European Jewish Fund - About the Fund

The European Jewish Fund was founded in February 2006 on the initiative of Viatcheslav Moshe Kantor.

The Fund was established for the very specific goal of strengthening Jewish life in Europe.

To achieve this goal, the Fund focuses on young people and their connection to Judaism and their communities by supporting programmes aimed at building Jewish identity and Jewish pride, especially by re-connecting young people with their rich and vital Jewish past. Consequently, the Fund will support programmes dedicated to educating our young people about Jewish achievements in all aspects of life, including culture, science, and medicine. These achievements should not only be used to earn respect among the nations, but also to earn dignity and self-respect among our people as well. In this respect the Fund intiated the JPS –Jewish Positioning System, which is focused on researching and revealing Jewish achievements and contributions to their respective countries, in all mentioned fields.

The Fund is also focused on addressing such serious threats to Jewish life in Europe as assimilation, anti-Semitism and racism.

Assimilation is without a doubt an existential threat to European Jewry that is becoming ever graver. The threat must be addressed in a serious manner with programmes that are aimed at reconnecting people with Jewish life.

Anti-Semitism has once again become a critical problem for Jews in European countries. In several countries there is a strong feeling of fear from this growing danger, a fear of a future that can repeat the tragic past. The Fund places a special emphasis on dealing with this danger by strengthening Holocaust remembrance and education, not only by teaching the historical facts, but also by teaching the lessons that need to be learned from those darkest times in Europe. A major program supported by the Fund in this regard is the “Let My People Live” international forum. These forums are used as one of the key tools for addressing the above-mentioned issues.

The Fund also seeks to address contemporary challenges to European Jewry such as the Iranian nuclear danger, which is a danger not only to the Jewish state but to the entire world. In this respect the Fund initiates an experts’ conference to present world leaders with a practical “road map” on how to deal with the threat.

The Fund is a unique platform for donors and community leaders to come together in order to discuss and analyze the needs, problems and threats that confront European Jewry, and to suggest programmes to address those issues.

The Fund is structured as two chambers, the Chamber of Community Leaders, as the Executive Council, and the Chamber of Donors, as the Board of Governors. A fundamental principle of the Fund is maintaining a roundtable where all members may speak openly and participate as equals.

As mentioned above, the Fund supports communal projects, regional and pan-European programmes, and also initiates programmes of its own in an effort to address the above issues or other subjects concerning a specific community or European Jewry as a whole.