Tag Archives: Charity

Jews of the Week: Marcel and Sylvan Adams

Canadian-Israeli Mega Donors

Marcel Adams and Sylvan Adams

Meir Marcel Abramovici (1920-2020) was born to a traditional Jewish family in Romania and became a leather tanner like his father. After three years in Nazi labour camps, he escaped to Turkey, and then to Israel, where he fought in the War of Independence. A few years later, he moved to Canada and got a job working at a Quebec tannery, where his boss told him to change his last name to “Adams”. Once he saved a little bit of money he began investing in real estate. In 1958, Adams became a full-time real estate investor and founded Iberville Developments. Today, the company has over 100 shopping centres, residential buildings, and industrial properties across Canada and the US. Before he passed away, Adams was the world’s second-oldest billionaire, and a noted philanthropist. He established Tel Aviv University’s Adams Institute for Business Management Information Systems and the Adams Super Center for Brain Research.

His son Sylvan Adams (b. 1958) took over Iberville Developments in 1990, and served as its CEO for the next 25 years, until making aliyah and settling in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, he took up professional cycling and in 2017 won the World Masters Championship in England. The following year, he opened the first indoor velodrome in Israel (and the entire Middle East). He gave 80 million shekels to bring the 2018 Giro d’Italia, one of cycling’s prestigious Grand Tours, to Israel, marking the first time that the tournament was held outside Europe. Adams has signed the Giving Pledge and is a huge philanthropist. He donated 100 million shekels to Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Medical Center in 2019, and financed a new children’s hospital at Wolfson Medical Center in Holon. Earlier this week, he announced $100 million to Ben-Gurion University in the Negev to “rebuild and strengthen” the south of Israel following the October 7 massacre. His foundation provides doctoral scholarships at the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, and funds the Nefesh b’Nefesh “Bonei Zion Prize” for immigrants to Israel who make a profound impact on the country. He also donated $5 million to SpaceIL to develop Israel’s nascent space program and put an Israeli spacecraft on the moon. Adams is still cycling, and earlier this year won the UCI Cycling World Championships in his age category.

Chanukah Begins Tonight – Chag Sameach!

Chanukah & the Light of Creation

Words of the Week

We must support the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, and visit the gentile sick along with the Jewish sick, and bury the gentile poor along with the Jewish poor, for the sake of peace.
– Talmud, Gittin 61a

Jew of the Week: Mikhael Mirilashvili

Pediatrician, Oligarch, Philanthropist

Mikhael Mirilashvili with a glass of air-generated water from one of his Watergen machines

Mikhael Mirilashvili (b. 1960) was born to a Jewish family in Kulashi, Georgia. He moved to St. Petersburg at 17 to study mathematics, then switched to medicine and became a pediatrician. As many new opportunities opened up with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mirilashvili went into business. He started with real estate, then expanded to retail stores, banking, television, oil and gas, and casinos. He owned six casinos in St. Petersburg alone, and his Viking bank is among the city’s most popular. Mirilashvili was a cofounder of Russian social media app Vkontakte, which he sold in 2013 for $1.12 billion. In 2000, his father was kidnapped by a group of criminals posing as police officers. Two weeks after his father’s release, the kidnappers were all found dead. Mirilashvili was arrested for ordering the hit on his father’s captors, and spent eight years in prison. Upon his release in 2009, he moved to Israel and has since invested a great deal in the country, including in Israel’s new offshore gas fields. He is a generous philanthropist, donating millions to ZAKA (of which he was chairman), Keren haYesod, Yad Vashem, the IDF, the World Jewish Congress, the Russian Jewish Congress (of which he is the vice-president), the Torah and Chessed Center for Georgian Jews, as well as Migdal Ohr, an organization started by beloved rabbi Yitzchak Dovid Grossman (known as “the disco rabbi”) to help struggling Israeli youths. Mirilashvili’s funding has allowed Migdal Ohr to support, educate, and care for over 17,000 impoverished and disadvantaged Israeli kids and teens. Mirilashvili also co-founded and owns Watergen, an Israeli start-up that transforms air into clean drinking water, extracted and filtered from humidity. Watergen machines are now found in over one hundred water-starved regions of the world. In previous years, Mirilashvili donated seven such machines to the Gaza Strip, each providing over 2000 litres a day of clean water, powered by solar cells. The machines are still operating in the Gaza Strip amidst the war, providing essential water to Palestinians. Watergen machines are also operating in Ukraine, though Mirilashvili has been falsely accused by the Ukrainians of supporting the Russian invasion. He has dispelled these myths, and reminds people that he was imprisoned for years in a Russian jail, survived several Russian assassination attempts, and has sold off nearly all of his Russian-based businesses. Meanwhile, Mirilashvili established the Israeli-Emirati Water Research Institute in Abu Dhabi (together with Tel Aviv University), and the Moshe Mirilashvili Center for Food Security at Ben-Gurion University in honour of his father. Over the years, he has donated millions more to synagogues, hospitals, and Jewish schools, for medical equipment, Torah scrolls, and ambulances, as well as a special fleet of firetrucks to combat forest fires in Israel.

“Jewish Awakening” Causes Global Shortage of Tefillin and Mezuzahs

Three Approaches to the Arab-Israeli Conflict from This Week’s Torah Parasha

Support the #KidnappedFromIsrael Campaign

Words of the Week

The Arab refugee problem was caused by a war of aggression, launched by the Arab States against Israel in 1947 and 1948. Let there be no mistake: If there had been no war against Israel, with its consequent harvest of bloodshed, misery, panic and flight, there would be no problem of Arab refugees today.
– Abba Eban

Jew of the Week: Ted Lerner

Bringing Back the Washington Nationals

Theodore Nathan Lerner (1925-2023) was born in Washington, D.C. to a family of Orthodox Jewish immigrants. He went to public school and his favourite pastime was baseball. He would sell newspapers as a child to get just enough money to afford a bus ride to the local stadium and buy an entrance ticket (a total of 28 cents). After serving in the army during World War II, Lerner returned to the US and enrolled at George Washington University (with a scholarship from the “G.I. Bill” for veterans). He went on to law school but became more interested in real estate. As a young man in 1952, he founded his own real estate development company starting with just $250. Lerner worked tirelessly, often 18 hours a day. He said that he would only take time off for Jewish holidays, and the occasional ball game. He went from developing small homes to larger apartment buildings, and then to massive commercial enterprises. Some of his most famous projects are Chelsea Piers in New York City and Tysons Corner in Washington (the area’s first indoor shopping mall, and still one of the largest in the whole country). All in all, Lerner Enterprises developed more than 20 million square feet of residential and commercial spaces, and Lerner became the richest man in Maryland. In 2002, the Montreal Expos baseball team went up for sale, and Lerner knew he had to bring the team to Washington. He ended up outbidding all the other contenders to resurrect the Washington Nationals. Lerner retired in 2018, and the following year the Nationals won the World Series, fulfilling Lerner’s childhood dream. Lerner was a generous philanthropist, and donated large sums regularly to hospitals and charities, to numerous Jewish schools, as well as to Hebrew University and the Weizmann Institute in Israel. Sadly, Lerner passed away last month.

Why President Truman Recognized the State of Israel

Words of the Week

The Jew is not a burden on the charities of the state or of the city; these could cease from their functions without affecting him. When he is well enough, he works; when he is incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And not in a poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large benevolence. His race is entitled to be called the most benevolent of all races of men.
– Mark Twain