A two-part essay for  The Peoplehood Papers, volume 22 – “Israel@70: A Peoplehood Perspective”  Part...

Is there a relationship between Israel’s dependence on rain and the traits and values we developed as a people?...

We’re still in the Stone Age. Or rather, our minds are.            ...

In eJewish Philanthropy . [This essay is part of a  series  from leaders in the field of Jewish...

Whenever the Jews have had sovereignty in their land, they have messed up and lost it. Traditional Judaism has...

“Each generation doubtless feels called upon to reform the world. Mine knows that it will not reform it, but its task is p...

Have you ever heard the phrase “the God of the Old Testament”? It’s generally used to distinguish between the supposedly a...

There few things more delightful that getting into an argument with your teenage child about the meaning of “freedom”. No,...

Much of our communal energy over the last three decades has been aimed at creating platforms, leaving the content pretty m...

Maybe what Haman wanted wasn’t so bad after all. He yearned for a homogeneous society, one in which people think the same...

Forward , February 26, 2018. I follow Anshel Pfeffer’s column in Haaretz with assiduity. I usually find his mo...

Our obligations extend to both past and future. Almost all modern societies are based on variations of a single...

Persephone was a unique goddess in Greek mythology. She lived an idyllic and lonely life in communion with Nature, far fro...

Intense, lifelong friendships that transcend social and cultural barriers are an Argentinian specialty, like tango, recurr...

The choice of Kohelet for Sukkot is a curious one. Sukkot is supposed to be the most joyous festival in our calendar, and...

In order to succeed as philanthropists, we need to better understand and accept the views of those who are in positions of...

Cross-posted on eJewish Philanthropy Georg Friedrich Hegel was to modern thought what Plato was to Greek philosophy....

Philanthropy Daily , Sep 13, 2017 Many people acquire power precisely by having a great capacity to be empatheti...

If the purpose of Tisha Be’Av is to warn us about the dangers of internecine hatred, it has failed miserably. T...

eJewish Philanthropy , June 12, 2017. All that death and destruction could have been avoided with honest and t...

Every time you scan your purchases at the grocery store self-checkout line, you’re learning Jewish mysticism. In 19...

eJewish Philanthropy, May 2, 2017 At the recent Jewish Funders Network conference, I sat down with two living legen...

Friends, I generally use the Jewish holidays to share ideas and insights on Judaism and philanthropy. But this holida...

JFN President & CEO Andrés Spokoiny discusses what JFN does in the Insight series from m/Oppenheim Associates ....

Frederick Nietzsche believed that the Egyptians were blond. My apologies; I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start from...

Andrés Spokoiny, President & CEO of Jewish Funders Network, addressed the 2017 JFN conference on March 20, 2017....

What if we are wrong about Purim? What if Purim is not the joyful holiday that we think it is, but a mordant exercise in...

Lake Valencia in Venezuela was once a beautiful place. Nestled among mountains and sierras, and blessed by a humid and tem...

Judaism Unbound, a project of the Institute for the Next Jewish Future, is a project that catalyzes and supports grassroot...

Cross-posted at eJewish Philanthropy We live in an era that journalist Chris Hayes calls “The Twilight of the Elite...

We’re more affected by architecture than we might want to believe. The built environment conditions our thoughts and behav...

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel In 2007, at Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, scientist...

Jewish Funders Network mourns the passing of Shimon Peres z”l, a true giant of the State of Israel, of the Jewish people,...

Cross-posted at the Times of Israel The aspen tree, from which that beautiful Colorado town takes its name, is a re...

The first books by Elie Wiesel that I read were not about the Holocaust; they were Spanish translations of his works about...