Four Young Jewish Entrepreneurs Earn Grants for Social Initiatives
Four young Jewish entrepreneurs received grants to encourage social entrepreneurship among young Jews.
The grants handed out this week from Natan/NEXT, a joint project of the Natan Fund and NEXT, a division of the Birthright Israel Foundation, total $25,000.
The recipients are Jesse Friedman, a New York City-based theater artist, for his Jewish Plays Project, which aims to put on theatrical productions of Jewish interest; Naomi Leight, assistant director for Research & Publications at the University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy, for her work in Jewcer.com, which helps Jewish organizations use crowdfunding to further their goals; Stephen Philp, of Chicago, for his Mishkan Chicago project, an alternative spiritual community that incorporates music and dance; and David Singer, of Dallas, for Makom, a spiritual community in his hometown that emphasizes youth engagement, social justice and environmental responsibility.
“These entrepreneurial young adults are driven by a passion to inspire their peers,” said Morlie Levin, CEO of NEXT. “Their unique projects are indicative of the kind of authentic experiences the Birthright Israel Generation creates for their friends — ones which we must support in order for them to find themselves in our Jewish community.”
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
