An Important Message from Michael Steinhardt

Dear Friends,

As we approach the second anniversary of the most barbarous attack on Jews since the Holocaust, I believe this serves as an important moment to reflect on what we have learned. 

October 7 and its aftermath have exposed both the vulnerabilities and the strengths of our people. Vulnerabilities: we found ourselves deep in a sudden and collective trauma, facing the betrayal of longtime allies amid a rising tide of murderous hatred from both left and right. And we witnessed the failure of our institutions to prepare our communities and our youth for what is turning out to be a protracted battle for our legitimacy, even our survival, in the Diaspora.

But also strengths: it has turned out that our communities, and especially a segment of our young people, have a great deal more fight in them than perhaps we had thought possible. 

Various studies have shown that in the months that followed October 7, alongside support for Israel and rallying to fight back on campuses, there was also a significant “surge” in Jewish engagement and identity in America. People were learning more, doing more, feeling more. As Jews became the focus of increasing hate, a great many of them chose to double down on Jewish pride in one form or another.

I don’t know whether that surge has lasted—it may well have not. But in an important sense, it doesn’t matter. The fact that so many Jews, in a moment of crisis and profound vulnerability, turned their attention inward—learning, connecting, acting—suggests that there is a latent sense of pride and commitment that runs very deep among a large portion of our community. This gives me hope. 

If the surge failed to hold, that’s more a reflection of the state of our institutions than of ordinary Jews: people were hungry, and what we offered them writ large may not have been new or resonant enough to satisfy. This hunger, however, has given me a lot to think about as I complete my work in Jewish philanthropy. 

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life was launched in 1995 with the aim of addressing the weaknesses of spirit, knowledge, and pride in the Jewish community. Looking back, we can see how much has been accomplished—and how much more work our community has ahead.

As I turn eighty-five this year, I am writing to tell you that we have decided to wind down our activities. Moving forward, the Foundation will fulfill all its prior commitments through 2028 but will no longer be undertaking new ones. 

The Foundation, whose work focuses on Jewish life in the United States, has spent these decades developing and identifying programs, formulae, and new approaches that can build Jewish pride—which I understand as comprising the three pillars of Jewish peoplehood, excellence, and joy—in a way that is measurable, scalable, and sustainable. As I spelled out in my 2022 book Jewish Pride, that effort has had its ups and downs—challenges alongside resounding successes. I have always been willing to take risks in this work, and to spectacularly fail as long as big wins could be possible with new ideas.

The best known of our successes was, of course, Birthright Israel which I envisioned together with my dear friend Charles Bronfman and in partnership with the State of Israel.  Launched in 1999, Birthright has brought close to a million young Jews on a free 10-day educational trip to Israel. This has made a lasting, well-documented impact on the long-term engagement of a sizeable segment of a generation of Diaspora Jews. Birthright Jews are different from their peers and if this intervention had not been dared, the challenges of the past two years may very well have been far worse. 

Birthright’s success has led to a good number of additional successful programs building on participants’ Birthright experience directly or bringing American Jews to Israel in other innovative ways. We have been directly involved with two of them. The first is Birthright Excel, in which exceptional American college students interested in business and technology have had, through summer internships in Israel, the opportunity to join with their Israeli peers, learning from and teaching each other, building a deepened connection between Israel and the Diaspora, and creating a lifelong elite network.

Another success, today known as OneTable, began with an early experiment to create a Shabbat-based follow-up to Birthright. Started in earnest in 2014, as we partnered with Paul Singer and Terry Kassel, OneTable offers a web-based platform and support system through which young adults engage each other in Friday night Shabbat dinner in cities across America and beyond. This has created a totally new point of entry for tens of thousands of otherwise unengaged Jewish young adults.

We have also invested heavily in the teaching of Modern Israeli Hebrew to American youth, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, to create a deep and authentic connection to the vibrancy and humanity of Israel through language and culture. We began this work with the creation of Hebrew language charter schools with our first school opening in 2009 in Brooklyn, New York. My daughter, Sara Bloom, chairs Hebrew Public: Charter Schools for Global Citizens which now counts 15 school units in its network enrolling over 4,000 students across the United States with more in the pipeline. I am deeply grateful to her for her leadership in this important area. 

Partnering with institutions of Higher Education including Brandeis University, Middlebury College, and CUNY’s Queens College, we have begun the important work of training teachers to make Modern Israeli Hebrew a living language for Americans in ways that instill pride in and excitement for Israel. Soon, those educators will be teaching students in public secondary schools in communities with sizeable Jewish populations. We have brought Hebrew immersion experiences to Jewish summer camps through the Kayitz Kef program which began in 2013 as a design experiment at Camp Ramah in Nyack, New York with seventeen campers and which, this past summer, worked with 40 camps engaging close to 7,000 campers. 

We have also invested in instilling Jewish pride through early childhood education, Jewish life on campus, innovation in synagogue life, Jewish Day Schools, and through other various areas from supporting the accurate measurement of the American Jewish population to fighting for the right of poor Jewish children in the Haredi world to a sound basic education both in the US and in Israel. 

We have some wonderful recently begun projects, as well, including Shiva Circle, being piloted through Shomer Collective, which we hope will do for the practice of sitting Shiva what OneTable does for Friday night Shabbat dinner. I am excited about the work of CSS, Community Security Service, to create a Jewish self-defense movement among young adults. I am also hopeful that the Z3 project out of the Palo Alto JCC and its Z3 Institute, which I have been funding, will help to revitalize and reclaim American Zionist thought and activism. 

My giving in Israel has focused on a range of programs supporting Israeli society, social mobility, underserved populations, children in distress and the relationship with the Diaspora. This includes Talma, which has brought hundreds of American teachers to underserved Israeli communities to teach English to school children. I am especially gratified to have founded the Steinhardt Museum of Natural History at Tel Aviv University which puts my love of flora and fauna together with my deep admiration of Israel as a global leader in the natural sciences. My giving in Israel will be winding down as well.  

I have spent close to $500,000,000 on my philanthropy but more important than the dollar amount is my abiding hope that I have been able to shift the momentum, even if in a small way, of the inertia of a fading Jewish Diaspora.

As my philanthropic work approaches its end, I look back with pride—but also with great gratitude. My wife Judy and my family have been supportive and involved throughout, and I am thankful for that. Among other things, Judy spearheaded our work to help make the Israel Museum a world-class institution. Likewise, I am proud of my son David Steinhardt’s role in co-founding Natan, which has been an important voice encouraging younger Jewish philanthropists. 

I am also appreciative of Rabbi David Gedzelman, President of the Steinhardt Foundation, who first came to work with us 30 years ago, and who will continue as senior philanthropic advisor to our family, shepherding our remaining grant commitments over the next few years and working with our various grantees. Tova Dorfman has been my principal advisor for our Israel-based philanthropy as the executive director of the Steinhardt Family Foundation in Israel; I am grateful for her friendship and wisdom. 

I am also deeply thankful to my many philanthropic partners over the years, too many to name here. Those who joined me in creating the Areivim Philanthropic Group, especially the late William Davidson, are of special note. My daughter Sara has done an outstanding job in co-chairing Areivim, which now numbers 13 partners, and I am reassured that David Gedzelman will continue to manage and lead the work of Areivim going forward.  

As I wind down my philanthropic work,  I am hopeful that others will carry the torch: a torch of Jewish pride, of peoplehood, of a deep connection between Israel and American Jewry, of learning and action, and of a Zionism that is not only the historic effort to build and secure the Jewish state of Israel, but nothing less than the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, transforming Jews everywhere to be proud and strong as masters of their own destiny. 

October 7 will likely be seen as an inflection point in the history of our people, both in Israel and in the Diaspora. For the former, we have already seen a remarkable generation answer the call with heroic strength, selflessness, and resilience that we could only hope our young people here would learn from. For the latter, what remains to be seen is whether it will have been the beginning of a dark chapter in our history, or the catalyst for a kind of renewal unlike anything that has come before—a renewal of spirit, of institutions, of pride. 

What not enough people realize, and what I believe we have shown through our modest efforts over the last three decades, is that the answer to this question is largely in our own hands. 

Yours sincerely,

Michael H. Steinhardt