Remembering to cherish: From Station Eleven to Jerusalem
Remembering to cherish: From Station Eleven to Jerusalem
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A Maimonides for the Age of AI
The situation we face today will require us to go beyond a legal response into theological, anthropological, and philosophical territory,...
Israel Is Our Positive Psychology
The concept of “learned helplessness,” coined by psychologist Martin Seligman, became the cornerstone of his groundbreaking “positive...
Being Decisive in the Face of Uncertainty
JFN President and CEO Andrés Spokoiny's presidential address at the JFN 2022 International Conference, delivered in Palm Beach, Fla., on...
Z3 Project Presents: Andrés Spokoiny
Z3 Project Presents: Andrés Spokoiny
On This Covid Yom Ha’atzmaut, Let’s Hit the Reset Button
Many things that worried us tremendously a few months ago seem to have lost their urgency in the age of COVID19. As Bari Weiss noted in a...
Fighting Antisemitism Is More Complicated Than You Think
American Jews are anxious. Antisemitism and Judeophobia, which didn’t used to be overriding concerns in the daily lives of Jewish...
Before the Next Recession, Philanthropy Needs to Redefine Efficiency
In a crisis, short-term efficiency can be a shock amplifier. Long-term efficiency comes from building resilient institutions. This...
In Defense of The Why: Judaism Needs a Mission
One of the things that make my job at JFN so rich and interesting is the debates, even arguments, that we have within our staff. I love...
“No-Place” Like Home: The Utopia That Came True
The word utopia was first used by Sir Thomas More in 1516. He coined the term combining two Greek words: ou (not) and topos (place), and...
What Prompts Us to Give? Balancing Head and Heart
Ask most people what motivates philanthropy and they’ll probably say, “generosity.” But generosity isn’t simple. People give charity for...
What All Anti-Semites Have In Common
On April 16, Alain Soral, a well-known French anti-Semite, was sentenced to one year in prison by a French court for “negationisme”,...
Tikkun Olam: A Defense and a Critique
Lately there seems to be a concerted attack on the idea of Tikkun Olam. Critics say Tikkun Olam is not a Jewish idea, but merely liberal...
Greece and Rome: Ideas, Technology, and the Problem with American Judaism
Much of our communal energy over the last three decades has been aimed at creating platforms, leaving the content pretty much up for...
Terror in New York: A Personal Reflection on Friendship
Intense, lifelong friendships that transcend social and cultural barriers are an Argentinian specialty, like tango, recurrent currency...
Philanthropic Arrogance (and how to avoid it), Part II
In order to succeed as philanthropists, we need to better understand and accept the views of those who are in positions of less relative...
The New Year for Globalists & Nationalists
Georg Friedrich Hegel was to modern thought what Plato was to Greek philosophy. Most of the ideological movements of the 19th and 20th...
Arrogance of Philanthropists, Part I
Many people acquire power precisely by having a great capacity to be empathetic, or, at least, to be well-attuned to the emotional...
Do You Fund Like Chairman Mao?
All that death and destruction could have been avoided with honest and timely feedback. One of the greatest famines of all time took pace...
How to Change the World: A Conversation with Charles Bronfman and Harold Grinspoon
At the recent Jewish Funders Network conference, I sat down with two living legends of philanthropy: Harold Grinspoon and Charles...
Why Elie Wiesel Wasn't a Holocaust Writer: A Personal Remembrance
The first books by Elie Wiesel that I read were not about the Holocaust; they were Spanish translations of his works about the Hasidic...
What We Can Learn From Russian-Speaking Jews Here
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s collapse, an event that opened a new chapter in world history and in Jewish...
Speaking of Jewish Identity…
According to cognitive scientist Lera Boroditzky, you and I don’t see the color “baby blue” in the same way. That’s not because we have...
On Persistent Illusions
When medical students in the Middle Ages opened a body and pointed out discrepancies between what they saw in front of them and the...
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