUC-JIR Los Angeles, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Jewish grappling: “At this moment our Jewish souls are in tension with our American sensibilities. Just as we struggle with our deep abiding concerns for Israel and the welfare of our own community amidst this new strain of antisemitism, our American mindset craves for a more perfect union, where this democracy continues to flourish and where the processes of government continue to perform.”
A partisan shuffle?: “Has the Jewish liberal experiment that so defined a significant part of the American electorate come to an end? While the majority of Jewish voters retained their long held Democratic credentials, no doubt there is political transformation in play, we are experiencing something profoundly different, whether permanent or merely a reflection of this particular election cycle.”
What lies ahead: “The new political reality will be disquieting and upsetting to some sectors of our community, just as it will be embraced by other parts of the Jewish polity. American Jewry will be at an entirely new political threshold, as national conservatism, Christian Nationalism and American populism take hold. Not only will America undergo a profound change, but America’s Jews will likewise experience a fundamentally different social order.”
INTERFAITH WORK
Renewing the Evangelical-Jewish alliance
“Now more than ever, the Jewish community needs the support of American Evangelicals to fight antisemitism and strengthen our ties in faith. And Evangelicals find authentic relationships with the Jewish community to be spiritually nourishing and filled with opportunities for fraternal connection. Unfortunately, when we need it the most, the relationship between the Jewish and Evangelical communities has descended into a silent crisis,” write Bishop Robert Stearns, founding executive director of Eagles’ Wings, and Rabbi Joshua Stanton, associate vice president for interfaith and intergroup initiatives at the Jewish Federations of North America, in an opinion piece for eJewishPhilanthropy.
Opening up: “American Jews need to take Evangelicals seriously and understand that the support that they receive is sincere and not predicated on conversion or end-times prophecies… With deeper relationships between leaders and a clear purpose for each gathering, Jewish communities can and should open their doors in ways that they have been hesitant to do in the past.”
Stepping up: “Evangelicals can become more effective allies of the Jewish community in America. They cannot stand idly by on college campuses in which Jewish students are harassed or assaulted. They cannot watch as public leaders single out Jews and Israel. Their faith calls them to be their ‘brother’s keeper,’ and American Jews are their siblings in faith.”
Worthy Reads
Fresh Blood: In The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Alex Daniels examines the incoming crop of younger and more diverse foundation leaders and the challenges and opportunities facing them.“Some of the most recognizable names in philanthropy are stepping down, and a new wave of leaders is taking their place… As a result of the departures, philanthropy is undergoing what some are calling a sea change in leadership. ‘There are a lot of new faces at the table,’ says Toya Fick, who became president of the Meyer Memorial Trust in Oregon in 2022… Of the dozens of new private foundation leaders, a significant number have [come from the nonprofit world] — not from high ranks in academia, business, or government, but from the day-to-day of dot-orgs… In other words, they are intimately familiar with the daily grind of philanthropy. In addition to coming from nonprofits, the new group is younger and more diverse than their predecessors… Rather than simply trying to defend the status quo, Pasic says, the new foundation leaders have an opportunity to communicate the benefits of philanthropy to a broader public and create new regulations that will make it more effective.” [ChronicleofPhilanthropy]
Around the Web
Jewish Insider examines how President-elect Donald Trump might approach Middle East policy in his second term…
In Israel Hayom, Yehuda Kurtzer explains to Israelis what the majority of American Jews care about besides the State of Israel, namely the democratic values that have enabled them to thrive in the United States…
Dov Ben-Shimonwill start a new position as chief executive officer of the Community Security Service; Ben-Shimon previously served as CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest, N.J.…
Sports Business Journal profiles the success and growth of NFL Minnesota Vikings football team owners, brothers Mark and Zygi Wilf and cousin Lenny Wilf, as they celebrate their 20th season. With the team’s $600 million in revenue, employees, players, retirees and fans and the state have also benefited…
The decision not to exclude charities from the increased employer National Insurance contributions requirement in the British Labour Party’s new budget will put charity beneficiaries at a disadvantage, Jewish nonprofit leader Naomi Lerer argues in the Jewish Chronicle…
Apollo Global Management Inc.’s focus on attracting wealthy clients has helped increase its assets under management to $733 billion, an increase of 16% compared to the same period last year…
The district attorney’s office in Brooklyn, N.Y., announced charges against three individuals who vandalized the homes of several members of the board of directors of the Brooklyn Museum “who have Jewish-sounding names”; the trio, according to the district attorney’s office, “did not target two board members who do not have Jewish-sounding names”…
Several storefronts in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson neighborhood in Los Angeles were vandalized early yesterday morning…
Businessman, art lover, refugee advocate and Halifax, Canada, Jewish community activist Lloyd Newman died Sept. 30 at 90…
Pic of the Day
The sign is unveiled yesterday renaming the piazzetta in front of Berlin’s Kulturforum after Johanna and Eduard Arnhold, 19th- and early-20th-century German Jewish patrons of the arts. The renaming is part of the Association in Memory of Johanna and Eduard Arnhold’s effort to highlight the civic engagement of the Jewish middle classes in Germany.
Birthdays
Film producer, together with her husband Robert Downey Jr., Susan Nicole Levin Downey…
Leading teacher in the Breslov Hasidic movement in Israel, Rabbi Yaakov Meir Shechter… Belgian theoretical physicist, a Holocaust survivor and 2013 Nobel Prize laureate, François Englert… Former president and CEO of American Jewish World Service until 2016, prior to that she served as the Manhattan borough president, Ruth Wyler Messinger… Former commissioner of the Social Security Administration until 2021, Andrew Saul… Former aide to President Bill Clinton and a longtime advisor to Hillary Clinton, Sidney Blumenthal… Research scientist at NYU’s Langone Medical Center, Barbara Volsky… Senior chair of Sullivan & Cromwell, Joseph C. Shenker… Actress and cellist best known for her lead role in the 1984 film “Footloose” and the television series “Fame,” Lori Singer… and her twin brother, violinist, composer and conductor, he is the founder and music director of the Manhattan Symphonie, Gregory Singer both turn 67… Managing director of the NFL Players Association for 15 years until he retired five months ago, Ira Fishman… Editorial page editor and op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times until 2023, Nicholas Goldberg… Professional poker player from Las Vegas, he has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets and his total tournament winnings exceed $45.5 million, Erik Seidel… Founder of Nourish Snacks, she is the host of NBC’s “Health & Happiness” and author of 15 New York Times best-sellers, Joy Bauer… Philanthropist, she is the founder and chair of Emerson Collective and XQ Institute, Laurene Powell Jobs… Principal and COO at Douglass Winthrop Advisors, Andrew S. Weinberg… Senior vice president of investments in the Beverly Hills office of Raymond James, Seth A. Radow… Chairman at IDTFS Bank in Gibraltar, he is a partner in Covenant Winery, Geoffrey Rochwarger… Host of the “Call Me Back” podcast and author of The Genius of Israel and Start-up Nation, Dan Senor… Director of external affairs at the William Davidson Foundation, Kari Alterman… South Florida entrepreneur, Earl J. Campos-Devine… Former baseball outfielder in the Orioles and Angels systems, he played for Team Israel in 2012 and is now a manager of business development at Robson Forensic, Robert Eric Widlansky … Head cantor of Lincoln Square Synagogue in New York City, Yaakov (“Yanky”) Lemmer… and his younger brother, the first Haredi-born Jew to sign a contract with a leading record label, Shulem Lemmer…
