The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life typically focuses on large-scale initiatives designed to revitalize the infrastructure of American Jewish life. SFJL is an operating foundation, and thus we cannot accept unsolicited proposals.

Following is an overview of select programs supported by our Foundation. To learn more about a particular program, please click on its name.

Selected
ongoing
Sponsorships

Birthright Israel

Birthright Israel NEXT

B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO)

The Curriculum Initiative

The Grinspoon/Steinhardt Awards for Excellence in Jewish Education

Hebrew Language Academy Charter School

Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania

Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI)

MyJewishLearning.com

Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE)

The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, New York University

Steinhardt Social Research Institute

Selected
Past
Sponsorships

The Abraham Joshua Heschel High School

The Foundation for Jewish Camp

Jewish Funders Network

Kivunim: Israel Summer Institute for Teachers in Jewish Day Schools

Makor/Steinhardt Center of the 92nd Street Y

Professional Leaders Project

In 1999, in an effort to enhance Jewish identity and to restore the centrality of Israel to the lives of young Diaspora Jews, Michael H. Steinhardt joined several other philanthropists in creating Birthright Israel, the revolutionary program to enable every young Jewish person between the ages of 18 to 26 to have a living and learning experience in Israel. Birthright Israel makes a profound affirmation of the unity of clal yisrael by establishing, for the first time in history, a birthright for every Jew in the world of a free round-trip ticket and ten days of intensive Jewish educational experiences in Israel.

Our goal is to change the framework of Jewish life so that travel and study in Israel ranks with the Bar/Bat Mitzvah as a universal life-passage experience for non-Orthodox Jews. Thus far, the response has been overwhelming. Over 48,000 young adults have traveled to Israel for the first time on Birthright Israel trips. The program has helped add a new dimension to the Diaspora experience by making a trip to Israel one of the transformative milestones of modern Jewish identity. Birthright Israel trips spark a passion for Jewish life and Jewish education while strengthening the sense of solidarity between Israeli youth and Jewish communities around the world.

Birthright Israel reflects the ethic of partnerships that drives the philanthropy of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life. The program was created by leading Jewish philanthropists, the government of Israel and the Federations of Jewish communities worldwide. Birthright Israel embodies an additional, cosmic partnership: the much-needed alliance between the State of Israel and the Diaspora. It affirms the essential Jewish teaching that all Jews are bound to one another. This is why an essential element of each Birthright Israel trip is the mifgashim between Diaspora Jews and their Israeli counterparts. Only through personal relationships can we reinforce the interconnectedness and mutual responsibility inherent in the concept of clal yisrael.

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life understands that the Birthright Israel experience should not end when the trip is over. Indeed, the program holds enormous potential to catalyze a lifetime of Jewish involvement and enrichment. The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is involved in the creation of a continuum in which the trip itself is part of a broad, comprehensive framework of Jewish identity formation. We are chairing the committee that oversees post-trip programming for Birthright Israel alumni, including the Birthright Israel alumni association and the Birthright Professionals program.

www.birthrightisrael.com

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life supports Birthright Israel NEXT to help transform the ten-day experience of Birthright Israel into a continued devotion to Jewish experience, learning and life. Birthright Israel NEXT inspires all Taglit-Birthright Israel trip participants and their peers to expand their connections to the land and people of Israel, to deepen their personal commitments to Jewish life, and to find or form a community where Jewish responsibility, learning, and celebration thrive.

www.birthrightisrael.com/next

The period between Bar/Mat Mitzvah and college is sometimes described as a limbo of Jewish affiliation. Although each of the denominational movements supports youth programs, many Jewish teens do not identify themselves chiefly through a denominational lens. And yet, the teenage years represent an enormous opportunity for Jewish growth and enrichment. It is in high school that teenagers often make their first adult decisions and begin to carve out unique, independent identities that will shape their entire lives. On a practical level, without strong Jewish identification outlets during high school, it will be that much more difficult to engage young adults in college and beyond. Simply put, the teenage years are too precious to neglect.

Recognizing this, in 2001 Michael H. Steinhardt joined Lynn Schusterman along with Edgar Bronfman and Newton Becker to help strengthen the newly independent B’nai B’rith Youth Organization (BBYO) into the major international platform for engaging Jewish teens.

For eight decades, BBYO has sought to engage young Jews all over the world through educational, recreational and community service activities inspired by pluralism and youth empowerment. BBYO provides Jewish youth with the opportunities to develop their leadership potential, encourages service and Tzeddakah as salient Jewish values, and nurtures a commitment to the State of Israel and clal yisrael. In North America alone, 20,000 teens are currently involved in BBYO, where they enrich their knowledge and appreciation of Jewish religion and culture. BBYO youth participate in small, democratically functioning groups under the guidance of adult advisors and professional staff. BBYO has recently been restructured as an independent organization to guarantee its long-term ability to engage Jewish youth across North America and the world.

www.bbyo.org

In an effort to galvanize Jewish explorations and enrichment in all areas of American Jewish life, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life supports The Curriculum Initiative (TCI).

TCI supports teaching and learning about Judaism in independent schools. It is the only organization in the United States that helps high schools integrate Jewish perspectives and that supports Jewish life on their campuses. TCI’s programs are pluralistic, open, and accessible to all students.

TCI programs on Judaism focus on Jewish holidays and culture, and use a combination of creative activities and Jewish texts to make Judaism meaningful and relevant to students’ lives. TCI also provides schools with educators and curricula for character education. Its programs address real-life moral issues that schools face, including the ethics of language, relationships between teachers, students and parents, and the creation of a moral community. TCI Faculty members include professors, rabbis, graduate students, and teachers from renowned institutions across the country.

www.thecurriculum.org

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life understands that the scope and breadth of an American Jewish renaissance is inextricably linked to the quality of our educators. In an effort to celebrate excellence among teachers, Michael H. Steinhardt joined Harold Grinspoon when he created the annual Grinspoon Steinhardt Awards for Excellence in Jewish Education.

Designed to recognize, honor and support outstanding Jewish educators in day schools and other formal Jewish educational settings on the local level, the Grinspoon Steinhardt Awards for Excellence in Jewish Education have been presented to 139 professionals in 36 communities across the United States and Canada over the past four years.

The Grinspoon-Steinhardt Awards are a partnership of The Jewish Education Service of North America, The Harold Grinspoon Foundation and The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.

www.grinspoonsteinhardt.org

The Hebrew Language Academy Charter School ("HLA") is a dual language public elementary school located in Brooklyn, New York. Founded in 2009, HLA's mission is to provide a nurturing yet rigorous early childhood dual language program committed to fostering academic excellence and a high degree of Hebrew language proficiency. The school provides students with a sophisticated core curriculum in English Language Arts, mathematics, the sciences, social studies, art, music, technology and physical education. It incorporates Hebrew language instruction across the curriculum through a partial immersion proficiency model.

HLA recognizes that its students are growing up in an increasingly "global" community. Its entire educational program is geared towards providing students with a solid foundation to become ethical, productive citizens in this global community. HLA helps its students learn social and civic responsibility through the integration of community service and service learning into their classroom studies, and diversity, tolerance and openness are emphasized throughout the curriculum and school life.

HLA currently serves 150 kindergarten and first grade students. The school plans to add a grade level each school year until it ultimately serves grades K to 5 in the 2013-2014 school year. HLA's student population reflects the diversity of its surrounding community in Brooklyn, New York. Most of its students come from families with at least one foreign-born parent, and a majority comes from homes where languages other than English are spoken at home (Russian, Hebrew, Creole, Spanish, among others).

http://www.hlacharterschool.org

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life supports various programs to strengthen and enhance Jewish life at Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Jewish Renaissance Project at the University of Pennsylvania engages Jewish college students through a variety of outlets within the context of campus life. In order to involve students at all points of their college experience, programs are implemented in non-parochial campus facilities such as dormitories, fraternities and sororities. In partnership with Hillel, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is positioning the Jewish Renaissance Project at Penn as a premier venue for training Hillel professionals nationwide in the work of engagement.

www.jrp.com

In order to support and augment Penn’s burgeoning Jewish culture, Judy and Michael Steinhardt gave the naming gift for Steinhardt Hall of Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania. Opened in October 2003, Steinhardt Hall is a 36,000 square foot facility that includes a large auditorium, kosher dining facilities, places of worship, lounges and meeting rooms. It is designed to be the nexus of Jewish life at Penn.

www.pennhillel.org/penn

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life views early childhood education as a unique opportunity to engage both young children and their parents in a rich and meaningful Jewish communal life. The Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI) transforms Jewish early childhood education (ECE) schools by igniting a desire and commitment in families to continue Jewish learning and living beyond their Jewish ECE experience and inspiring increasing numbers of new families to enroll in Jewish ECE schools of the highest quality.

At this stage of their lives, parents of young children are open to considering questions of identity and connection for themselves and their children. The raising of young children offers Jewish communities an unrivaled opportunity to engage young families and deepen their Jewish journeys.

The early years of a child’s life have a substantial impact on brain development, social-emotional intelligence and personal identity. The foundations for future learning, personal relationships and communal belonging are laid down in those early childhood experiences. Thus, parents are seeking the best educational environments available for their children, and the Jewish community needs to be able to offer them excellence.

www.jecei.org

As part of our continuing efforts to create points of engagement for unaffiliated Jews, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life joined the Samuel Bronfman Foundation, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and the Abramson Family Foundation in supporting MyJewishLearning.com.

MyJewishLearning.com is a comprehensive, pluralistic website of Jewish information and education geared towards learners of all ages and educational backgrounds. As the central Internet site for learning about Judaism, it offers more than 2,000 articles covering such topics as history, culture, holidays and texts. One of the distinguishing features of the site is its guided learning feature, which allows users of widely varying background to find information suited to their needs. Content on the site is packaged to invite and facilitate ever-deepening levels of learning. Its learning materials are representative of the wide range of trans-denominational perspectives within Judaism.

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life believes that MyJewishLearning.com has tremendous potential in using the Internet to engage and educate Jews on the margins of Jewish life.

www.myjewishlearning.com

Jewish renaissance will not be possible unless our community is Jewishly literate. With this in mind, the philanthropy of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life aims to shore up both informal and formal outlets of American Jewish education. Day schools in particular have the capacity to become the cornerstone of a campaign to revitalize American Jewish life. With their rigorous transmission of Jewish knowledge, identity and experience in total-immersion environments, day schools are arguably the community’s most valuable resource in inspiring lifelong Jewish commitment among their students.

To help advance the goal of a flourishing day school movement, Michael H. Steinhardt founded the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE). PEJE is a collaborative initiative of philanthropic partners committed to strengthening Jewish day school education in North America. Through grant making, expertise delivery, and advocacy, PEJE works to strengthen individual schools, promote excellence in the field at large, enable the creation of new schools, and increase awareness and support of day schools in the broader Jewish community. PEJE schools are committed to transmitting Jewish identity and values to the next generation, and to achieving a level of academic excellence that equals that of the best private schools in the nation.

In its first six years of operation, PEJE has established over 60 new schools. Over the next six years, PEJE will continue its pioneering work by assisting schools in developing educational excellence, enhancing financial and volunteer resources, and deepening their communal connections in order to increase the number of children receiving the treasured gift of a day school education.

www.peje.org

In order to revitalize Jewish life, we must train our future educators in a wide variety of skills and disciplines. The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life has taken an important step in this direction through its support of the The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. As part of Michael H. Steinhardt’s naming gift, the The Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development and the NYU Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies have created a joint Ph.D. program in Education and Jewish Studies. Designed to develop leaders for a wide range of settings, this new program combines course work at the School of Education, course work at the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, and a two-year seminar on issues in Jewish education. Tracks are available in administration, curriculum, and academics/research. A competitive fellowship is available to selected students, providing up to three years of full-time tuition support and a living stipend.

www.nyu.edu/education/humsocsci/jewish

As part of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life’s ongoing efforts to understand the full dimensions of American Jewish life, Michael Steinhardt established the Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at Brandeis University. The Steinhardt Social Research Institute is dedicated to providing unbiased, high quality data about contemporary Jewry. The institute conducts socio-demographic research, studies the attitudes and behavior of U.S. Jews, and develops a variety of policy-focused analyses of issues such as intermarriage and the effectiveness of Jewish education. The institute's work is characterized by the application of cutting-edge research methods to provide policy-relevant data.

Steinhardt Social Research Institute researchers have been audacious in their application of new social scientific approaches and their willingness to tackle key societal challenges. SSRI research informs discourse about religious-ethnic identity and, in so doing, aids efforts to ensure a vibrant future for the Jewish community.

Since its founding in 2005, the Steinhardt Social Research Institute has developed new approaches to socio-demographic research and to understanding Jewish identity. Institute researchers have created new estimates of the size and characteristics of the United States’ Jewish population and conducted similar analyses of other religious minorities.

Its work, including studies of local communities and analyses of data from more than 200,000 applicants and participants in Taglit-Birthright Israel, has led to a reexamination of fundamental assumptions about the Jewish community. The institute’s efforts provide an evidence-based and contextualized understanding of contemporary life.

www.cmjs.org/ssri/

PAST SPONSORSHIPS

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life seeks to cultivate an infrastructure of freedom that will enable all Jews to grow enriched by Jewish values and committed to life in the open society. The Abraham Joshua Heschel School, founded in 1983 by Peter Geffen, shares this vision. It has endeavored diligently to educate Jewish children with the preeminent Jewish ideals of study, justice, shared humanity and mutual respect.

Understanding the need to expand the opportunity for a pluralistic Jewish education into the high school years, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life joined with other friends of the school to found The Abraham Joshua Heschel High School. The high school, located in a new building on the Upper West Side of New York City, opened its doors in September of 2002 to its first class.

www.heschel.org/high

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life recognizes the importance of summer camp, a quintessentially American institution, in shaping a lifelong attachment to Judaism. We support the Foundation for Jewish Camping (FJC), the central voice for non-profit Jewish overnight camps in North America.

The FJC provides a clearinghouse for information about Jewish camping, advocates for camp in the Jewish community, and provides financial and programmatic resources for camps without regard to denomination or sponsorship. As the only national organization dedicated solely to the Jewish camp movement, the FJC is the central address, advocacy voice and champion for more than 120 Jewish content camps, 50,000 campers and 12,000 counselors in North America.

The FJC is working to create new professional training for management and staff across the field of Jewish camping. It is also working to expand capacity within camps and to establish new camps throughout North America.

www.jewishcamp.org

A core tenet of the philanthropy of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is that the community must substantially upgrade its levels of philanthropic giving and engage in philanthropic partnerships in order to strengthen Jewish life. As part of our efforts to facilitate partnerships, synergy and optimum funding practices, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life supports Jewish Funders Network (JFN).

JFN was created to provide leadership, programs and services to help Jewish grantmakers be more effective and strategic in their philanthropy. JFN members explore various issues, including personal and family relations, the responsibilities of business and philanthropy, as well as the transition of assets, tradition, values and priorities between generations. Together, they build partnerships and assist one another so that their philanthropic giving can effectively change the world. The basis for all JFN programs is the textured world of Jewish values and identity that grant makers apply to whatever funding decisions they make.

www.jfunders.org

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life understands the importance of day school education and the centrality of Israel in Jewish identity formation. Kivunim works to synthesize the two concepts by integrating Israel experience into the professional development of day school teachers.

Created in 1999, the Kivunim Summer Institute is an intensive two-week educational experience in Israel aimed at enhancing the intellectual and creative discourse in North American Jewish day schools. It has become the largest in-service training program that brings teachers from North America to Israel. Using Israel as a laboratory of Jewish education and critical inquiry, Kivunim serves to broaden the Jewish identity of our day school teachers while helping them to develop a more open approach to the education of children. Program participants receive a full fellowship and are eligible for up to six graduate credits through the Cleveland College of Jewish Studies. For more information on Kivunim, please contact Peter Geffen, Director, at PG1946@aol.com.

www.kivunim.org

The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life seeks to reach and inspire Jews on their own terms, through programming that can compete with the most sophisticated cultural, artistic and intellectual offerings of the secular world. Makor is a stellar example of this philosophy in action.

Recognizing that Jewish New Yorkers have come to expect the best in arts, intellectual discourse and music, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life conducted research to find ways of weaving Jewish content into a secular cultural venue in order to educate, inspire and entertain young Jews. We then opened Makor in 1999 as an arts, cultural and educational center that reaches out to Jewish New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s and gives them opportunities for Jewish exploration and connection.

The five story facility includes a live-music café and bar, state-of-the-art film center, lecture hall, art gallery, seminar rooms, and more. Thousands of young Jewish New Yorkers participate in Makor’s programming each month seeking spiritual growth, intellectual edification, opportunities for service, social and entertainment possibilities as well as the many synergies between popular culture, Jewish meaning and artistic expression afforded by the Makor program. Since June of 2001, Makor has been a program of the 92nd Street Y.

www.makor.org

Together with William M. Davidson, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, Eugene and Marcia Applebaum and Robert P. Aronson, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life created the Professional Leaders Project (PLP), a national initiative to improve the field of Jewish professional life. PLP is devoted to inspiring and enriching a talent pool of outstanding 20- and 30-somethings that will produce a next generation of Jewish community leaders. Our goal is to recruit and nurture a new generation of Jewish leaders from across the Jewish spectrum who will be inspired by a sense of the meaning and value of their roles, and who will share a common willingness to take responsibility for reaching out to the entire Jewish people.

www.jewishleaders.net