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Inside the mind of Andres Spokoiny

Getting Past the Hamster Wheel

This article was published in eJewish Philanthropy. One of the most popular recurrent dreams comes in different variations, but the core...

Living Our Deaths (Rosh Hashanah 5776)

We don’t like to talk about it much, but one of the main themes of the High Holidays is death. Why do we traditionally dress in white?...

A Day Like Today in Jerusalem

As funders, we need to stop watching [the] deterioration of civility from the sidelines. We certainly are part of the problem, but we are...

Asking the Kids to Clean their Parents’ Mess

Most of the folks fighting BDS have the best intentions at heart, and many are doing great work, but collectively, our impact is limited...

The Wexner Foundation at 30—Leading on Leadership

John F. Kennedy once said that “leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.” JFK probably didn’t know, but his statement was...

Honoring Life on Yom Hashoah

Well above the Arctic Circle lies Tromso, the northernmost city in Norway. During the summer, the sun never sets and in winter it never...

Back to Childhood for a Day—or More

Every time I go back to Argentina my mother makes me feel like a child. She reminds me to button up my coat, impervious to the fact that...

Finding Light in the Darkness

As somebody who grew up in the Southern Hemisphere, the wintery nature of Chanukah used to elude me. During my childhood, Christmas fell...

Roots of Intolerance Still Firmly Planted 19 Years After Rabin Assassination

I consider myself to be an incorrigible optimist. I’m an eternal searcher for glasses half full and silver linings. Yet, there was a day...

The Strength of Our Fragility During the Chag

Jewish tradition has a lot of paradoxes, but Sukkot is probably the biggest of them all. Yom Kippur probably hired PR consultants to make...

The Day After

Israel never had a victory parade. Even when military triumphs were outstanding and even miraculous, Israelis knew wars are not something...

What Are Funders to Do? Implications of the Pew Report

Sometimes we need to spawn many new organizations, and sometimes we need intelligent birth control. [This essay is from “Philanthropic...

Shavuot Marks Society Bound by Covenant of Words, Not Use of Force

Imagine a country that says “we are going to get rid of all law enforcement agencies.” There will be no police, no army, and no coercion...

Redefining Freedom as Pesach Nears

Those of you with young children or grandchildren surely know books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Big Nate. My kids love them and I’ve...

Mounting a Comeback for Pluto: Funders’ Whims and Responsibilities in Israel and Beyond

I played an April Fool’s Day prank on the Jewish Funders Network staff last week. I told them a major funder wanted to have Pluto...

No More "Rich Uncle from America"

The biggest problem when driving in Israel is not that people are reckless, but that they don’t want to be “frayerim.” As in, “I’m not...

JFN: The Jewish Frayers Network

The biggest fear of an Israeli is not a nuclear Iran; neither is a rain of missiles from Hamas or Hezbollah. It’s definitely not the...

It’s Not Your Grandfather’s Charitable Organization Anymore

Listen or read transcript The world of philanthropy and social impact is undergoing rapid change. Notable developments include the rise...

Remembering Edgar Bronfman

It is easy to admire Edgar Bronfman for his work going back more than four decades to win greater rights for Jews in the Soviet Union,...

Heroism, Adaptation and Survival

The rabbis of the Talmud didn’t like Chanukah. No, really. They didn’t. But they had good reasons. Many of them had survived the...

Study Points The Way Toward More Avenues To Jewish Life

Since the release of the Pew Research Center survey on American Jews, the question I’ve been asked most often is what surprises me about...

Local and National Funders: The Launch of A Conversation

I’m happy to introduce a series of articles about interactions between local and national funders. This series continues a conversation...

What’s the difference between 45,000 and 4,300? Millions.

Israel, a country of fewer than 8 million people has 45,000 registered nonprofit organizations. This ratio, one of the highest...