Jared Kushner’s Parents’ Foundation Donated Tens of Thousands to Settlement Groups
JERUSALEM — The charitable foundation of the parents of Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President-elect Donald Trump, has donated tens of thousands of dollars to West Bank groups and institutions, an Israeli newspaper reported.
The Charles and Seryl Kushner Foundation has given a few million dollars a year to charitable causes, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported, citing the foundation’s tax forms for 2010-14, with an average donation of between $5,000 and $10,000.
Jared Kushner and his three siblings sit on the foundation board.
Among the West Bank organizations and institutions that receive funding are the American Friends of Beit El Yeshiva, with a $20,000 donation in 2013; the Etzion Foundation, which supports Yeshivat Har Etzion, Kibbutz Migdal Oz and the Herzog College teachers’ training institution, all located in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc, with two donations totaling $15,000, and Ohr Torah Stone, headquartered in the Efrat settlement, with $5,000.
The foundation has also donated to other Israeli institutions. In 2014, it pledged $18 million to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, in addition to $2 million it had committed earlier. The foundation also pledged $315,000 over the course of three years to the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, and Jared Kushner sits on the group’s board.
Other Israeli institutions supported by the foundation, according to Haaretz, include the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, $2,500; the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem, $1,000; the United Hatzalah rescue service, $70,000; the Israel Cancer Research Fund, $10,000; Meir Panim Lachayal, which supports Israeli soldiers, $4,000; the Shalva Children’s Center in Jerusalem, $20,000; Maayanei Yeshua Hospital, $25,000, and the Rabin Medical Center, $23,000.
The foundation also supports American Jewish organizations including Jewish day schools, charities and cultural centers, according to the Haaretz report. Among the groups are $30,000 to Chabad institutions, $250,000 to the Ramaz School in Manhattan, and $20,000 to Kehillat Jeshurun, a synagogue on the Upper West Side of New York whose rabbi, Haskel Lookstein, oversaw the conversion of Ivanka Trump before her marriage to Jared Kushner.
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