Billionaire gives $25 million to Birthright
Billionaire Sheldon Adelson pledged $25 million to Birthright Israel. The money will allow the organization to double the number of free trips to Israel that it offers Jewish youth this summer, bringing the total to 20,000.
The gift is being made by the Adelson Family Charitable Foundation, founded recently by the majority owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson.
According to a Birthright spokesman, the foundation anticipates making similar $25 million gifts for the next several years. In December, the Adelson foundation gave $5 million to Birthright to pay for 2,000 free trips for Jews aged 18 to 26.
Adelson, whose net worth was estimated in September at $20.5 billion, is America’s third wealthiest man behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. — jta
Jewish groups to merge
Jewish Funds for Justice and Spark: The Partnership for Service will join forces. Under the arrangement announced Monday, Feb. 5, Spark will become a division of Jewish Funds for Justice, a national foundation providing grants and programming aimed at combating what it calls the roots of social and economic injustice.
Based in Baltimore, Spark sponsors programs aimed at making a commitment to service an integral part of Jewish identity. Jewish Funds for Justices has offices in New York, Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
“We are excited that the merger will enable us to take Spark’s innovative pilot to a larger scale,” said Michael Steinhardt, one of five primary funders of Spark. “Our joint goal is to infuse the volunteering, service and social action which unconnected Jews disproportionately practice with enabling even more people to benefit from its innovative model that enhances and illuminates the Jewish values and ideals inherent in community service.” — jta
Court holds off Holocaust settlement
A federal judge in New York withheld approval of a proposed settlement of Holocaust-era insurance claims.
At a recent hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge George Daniels refrained from endorsing an agreement reached between the Italian insurance giant Assicurazioni Generali and lawyers representing Holocaust victims who claim their life insurance policies were never paid.
The proposed settlement is contested by survivors who claim that Nazi archives opened last year could shed further light on the case and that no settlement should be approved before that material is examined. Under terms of the agreement, Generali would not be forced to admit wrongdoing in failing to pay Holocaust-era claims. — jta
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California