Meet our Partners

Harold Grinspoon, Grinspoon Foundation
Michael Steinhardt, the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life
JESNA
Local Communities

In 1995, the Foundation established the Awards for Excellence in Jewish education in Western Massachusetts as an expression of Harold Grinspoon’s commitment to quality Jewish education and his belief that teachers are at the heart of the educational process. In 2000, the HGF expanded the award program nationally in order to reward Jewish educators and to encourage communities and other Jewish philanthropists to join in honoring teachers and spearheading their professional growth.

The Foundation is a founding partner in PEJE, a funder of the Hillel movement, and is a partner in Birthright Israel. Mr. Grinspoon is a board member of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The Foundation launched two national initiatives which began as local programs: the B’nai Tzedek program designed to teach teens about Tzedakah, and a Campership program designed to subsidize the cost of Jewish overnight camps.

Two of HGF’s newest national initiatives include the PJ Library, which sends Jewish children’s books and music into the homes of families with young children each month; and the Grinspoon Institute for Jewish Philanthropy, which works primarily with Jewish overnight camps to help them become more effective organizations. One of the Foundation’s goals is to create local programs which can be replicated by other Jewish communities. Harold’s wife Diane Troderman is his active partner in all of his philanthropic activities.

In 1995, after a legendary career, Michael H. Steinhardt retired to devote his time and fortune largely to the causes of the Jewish world. Mr. Steinhardt has masterminded his Jewish philanthropic activities through his foundation, The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.

The mission of The Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life is to revitalize American Jewish life with projects that both nurture the identity of individual Jews and transform the institutions of the Jewish community to reach the widest possible spectrum of American Jewry. Among its most well-known initiatives are Hillel’s Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps; the Partnership for Excellence in Jewish Education (PEJE); Makor; Birthright Israel; Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative (JECEI); and the newly founded Steinhardt Social Research Institute (SSRI) at Brandeis University.

Mr. Steinhardt is also a principal supporter of New York University’s Steinhardt School of Education and the Israel Museum. In 2001,Mr. Steinhardt published his memoirs, No Bull: My Life In and Out of the Markets (John Wiley & Sons, 2001). He and his wife, Judy, are the parents of David, Daniel and Sara, and the grandparents of Jacob, Joshua, Kira, Talia, Tora, Lila and Infinity.

JESNA
JESNA seeks to make engaging, inspiring, high quality Jewish learning available to every Jew in North America by building an educational system of consistent excellence. Our commitment to system-building is advanced through a three-pronged strategy that focuses on people—recruiting talented educators and creating the conditions that enable them to thrive; best practices—identifying and disseminating models of excellence in educational practice; and innovative solutions—developing creative new approaches to expand the impact of Jewish education.

JESNA partners with a dynamic and a growing group of individuals, organizations, institutions, and foundations. In addition, JESNA works closely with the central agencies for Jewish education that operate in more than 60 communities and the Jewish federations in more than 150 communities throughout North America.

Click here to see a directory of central agencies

Click here to see a directory of federations in each community.