Ep. 173: Investing in the Promise of the Jewish Future
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I mean, if you look at, if we're concentrating on American Jewry and you look at young Americans, most don't know their story. Most don't know where their family came from. Most don't realize that when their families came here maybe five generations ago, they were not citizens of the country that they came from. I mean, if we're not teaching our young ones our story, how do we expect them to know and how do we expect them to support Jewish causes?

This episode of Think Twice is sponsored by the Jewish Future Promise, ensuring a vibrant and thriving future for Jews and Israel. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice.

This week we have an interesting conversation for you with Michael Levin and Hadara Ishak from the Jewish Future Promise. But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications.

Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content. There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, JNS's inaugural International Policy Summit will be held this April in Jerusalem.

Click the link in the description below to request registration in order to attend. And now to today's program. Optimism about the future of American Jewry is not in great supply these days. For the last few decades, concerns about demography, rising rates of assimilation, alienation, and fewer young people choosing to create Jewish families have created a sense among many that a vibrant Jewish community in the United States is a thing of the past.

Those concerns were rooted at their core in the freedom to opt out of Jewish life offered by an American society that no longer erected the same barriers for Jews that they had in the past. But in recent years, those worries have been amplified by a new threat, or rather an old one, to Jewish life in the form of a surge in anti-Semitism that many of those who grew up in the decades after the Second World War thought was a thing of the past.

This massive and unprecedented increase in anti-Semitism is coming from sectors that many Jews thought of as allies, but now, after their indoctrination in critical race theory, intersectionality, and settler colonialism theory, spew the state of Israel and Jews everywhere as white oppressors. This has led to a situation where Jews are targeted for intimidation and shunning, if not violence, at institutions where they once felt at home.

what should we do about it the answers are fairly simple when it comes to antisemitism the correct response is one that is rooted in the same formula for coping with assimilation we need to fund jewish institutions and groups including schools camp trips to israel

that educate Jewish kids in Jewish values and knowledge that give them a strong sense of identity, as well as arming them with the information and historical examples that will enable them to stand up to the anti-Semites, no matter where they come from, the right, the left, or Islamist hate groups. But doing that is not just a matter of endorsing such a backing efforts that reinforce a sense of Jewish peoplehood and young Jews, as well as supporting Israel.

and that requires a revival of jewish philanthropy in a country where despite the great generosity of many jews it has been in steep decline for many years two people who rightly think this must be a priority are michael levin and

respectively the founder and the president and chief operating officer of Jewish Future Promise, an organization dedicated to encouraging individuals to commit to the idea that if any charitable contributions are made upon their passing, whether that be $10 or $10 million, at least 50% should be allocated to Jewish causes and or the State of Israel.

Michael Levin is a successful businessman in the hospitality industry who served as president and chief operating officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, the chairman and chief executive officer of U.S. Franchise Systems, the president and chief operating officer of Holiday Inn Worldwide, and the president of Days Inn of America.

In 2020, he founded Jewish Future Promise. He also serves on the boards of the A.E. Pi, Fraternity Foundation, Jewish National Fund, and the Marcus Foundation, and is an honorary board member of the Birthright Israel Foundation.

Hadar Ishak has had a varied career in both profit and not-for-profit worlds. She has been an entrepreneur, building a successful women's clothing manufacturing company, a vice president of distribution and a co-producer at Imagination Productions, an independent documentary film company, and has also served as vice president of partnerships at Open Door Media. Michael Levin and Hadar Ishak, welcome to Think Twice.

Thank you for having us. Thank you both for taking the time to join us today. I want to start with you, Mike, and ask you to tell us how you came to start the Jewish Future Promise and why you thought this idea was not only important but needed an organization designed to promote it. Well, basically, I watched Bill Gates and Warren Buffett do a pledge for billionaires to give their money to charity.

I began to wonder about the $6 billion of more that the Asper Jews are providing to support the Jewish organizations, the Jewish world, and the state of Israel in donations in the next generation and the generation after that. They had legacy programs, some of which were working, some weren't working. And I said, well, why can't the Jews do this? And I thought about the idea of a Jewish future promise program.

originally. And I talked to my friend, Bernie Marcus, who was an advisor for me for many years, who recently passed away. And I asked him, what do you think about it? He thought it was a great idea. He said, just do it. So I formed an organization with my own funding. I take no funds from anybody else. I hired a couple of people, set up a process to do it.

And we began, I guess, like any entrepreneurial exercise. And everybody we talked to thought it was a no-brainer idea where for anybody leaving anything for charity, any Jewish person or other, leaving anything to charity that would, in fact, 50% or more be given of the charitable gifts to Jewish causes and Israel.

That was the original idea behind it. It was not a legal document. It was a moral commitment. And we tested it in various Jewish organizations with rather limited success. And it was very slow going. But that was the way we started. And all of a sudden, we found different ways to market.

In different ways, we added more people. We added a youth promise through Jewish organizations. That actually is working pretty well. And as of today, we're at 100,000 signatures. And so we did that yesterday, I think, afternoon, if I'm correct.

Oh, well, no. Now we're already at 100,200. We're at 100,200, right. We're growing daily. And it's taken a while. I mean, we got hit with COVID right away. We really slowed it down. We added some other people. We changed some of our marketing firms. We changed different strategies. And I think we're on our way to what my original idea was, is to get a million people to do this.

And if we got a million people, we'd be able to really buy insurance from a diaspora world to support these causes. After long, many of us, most of us are gone. And that was the idea. And I'm very pleased about what's happened in the last few days. In the last couple of years, it seems to have gotten on. And yeah,

I feel very good about it when I say, gee, we have 100,000, 102,000, 100,000, 200,000 scientists, and everybody says, gee, that's great. It's still a long way from a million, but we're planning to continue to chug along and do what we can to get to that million. And that's my goal. It's my personal legacy to the Jewish people and the state of Israel, both of which are

are most important to me and Adara and our families and everybody else. So, uh, I think, uh, that was the idea and we're in the execution model. So that's, that's, uh, Jonathan, I'd like to add to that. So when Mike Levin, um,

Mike Levin came to me and told me that there is, right now we're going through a $68 trillion financial transfer from one generation to the next. And if we're looking at charitable dollars, we're looking at $6.3 trillion. And if we look deeper into it and try to figure out how much of that is Jewish philanthropy,

through resources, we found out that at least 18 to 20% of that is Jewish philanthropy. And then when we look deeper into that, we wanted to see how much of Jewish philanthropy goes towards Jewish causes in Israel. And that was a shocker. I mean, things have changed since then, but our

Our first diagnosis of it was only 11% of Jewish philanthropy was going towards Jewish causes in Israel, meaning Jews were giving, but 89% of Jewish giving was going towards other great things, but not Jewish causes. And we decided that we want to change that trend. Now, obviously, since October 7th, things have changed, but that was the main vehicle. Secondly,

We realized that there's not enough conversations among families about their own Jewish values, their culture, their tradition, and their family stories of where they came from. What is their family stories? How do we transfer our traditions from one generation to another? And that's when we decided to sort of encompass that into the Jewish Future Promise as well. Hmm.

Now, Jewish Future Promise seeks to encourage a purely voluntary, non-binding promise. But, you know, you've spoken of wanting a million. What are the specific goals beyond that that you've set for it? What are you hoping that leads from this? My view of the hope is more than the money, it's the conversation.

is for parents or grandparents who have signed these particular promises without a legal obligation, whether they have a dollar, $10, or a million dollars, or 10 million, or 100 million, is to talk to their children, have the conversation about why they should be part of the promise and what it will yield in the future. In other words, I'm really trying to break down

the patented Jewish living and giving that has happened in our history all the time.

Once we assimilate to a certain level in every society, in every situation, we forget what our obligations are. As Maimonides once said, your obligation is to your family first, to the Jewish people next, and to the rest of the world after that. And in the United States, I saw through my own context and my own vision of philanthropy that was going on with major philanthropists in the Jewish world,

is they were doing what I would think a lot, but not enough with their progeny to ensure the fact that they were teaching the progeny their responsibility to go on. So the more signatures you have, the more you have conversations with our monthly newsletter, the more you ask people to spend the time

around the Seder table or after the Seder table was spend the time with your family and let them know. And I use my own family as an example. I mean, I've used that with my seven grandchildren, with my three sons and their wives and what have you. And they learned. And we thought we could use people to use donor-advised funds, use legacy gifts, whatever, but make sure that that carried on by the next generation.

And I think that's the real purpose of it. So it's exciting that the more we have, yes, we'll have some fallout. Yes, people won't always act the way we'd like. But the more you have, even if it falls out, it'll be gargantuan for the Jewish people and Israel in the future. That's the methodology behind it. Yeah, now I want to sort of hone in on something you just said a couple of minutes ago, Hadar.

in that you spoke of only 11% of charitable dollars being donated by American Jews were going to Jewish causes. Why don't we take a step back and ask both of you to reflect on how that happened in the history of American Jews and the state of Jewish philanthropy and how it's really changed in recent decades. There are forces, or at least there were forces in Jewish society that used to encourage giving to Jewish causes as well as institutions

They were founded because Jews were excluded from secular and non-Jewish philanthropic institutions that are no longer there. How has that affected Jewish life? And how well do you think Jewish institutions have fared in coping with these changes? Mike, do you want to answer? Yeah, I mean, I think that what's happened is that

Unfortunately, for many wealthy Jewish philanthropists, being accepted by non-Jewish charitable organizations became a goal. You look around at the university problem. A perfect example was my relationship with Bernie. I was running his foundation for a couple of years, and I got involved over 20 years ago.

where basically we found out what was going on in these colleges, in these universities. We spent a lot of time on the West Coast talking to philanthropists or whatever about Middle Eastern study programs. Universities were buying, selling these programs to Arab money at the time. And those people were teaching our kids. We couldn't get anybody to take their money and counter that. What they did was put their names on buildings, right?

And basically, we were outsmarted. We were outsmarted and we saw it, but nobody paid attention. It's too late when the horse was out of the barn. And basically, the door was off. And you've written about that, John, Jonathan, a lot. And I think the natural need, I used to always tell the story about the Maccabees.

and the Hellenistic desire of the people living in Israel at the time to become Hellenistic Jews.

And let's become American Jews as opposed to Jewish Americans. And basically, it's a natural development when you're accepted because we weren't accepted in everything. If you look at my own personal history, there were jobs I couldn't get. There were jobs I was turned down for. My grandparents' sons changed their name from Goldberg to Gelbert so they could get a job in the 1930s.

And so when that all changed, when that all changed, we closed our eyes and didn't do what we should have done. That's not to say that these foundations didn't give money Jewishly, but they gave much more to put their names on the buildings and much more by continued acceptance. And I can send you a quote I once got from one of those foundations that said, well, I put my name on the building to show that there was a Jewish name there.

But that wasn't as important as putting your money where it was going to teach Jewish kids to be proud as opposed to the name. And so I think that's what really caused this effort on my part and Hadar's part and those people who work with her on a daily basis.

She's Israeli, Arbusian Israeli, and she knows what it's like. And her family goes back a long time. My family goes back a long time in America. My grandparents, I lived with them 16 years. They were immigrants from Russia and North Romania. So I grew up with it. But I fought to be assimilated also, except when I got to college, the only fraternity that would take me was a Jewish fraternity.

And so I went through that. And I think the uncomfortable reality is the more we are accepted, the less we pay attention to the fact that acceptance never stays for the Jewish people. It's always something at risk to us. And Israel, we can't risk Israel because Israel is the absolute insurance of the Jewish people's survival.

And so that's how we felt about it. I hate to sound passionate, but I am very passionate about it. It's good to be passionate. I'd like to add to that. I think in conversations that Mike and I had early on with introducing the Jewish Future Promise to our communities,

Many asked us, well, why do I have to give Jewishly? Isn't Shadaka giving Jewishly? If I'm already giving, why does it matter where I'm giving to as long as I'm helping humanity? And that's the reason why we say consider leaving 50% to Jewish and Israel causes, meaning we didn't say stop giving your community and important causes, but you got to consider giving Jewishly because if we Jews don't, then who will?

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, what I was referring to, you know, before was that

A couple of generations ago, when Jews were excluded from philanthropic boards or the museums, the symphonies, you name it, as well as country clubs and things like that, they had to form their own institutions. That's right. There were Jewish country clubs and there were Jewish hospitals with Jewish doctors couldn't get jobs at the other hospitals. And there were social pressures there.

within the Jewish community saying that if you didn't give to Jewish causes, you know, you would be sort of held accountable. Well, of course, it's good that those barriers drop, that anybody can be president of the museum or the symphony or in your case, the aquarium, right, Mike?

But of course, that means that people felt people who felt, as you say, well, I'm giving to something that's charitable. Why should I care about the Jewish community? That kind of goes in with the whole sense of, you know, the freedom of America, which is great, was also part of why, you know, rates of assimilation are so high and why so many drop away.

Well, Jonathan, that's why we encourage people to having family conversations. I mean, if you look at, if we're concentrating on American Jewry and you look at young Americans, most don't know their story. Most don't know where their family came from. Most don't realize that when their families came here maybe five generations ago, they were not citizens of the country that they came from.

I mean, if we're not teaching our young ones our story, how do we expect them to know and how do we expect them to support Jewish causes? So that's why we encourage very much to talk about Jewish values, the stories, understanding your own history in order to know where you're going. When I was running the aquarium, I was chairman and CEO of the aquarium, we ran a 90th birthday party for Bernie Marcus.

His family was there, etc. There were 900 people that showed up. The great majority were not Jews. Michael Feinstein was the entertainment for the day. At that party, we had the slides of Bernie Marcus's family pictures on the wall. Michael Feinstein and I did a duet of Yiddish Mama in that room. People were crying in that room near the song.

And basically, I wanted to make sure that every non-Jew in that room knew who we were and who Bernie was. And they loved it. It was a standing ovation.

And basically, I see the same thing with the evangelical community, many of which I deal with now philanthropically, because they support Israel and they love Israel. Their objective may be different in the end, but at the end, they support us. And there's 55 million of those people. If we could get the amount of Jewish support that we need to be that way, that's going to sustain us in the long term.

And so that was really our job. As you know, Jonathan, many Jewish organizations have legacy programs. Some of them have been relatively successful. Some of the legacy organizations such as AJC and ADL have trust funds that have built up over 100 years, if not that close to 100.

But the fact is, who's going to be there next and the next generation? Because as Chaim Weizmann said in his autobiography, he said, if it weren't for the Jews against me,

In America, Germany, France, and England, I could have had the Balfour Declaration four years earlier. It's in the book. That's right. Yeah, well, the one Jewish member of the British cabinet, just a little historical note, at the time that it was issued, actually voted against it. That's correct. And we even see that happening now. We see that happening now. You see it all the time because I read your stuff. It's happening now. So the idea of this is we wanted a movement.

And it was slow going in the beginning. It was hard. Adara would, you know, she would talk and we would talk about her all the time. Why can't they understand? Why can't the traditional Jewish organizations understand that we need them to use the vehicle to build their future in the organization? It's hundreds of thousands of Jewish employees that may not have signed this pledge to work in the Jewish world.

Many rabbis, and I can tell you my own experience when I presented to a board of a temple about the Jewish future promise, I didn't walk away without a signature from a board. I didn't get it. And so I think now the more we get, the more noise we make,

that we've crossed the threshold now with a six-figure signing that maybe more attention is going to be put to it. So I expect the progress we're going to make is going to be easier as we go forward. Yeah, that leads naturally to my next question, which is, what do you think are the greatest challenges facing those who want to support Jewish philanthropies in Israel these days? Where is the no coming from?

I think that I don't want this to be successful because of the war that started, the Gaza war, and what happened in October 7th. A lot of the reaction to the Jewish world's commitment since that time has been a crisis-oriented commitment.

That's not what I'm interested in. I mean, I like it. I think it's fine. But at the end of the day, that commitment is going to dissipate over time because it always has in the Jewish history. All of a sudden, you're fine. Everything's over. The war is ending. Israel is making a deal with the United States and all the rest of the stuff on Paris and all this stuff. Oh, wonderful. But at the end of the day, the promise is going to guarantee that we will be vigilant all the time.

We want to see, instead of urgency, sustainability. It's very simple. Yeah, that's the important thing. Look, this is a very accidental situation, but Saturday, last Saturday, I was not doing anything in the afternoon, and I said, I'll put on Netflix. I'll see what's on to see the Netflix. And when I put it on, it said, Schindler's List going off April 30th.

Not going to be there anymore. And I said, gee, you know, I saw that movie about 20 years ago. I think it was in the early 90s. Yeah, 93. And I said, maybe I'll take a look at it again. So I watched the first half of it. And then Saturday went out. And then, yes, Sunday, I watched the second half of it. And it's going away April 30th. It should never go away. It should always be on Netflix.

And every Jew should see it because basically, but they don't anymore. Most of the young Jews don't even know shingles exist. It doesn't. And I think it would be unnatural if it existed all the time. So part of what our effort is trying to do is to make sure that we're in constant contact with

constant contact with our community and our people, and constant contact with Israel and its problems and its difficulties and its joys, to make sure that in the future, in the future, there won't be another Schindler's List. But without that, without that, there will be. It could be minor, it could be major, it could be October 7th, or it could be something else. There's always in our history

You know a lot better than I do at history. It's always happened before when we're resting and we cannot rest. We just can't. And this was a vehicle. And if there's a disappointment, the disappointment so far has been that I think that even with 100,000, we should be much more.

We should be much more. And we're going to try. We're going to try to get much more. If we get to my goal of a million, then I think I can rest a little bit for a while. And I'm getting up there in aid. I may be resting permanently, you know, but who knows? But Hadar will be after me. She'll follow it along for sure. So that's how I think about it. And I think...

We still have a lot of work to do. We're still trying to create different ways to approach it. Our youth promise is going very well. We've got many organizations. We're up to over 31,000 young people that have signed. There's no money involved, and it's supporting the Jewish world and supporting the Jewish community.

all different sections of the Jewish world, from reform all the way to orthodox, things like that. People were signing, young people were signing, writing letters to their future self that's in our technology that will come out and pop out again five years from now, 10 years from now, 15 years from now, to remind them of their commitment. So basically, we're working both ends of the market. We're working young people and we're working old people. And that's what we hope we're going to do.

I'd like to add that early on, I think that when we were introducing the idea of the Jewish future promise, for many people, it was very difficult to understand. They wanted to know what's the catch. They weren't sure if I'm making a promise. It's not a legally binding promise. So what am I doing? What's the catch? People ran to their attorneys. I mean, we had all kinds of discussions. And the idea was this is a moral commitment for the longevity of the Jewish community.

Secondly, within these family conversations, what we'd like to inspire people is to consider

leaving money towards Jewish education. You know, we're fighting anti-Semitism. As you know now, millions of dollars are going to fight anti-Semitism, but every time I look out the window, there's still anti-Semitism. Sadly, I think it's always going to be there. I'm a product of anti-Semitism. My grandmother flew from the Ukrainians with the Cossacks killing her brother.

My father is an orphan from the Holocaust, so anti-Semitism is always going to be there. We saw on October 7th. But what we need to secure is Jewish education. We have to educate the next generation. We can't expect them to understand, to know about the Holocaust, about Jewish history, if we don't invest in their education. And I think that that's the best way of fighting anti-Semitism. And I think the Jewish Future Promise gives that opportunity.

opportunity for people to consider that through their family conversations and finding out what's important to them. And now a word about our sponsors. At the heart of the Jewish people is a promise that ensures our traditions, values, and future endure for generations. The Jewish Future Promise is a movement I endorse. It is a moral commitment to securing that future.

By signing the promise, we commit to keeping Jewish life vibrant and thriving for the next generation. Join me in shaping the future. Make your promise today. Sign the promise. JewishFuturePromise.org Sign the promise.

Yeah, I think, you know, for the last 30 years, we've known the three basic, you know, sort of the three legs of the stool on which we can build a Jewish future, which is education, schools, camps, which I know you're very interested in, Mike, as well as trips to Israel, which you've also been involved in with Birthright. Right.

Yet, you know, we still struggle to keep them fully funded. I mean, nobody, we don't have to reinvent the wheel. We do still get sort of that resistance. Where do you think that is? Is it assimilation? Is it ignorance? Where do you think, you know, why are we still getting resistance? I think it's a lack of leadership, Jonathan. I think our Jewish leadership,

Basically, much of it has been sustaining what they're doing. They're looking at the status quo and sustaining the status quo. Nearly 20 years ago, I was the marketing chair for the Federation out of New York City, volunteer.

I met with 10 big philanthropists at the time. I was nothing like a philanthropist at all. I was just running a business, but I wasn't a big donor. I was a donor, but not a big donor. And I said, there's enough money in this room that every Jewish kid can get a K-through-rate education in a Jewish day school, that every kid can go to a Jewish camp, and every kid can take a trip to Israel free. They all looked at me like I was insane.

But you just said it. Those are the three legs of the school. You do that, you're guaranteeing Jewish continuity. What happened the other day with two Jewish philanthropists, when a woman was on TikTok and said, I think, she said, I have three children. I want to send them to a Jewish day school. I can't afford it. And I sent it to two philanthropists, one David Zalek and one Jay Kamen at the Marcus Foundation.

And within 30 minutes, they said, let's start a funding program and test it in Atlanta at any Jew who wants to go will pay. Now, why can't we do that on a national basis? And then you'll build schools. You'll build. And no Jewish camp's been built for 15 years in the United States. Jewish camping really, I mean, I'm a big one on Jewish camping also because I went when I was 10 and a half years old, $250 for eight weeks kosher.

And basically, it was the first time in my life that being a Jew was fun. Fun. And I sang Hatechfer in the morning. And I danced, we could, with the girls. It was co-ed. And I sang songs for the Palmach and the Haganah. And I knew Israel. And my bunk's name, my bunk name was Telchai. And every bunk was named after a settlement in Israel. I grew up with that.

And there's no reason, there's no reason that that can't be done. So part of this movement is to say, we have the money, we can sustain it. Now we need the leadership to sustain it. And billions of dollars working in anti-Semitism, I hate to say it,

It's not going to do anything. It's going to not go push it under the ground a little bit, but whatever it is, I want prideful Jews to stand up. I want more Jews educated, more Jews in camp, and more Jews in Israel. And many programs in Israel are going to be great. Most of them are expanding now.

And I think we do that and we're changing the basic status quo and looking at what has to be different. You know, I don't have it in front of me, but I could pull it up about a great call I heard about the status quo. If you want to do the status quo,

You're never going to get what you want to get. You've got to keep changing and moving and moving and moving forward. And too much of our leadership has been buried and trying to do the same thing over and over, waiting for the crisis. Crisis disappears. They go back to doing the same thing. We can solve. And they're all in business for themselves, you know, looking to support their own thing, which we understand, but it doesn't necessarily build a community.

I think I'm hard-pressed to say that the Jewish leadership

doesn't care about the community. I think they do care about the community. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, they need strategies that work. They need strategies that they can measure. They can measure. And I feel sorry for the hundreds of millions of dollars that are going into this program where the measurement of success is not going to be there.

The appropriate research isn't done. The appropriate execution isn't done. It all looks good on paper and it sounds good, but the money is not changing. Well, I'll go on. Sorry, I thought you were done. No, it's fine. I think that the whole idea of giving today is very different. I think that for many young people, it's not through the legacy organizations. I think they like to identify things that they feel a part of

They like to build things. They like to make sure that what they're giving to is aligned to their values as opposed to just giving and not knowing where the money goes. I think that's where you see success with people

you know, online giving. There is the dailygiving.org. I'm not sure if you're familiar with that, where you could actually give a dollar a day. And it's incredible how much money they're giving to different organizations. And people feel that they know exactly where the money is going to, as opposed to just giving it to a large pool. There is another one, Israel Gives, where you can actually choose where you give your money to.

I think there's a lot of change in philanthropy today, even with donor advised funds. It's not something that used to be there many years ago, where you can actually allocate your money to exactly where you want it to go, as opposed to a larger legacy organization that makes a decision for you.

I mean, look at the different cities. It used to be that you had one federation and the federation would make the decision of where the money is going to. Today, in most cities, you can decide where you want to give your money to, not necessarily to a federation. You want to support a school, you'll support the school. You want to support whatever you might want to support, you're able to do. And then again, with online giving, I think that

We used to sort of give during galas and events, and today you simply go online and you choose what you'd like to do, and you're happy.

I think there's more transparency today that people are looking for as opposed to just giving and not knowing where the money goes to. So there's a lot of change in that. And I think that the Jewish Future Promise gives people the opportunity to make these decisions as a family of where they want to give the money to. We encourage them to having conversations of what's important to them as a family. What do they want their family legacy to be? Where are they involved, the whole family, in giving? I think that's part of our

Yeah, I think the ability to sort of adjust to this new environment. I mean, now, you know, people do feel that they have a right to have transparency, to give exactly where they want. They don't want to be part of a consensus driven, you know, which is a sort of a we used to be a magic word in the Jewish community, you know,

you know, where, you know, a committee would sit down and say, well, this is what's good for the community to give to these causes. And that's where you should give your money. They want to, they want to decide that for themselves. Of course, the downside to that is that,

That also means that there is no consensus, that the money gets diffused. But the point is, we want to encourage Jews to give to Jewish causes and to, you know, to focus on that as opposed to the, you know, to non-Jewish ones, which are fine, but aren't actually going to build a Jewish future.

Well, I think in transparency, it makes the organization actually become better. In order to make sure that they sustain the gift from the particular family or the person, they have to make sure that their dollars work, as opposed to just sort of go and pay salaries and do all kinds of things and not end up doing what their mission is and what they're promising their community that they're doing. You can simplify it a little bit too. I think that

It's the leadership of the Jewish world, both lay leadership and professional leadership,

worked to guarantee Jewish continuity, we'd start from the very beginning, from preschool all the way up through education, education, camping, and trips. There are many other things that they have to support. They have to support poor Jews. They have to support different situations with Jewish family services and these organizations for disabled kids and things like that that they support. They still do that. At the end of the day, fundamentally,

If you want prideful Jews to carry on that stuff, you have to fill those three legs of the stool that you said. I'm old enough to remember when there was no state of issue and we were on our own in America.

And basically like all the other diaspora Jews. The state of Israel starting in 1947 with the partition in 1948 with the Declaration of Independence gave Jews not only that, not only did it give us the pride of Israel, but it also gave a lot of the non-Jews pride in Israel when we started to win wars and do these kinds of things. The image of the Jew was totally different in America for sure. That's a very important point.

Because I think historically we know, and you're just telling us, that the creation of the state of Israel made every Jew, whether they were religious or non-religious, Zionist or non-Zionist, sort of stand a little bit taller and made the non-Jewish world respect the Jewish world more. But we live in an environment now in which a lot of the coverage from the media and Jewish issues is

and very specifically Israel, has impacted the self-image of Jews as well as their attitudes toward Jewish life? How is this affecting philanthropy aimed, as you hope, to ensure the Jewish future? I think that the...

But with the pride in Israel back in the 40s, the late 40s and 50s, and going all the way through the 73 War and the Yom Kippur War and all the rest of the 67 War and all that, the pride now sort of was taken for granted. But when you see different situations in Israel that you don't agree with, the political differences, things like that and whatever, it's not dissimilar to what we have in our own country.

I mean, we have the same conflicts between left and right or center-left and center-right and all this kind of stuff going on. They're human beings. But the way I treat it and look at Israel is it's part of my family. It's part of my family. My family has disagreements politically. It's always going to be that way. But we need Israel and the United States both to survive. So this is my discussion. It goes on all the time, no matter who the president is, no matter what party's in power.

But I think at the end of the day, when you look, I mean, it's an interesting example. I had dinner with two people in Atlanta. One person was a former lay president of the Jewish Federation, very active Jew. And his wife was working part-time for Jewish Family Services. She'd retired. And it happened right after the Pager incident in Lebanon.

And I brought it up. I said, this is the most unbelievable thing I've ever seen in a military situation. And both of those people didn't like it. They said, well, you know, I'm not sure it's appropriate to do that, you know, whatever it is. And I said, but why? Would you rather have bombs drop and killing hundreds of thousands of people who are not military? I mean, they took a different point of view. But we're Jews. We're always going to have different points of views.

But at the end of the day, I felt that in the military history, that particular incident will go down as extraordinary in terms of not having casualties, civilian casualties, things of that kind. So I was very proud of it. And I think that I can deal with different opinions on different situations. But at the end of the day, we have to be here.

There's only 15 million of us, and basically there's 8 billion people in the world. I want people to understand the contribution of the Jewish people

We're nothing, 0.12 or something of the world's population. And look what we've done. Look what Israel has done in 75 years. It's unbelievable. And every Jew should feel proud about it. It's not that they can't disagree, but be proud about it. And so the promise is designed to keep that state and keep people in mind.

of what we are and who we are and what we've accomplished. And that's what we're doing. I mean, I think we start our fifth year in February, if I'm not mistaken. And I can't keep counting. But I feel when people say to me, Keith, there's 100,000 signatures, that's terrific. I say, it's not good enough. We still have to get more.

And Yadara can tell you, because I always talk about doing strategic changes, and so does she. How can we change? How can we do better? We're not going to sit and continue to do what we've done in the past and expect the result to be the same, to get better. It doesn't. So that's our role, and that's what we work on. Right. Now, we've already noted October 7th, 2023, and we know that that's impacted Jewish life everywhere.

How do you think it impacted those who are working for the Jewish future and giving to the causes you want to see supported? We know that, you know, within the core of the Jewish community, there was a rallying around the flag during an emergency. But the aftermath of October 7th and the subsequent war has, you know, created a lot of negative feedback and a lot of attacks on Israel. How is that impacting the campaign to support Jewish philanthropy?

Well, I think that, from my perspective, I think that it has impacted favorably the philanthropy in terms of people are giving all the time. And so many organizations have started up in Israel and to support Israel and fight anti-Semitism. The problem I see with that is...

that the money is not being directed, in my mind, where the results can be measured of effectiveness. It's one thing to be able to have said, my wife went to Israel and picked fruit, volunteered because they didn't have people to take the food anymore. He did those kinds of things. I think that's absolutely fine in helping Israel rebuild its situation. But at the end of the day, my fear is that when the crisis is over, and it will be over,

hopefully sooner than later, that that will return from doing the same things they've done before, unless they redirect the money to be able to measure the results of what they're doing. And I look at Bob Kraft's program. He spent over $100 million. He's a wonderful Jew. He used to sit in the synagogue with Sheldon Allison, who was my boss on Yom Kippur in Newton, Massachusetts, all the time. And they used to talk about Israel and all this. And he's a great Jew.

But I look at the program and I say, what really are we accomplishing? What we're accomplishing? Are we making the change that's necessary to build a foundation for the future with that money?

And so I just... The anti-Semitism response, well, I have to criticize his Super Bowl ad, so I'm on record on that. We'll just think if that money went towards education. There was a couple of Super Bowl ads, eight million dollars, but it's... But that, once again, you fall into the trap of saying you want to help, but you've got to be careful about helping to make sure that there's an end result you're looking for.

And measuring that result. One of the things that Charles Bronfen did when he started Birthright, he started researching the trips with an organization out of Brandeis University. Len Sachs was the guy doing it. For 25 years, they've been doing research on the people who go on Birthright.

So you can see, you can feel and touch the results. The results are in marriage. The results are charitable giving. The results are in out marriage, what the children are. All these kinds of things that you can factually do that. What crafts could have done.

could have done is measure the attitude of certain populations to what he was doing to see if it was working. I'd never seen any results of that kind of situation. So I think that I'm not here to try to criticize or say anything like that. The reaction to help Israel and the Jewish people has been enormous after October 7th. My problem is

My problem with it is it shouldn't take October 7th to get the reaction. That's all. Adara, how have you seen the post-October 7th? Well, I think that most people used to think that us Jews were doing fine. There's no reason to worry about us. We should worry about others and give towards others. And October 7th was a collective trauma where it rekindled the sense of peoplehood

People are giving more Jewishly. And I think that people are rethinking what they've lost thinking for the last 30 years. I know that I've been involved in different programs and people just used to say now, you know, like, for instance, what was happening on campuses, it's been going on for 20 or 30 years, but people just didn't want to deal with it. And all of a sudden now this gave a big wake up.

And I think that it's going to be a surge in Jewish giving. But as Mike said, I think that it's going to be a surge in rethinking. How do we support our community? How do we educate our community? I think more people woke up and see the need for it. I mean, we shall see the future. That's what we're working towards. But I think that that's a part of a conversation. Mm-hmm.

Well, you've already referenced the reception that Jewish Future Promise has been given in the organized Jewish world, as well as from individuals who've heard about it. But one of the more interesting aspects of this effort is your success in actually getting some support from Christians. I noted just yesterday that actress Patricia Heaton, who is not Jewish, although a great supporter of Israel, became the Jewish Future Promise's 100,000 signer.

This seems to be a natural outgrowth of the strong support for Israel and anger about Israel being attacked from many American Christians. Yet a lot of American Jews are historically very suspicious about allying themselves with Christian conservatives with whom they may disagree on some domestic issue. Why is it important to welcome people like Patricia Heaton into the fold? And why is this really important to the Jewish future as well?

Well, first of all, we need all the support we can get. I mean, to be quite frank with you, I see what people write when they make the Jewish future promise. And I read what our Christian friends are writing, and it really couldn't touch me more. They care about Israel. They're

dis you know they're they're so frustrated in what's going on in the news and social media and the way the story is being told and the way lies are being made and they're basically want to make sure that israel is able to sustain itself it's just um incredible i mean look at what patricia what she's done she started a whole organization supporting israel waking up christians that are listening to lies trying to tell them the true story um

I think Israel is a very tiny little country. We need all the support we can get. So we at the Jewish Future Promise are certainly open to our Christian friends and their support. And we constantly get it. I have a couple of agency comments on this. As a business person, if I wanted to sell Israel on a positive basis, there are 55 million evangelicals in the United States and Canada. There's 7 million Jews.

If I were allocating my resources, where would I go? Okay. Think about that for a minute. It's a very interesting scenario. I'm having lunch on Friday with Susan Michael. She works for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. She's based in the United States. And we're talking about things because she's having a Seder on April 14th after the Seder days for her people.

to teach them the Hebraic, by her quote, the Hebraic language and the purpose of the Exodus and everything else. Now, these people, most of them are our friends. And we haven't done any work there. I went to a Kufi thing 15, 20 years ago. And I met Reverend Hagee and his wife when I worked in Vegas with Sheldon. And these people are our friends. They want Israel to survive. And there's so many of them.

There's so many of them, and we're just a tiny minority. So basically, I don't understand why we haven't been more friends with them. Why we haven't opened more communication with them. And I know Israel does some of that. They do work. They have a museum for them now in Israel. My cousin, who runs a tour business in Israel,

uh, actually only does Christian tours. And I asked them, why do you only do Christian tours? He said, they don't complain. Uh,

Yeah, that sounds right. Jonathan, your question is very relevant. Just yesterday I was asked from the Christian community, how come we don't do the Israel future promise for the Christian community that wants to support Israel? And that's something that actually Mike and I are talking about. That's another opportunity from a business standpoint. It's another opportunity to get Israel's support.

And, but that's not really what our job has been. But I think that they're there behind us. I've been to a number of dinners and a number of situations where I've seen one of six Jews out of a thousand people at the dinner. And I've seen that stuff happen. I've seen it. It's a very sincere belief in why Israel is important to survive.

Well, not only that. I mean, you see them at a Jewish organization. JNF has a nice number of non-Jews supporting it. FIDF has a great number of non-Jews supporting it. I mean, they've always been there. Yeah, that's absolutely right. But we can't depend on them, but we should be able to understand that they're our friends. Knowing who your friends are is very, very important.

And I think you can't walk away from that situation. And basically, and the same thing in the Jewish community. I mean, we need the Jewish community to embrace the problems that we have and embrace it together. But at the end of the day, it's going to depend on the leadership. The leadership is everything.

Very right. That's quite true. Now, you've both been involved in a number of Jewish initiatives, as well as Jewish Future Promise. What are the experiences and accomplishments involved with charitable giving that impacted you the most, as well as the ones that you're proudest of? Well,

I think if I had to, I mean, it's going to be redundant to say the things I'm most proud of is when I've supported the Jewish education at the day school level. Most important to me has been the Jewish camping and most important to me have been trips to Israel.

And I think that doesn't mean that I don't spend money. I don't spend my money helping Jews in need or anything like that. But the majority of my greatest feelings have come from protecting those three items that you talked about earlier in the conversation.

And I just met with Giddy Mark, the CEO of Birthright, last night for dinner and this morning. And his volunteer program has been absolutely amazing, what he's done. And I've been on that board for, I don't know, I'm an honorary member now because I don't like board meetings anymore.

But when we were doing 48,000 kids, we did 48,000 a couple of years after I got there. And the results are fantastic. And by the way, they struggled for funds. They struggled for funds because Shelter was giving a lot of money. He said, I need help from other foundations. And they're trying to work the other foundations as his money has gone down after he passed away.

It's still there, but not in the way it was before. So why not get the support of more elements of the Jewish community to help those three aspects of the Jewish world? I mean, when you're doing philanthropic work, I mean, you can get great joy from helping them feed the hungry Jews. Organizations will do that.

But I think that if I had a look at the giving that I do, which is multiple organizations, the ones that are most successful in Jewish continuity are the ones that I work with. The others I do because I'm part of a community. So I give to the Federation in South Palm Beach. I give to the Federation in Atlanta because that's basically my home.

And I don't get involved in the management or the direction of it. It's a community gift and I just participate. But the ones that give me a great feeling of accomplishment are in those three areas.

I think that that's where Mike and I aligned. To me, Jewish education, Israel education is the most important to our people. I think everything else will come along. But if we don't teach our children pride of who we are and where we come from, I don't think that there is a place to go. So I would align with that. And then I just wanted to mention something that Mike spoke about.

regarding the Jewish Youth Promise that we started several years ago. Yes, please tell us about that. Basically, the idea of the Jewish Youth Promise is not a philanthropical idea, but it's more of being a part of the Jewish story. So the Jewish Youth Promise really targets students from the ages of 13 to 24.

where they are asked to make a promise to be a part of the Jewish story. And at that time, they write a letter to their older self to see where they want to see themselves within the Jewish story.

The letter goes into a time capsule, into a cloud. Every two years, they receive a reminder of their experience at that particular organization, whether it was a school, a camping program, a youth program, birthrights.

It reminds them of their experience. Every five years, they get to see the letter and the letter goes away. And in 20 years, they receive the letter. At that point, the organization has an opportunity to reach out to the students and

at that time an adult and give them the opportunity to pay it forward, whether it's volunteering, whether it's in giving charity towards the organization and making sure that they're paying it forward for the next generation to be able to go through the experience. And we did that because when we looked at alumni programs for Jewish organizations, there was really nothing there. So

So you went through a Jewish camp, you went through a Jewish day school, but 20 years later, the organization wasn't in touch with you. And this gives the organization the opportunity to stay in touch with the students, but through their own memory, as opposed to asking them to give or asking them to do something, you're connected to them through their memory.

And we've been rather successful. We have more than 70 partner organizations, some of the largest organizations within the Jewish world. And we're looking to grow it. We think that every Jewish student should have the opportunity to write a letter to their older self. It's fun. And hopefully it will be fruitful for the next generation. Go ahead. You should see some of these letters. I ought to send you some of the letters that you get.

uh, that we got, uh, I sponsored some trips from Yehudi, which is a college organization in Florida, Morocco and Pullman and whatever. And they brought me a book. We don't own it. The organization that's part of it actually owns the letters. We can't see the names for privacy purposes, but they sent me a book with the letters from the trip to Morocco without the names of the people or just in the, in a booklet.

And what they're saying about being Jewish and all this kind of stuff from the chip. And they'll get that letter two, five, five and five years later. And there will be potential donors for this organization. And also they'll carry that with them. When I was in ACA as a young person in Boston, I never heard from B'nai B'rith.

ever again after I was in the NCAA. This is an area for the ABRIT or BBYO or whatever the organization is to stay in touch with me, and I will stay in touch with it over the years. So it's a very interesting situation. Yeah, that's a great idea, and I think it's a great note to end on. Mike and Hadar, thanks so much for joining us today and sharing your insights about Jewish philanthropy and ensuring the Jewish future.

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