In the wake of a global rise in antisemitism not seen in generations, World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder told some 250 attendees at the organization’s annual gala dinner on Monday that the “only” solutions are “creating more Jewish schools” and “taking the high ground in public relations.” 

“The entire education system — K-12 to college — must be retaught. Laws must be passed that will focus on no racism, no antisemitism and no anti-Western civilization being taught,” said Lauder. “It’s [also] time we fight back with stronger PR to tell the truth about [antisemitism and Israel]. If Israel doesn’t want to do this, we in the Diaspora will help.

“I don’t blame Jewish organizations for not being prepared” for the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel and their aftermath, continued Lauder. “[But] all of these groups don’t know how to [combat antisemitism]. Frankly, they’re wasting a lot of money. Education and public relations are the only [answers].” 

The event, held at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, honored Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) with WJC’s Theodor Herzl Award for the lawmakers’ pro-Israel advocacy and opposition to antisemitism. 

Stefanik, who announced earlier this week she is running for governor of New York in the 2026 election, told the audience she plans to continue “exposing the truth about how antisemitism is normalized and institutionalized in American higher education.” 

“I will not stop until accountability is real and until every Jewish student in this country can walk across campus without fear,” she said.   

“As I look around my beloved home state, I know there is another battle that now demands our focus,” continued Stefanik, speaking nearly a week after the election of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. “Today, New York is not just a city and state in crisis, it is the epicenter in the fight for democracy, capitalism and dignity of work.” 

Bernadette Breslin, spokesperson for Stefanik, told Jewish Insider after the event that, if elected governor, “Stefanik will enforce and strengthen New York’s anti-BDS law.”

“Our office works with Jewish schools in New York State to provide increased Nonprofit Security Grant Program funding from DHS as well as state funding for protecting the safety and security of Jewish students,” she told JI. “[Stefanik] is also a proud co-sponsor of the Countering Hate Against Israel by Federal Contractors Act which would prohibit the federal government from contracting with entities that boycott Israel. We will institute this at the state level. She will continue to fight against the antisemitic BDS movement in New York State like she has done in Congress.”

Lauder voiced support for Stefanik’s campaign launch. “Our hearts are with you as our next governor in New York,” he said to applause. 

Fetterman gave virtual remarks from Washington, where he remained to vote on an effort to end the government shutdown. “The proudest thing I’ve done in my entire Senate career is to stand with Israel and the Jewish community worldwide through this horrible war in Gaza. My voice is going to follow Israel,” he said.

In 1999, with the lofty goal of bringing every young Jewish adult to Israel free of cost, the nascent Birthright Israel launched its first trip to the Jewish state. Over the next 25 years, the organization would bring over 900,000 young Jews from some 70 countries to Israel. 

Last night, at a gala marking a quarter century of activity at Manhattan’s Pier Sixty, Birthright Israel Foundation’s CEO Elias Saratovsky announced two new goals: a $900 million fundraising campaign aimed at securing the organization’s future and bringing 200,000 participants to Israel over the next five years.

The campaign has already secured more than $220 million in commitments, Saratovsky told eJewishPhilanthropy — $132 million toward its $650 million goal for trips, and $90 million toward its $250 million goal for legacy commitments.

“We have a solid foundation of gifts,” he told eJP. “We’re grateful to everyone who has given so far, and now the opportunity we have in front of us is to ask the entire Jewish community to support an organization that has impacted the entire Jewish world over the last two and a half decades.”

Alongside Jewish summer camps, Birthright trips are credited with increased connection to Israel and Jewish engagement among participants, research from Brandeis University’s Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies has found. A participant on the first Birthright Israel trip, Saratovsky also credits that experience for his own Jewish involvement. 

But at $5,000 per participant, the signature trips are also a mammoth financial undertaking, requiring both logistical mastery and a constant funding stream. (See: the organization’s efforts to quickly charter a cruise ship in order to evacuate participants who were stranded in Israel after the skies were closed during the war with Iran last June.)

Since its early days, Birthright has benefited from support from some of the Jewish community’s most prolific donors — chief among them Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, as well as Sheldon and Dr. Miriam Adelson, who donated half a billion to the organization over 15 years; following Sheldon Adelson’s death in 2021, the family scaled back its contributions, encouraging other donors to fill the gap. 

Many of those supporters — representing nearly every major Jewish foundation and individual donor family — turned out for the Manhattan gala — a sprawling, candlelit affair packed to capacity. Attended by nearly 1,000 trip alumni, along with Jewish professionals and donors, Lynn Schusterman was honored for her contribution to the project, delivering a speech about the love that her late husband, Charles, had for Israel and the butterfly effect she’s witnessed since the program launched. 

“Each of you in this room has the power and the responsibility to decide how the story of Israel and the Jewish people unfolds. When my late husband, Charlie, passed away, I had this idea of creating what I call ‘the Charlie’ — young people who had gone on Birthright, got past their community and [gave] back from what they had learned and the impact of Birthright,” said Schusterman. 

The event was emceed by Jonah Platt. Schusterman’s daughter, Stacy, and the co-president of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Lisa Eisen, co-chaired the event. Other speakers included Birthright Israel cofounder Charles Bronfman, Saratovsky and Birthright Israel CEO Gidi Mark.  

“This is a room filled with leaders, with dreamers, with community,” said Platt. 

Fortunately, for an organization seeking nearly $700 million in donations, it was also a room filled with philanthropists. 

When several hundred people gathered on Sunday evening at the French Embassy in Washington for the Capital Jewish Museum’s second annual gala, they did so in service of a simple theme: “preserving history and building bridges.”

That message was particularly resonant as the evening’s honorees and organizers paid tribute to a tragic moment in recent history that will be part of the story of Washington’s Jewish community forever: the murder of Israeli Embassy staffers Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky outside the museum in May.

“It was a horrific, brazen act of antisemitic violence, a wrenching reminder of the importance of what the museum does every day of its existence and the fact that it collects artifacts, but it is a living, breathing place for a viable Jewish community to go, and that’s what was happening that day,” CNN anchor Dana Bash, who emceed the gala, said at the start of the event, as she introduced a moment of silence for Milgrim and Lischinsky. 

The Capital Jewish Museum opened in downtown Washington in 2023 with a commitment to teaching the history of the District’s local Jewish community, in the context of the city’s unique role as a nexus for civic-minded Americans. Speakers throughout the evening, including Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, touted the diversity and warmth of Washington while taking not-so-subtle jabs at President Donald Trump’s recent takeover of the city’s police force. 

“You know that the real D.C. is 700,000 people that actually live here, go to work, raise their families and are tax-paying Americans,” Bowser said. “While we are diverse, we are also a connected city, and so we know in our honorees tonight that they have followed their faith [and] invested in their families, their city and their nation.” 

The Sunday evening gala honored the investor and philanthropist David Rubenstein and Esther Safran Foer, the former longtime CEO of Sixth & I Synagogue and the Capital Jewish Museum’s founding board president. The two were asked, in conversation with Bash, where each traces their love of history.

For Rubenstein, the co-founder of the private equity giant Carlyle, who has supported major American institutions like the National Archives and the Kennedy Center, the answer was a sixth grade teacher who encouraged him to watch President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address, sparking a lifelong love of American history. He used historical reference points — immigration quotes from 1915 and the doomed voyage of the MS St. Louis, a European ship with Jewish refugees on board that was turned away by the U.S. — to bemoan antisemitism as “at a level I’ve never seen before in my lifetime.” 

Foer described a lifelong search for answers about her family’s story in Ukraine, which they fled after the Holocaust. She detailed that quest in her 2020 memoir, I Want You To Know We’re Still Here. 

“Pulling together the family history and the context of the history of the times has been kind of a lifelong obsession for me,” said Foer, who was born in Poland in a displaced persons camp soon after World War II ended. 

“My background is a Holocaust background, but when I wrote my book and I was working on the title, my working title was, ‘I Want You To Know We’re Still Here,’ and it ultimately became a title, because that’s our story. The Holocaust happened at a terrible time, a terrible place, but there’s a vibrant Jewish life here, in other countries. We need to celebrate that, and a museum is a way to celebrate that, to keep telling the stories.”