Articles

Let’s declare a moratorium on new Big Ideas and look at the possible Near Ideas that abound in our community. If I had a penny for every...

A community that believes in owning rather than sharing cannot seduce those who grew up in an Open Source world. Sometime in the...

William O. Douglas, the longest-serving U.S. Supreme Court justice, said that “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” But as a proverbial...

I made a bet with myself that I could resist using the Star Wars craze as an analogy to write something about the state of the Jewish...

In 1972, during Richard Nixon’s visit to China, Premier Zhou Enlai was asked what he thought about the French Revolution. He responded,...

Inside the mind of Andres Spokoiny

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

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?...

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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...

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

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

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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