In the spirit of activating Jewish Peoplehood locally and worldwide, the Koret Foundation and Taube Philanthropies have established a collaborative philanthropic venture entitled the Koret Taube Initiative on Jewish Peoplehood (KTIJP). Officially launched in 2010, the Initiative serves as a central organizing force in reinvigorating Jewish communal interests, deepening Jewish consciousness, and stimulating multigenerational participation in Jewish life and culture in the Bay Area, Israel and Eastern Europe.
Grants made in the San Francisco Bay Area have helped empower organizations such as Jewish Community Centers to become expansive and stable community institutions. Large Jewish organizations continue to be the cornerstones of Bay Area Jewish communal life. However, the presence of so many single or childless Jews has created opportunities for entrepreneurial programs and challenges for the bigger, well-established institutions. Recognizing the important role this age cohort will play in the short and long-term, the Koret Taube Initiative on Jewish Peoplehood has engaged in a first round of funding to a handful of innovative "next generation" organizations such as The Hub at the JCC San Francisco, which presents cutting-edge events that promote the revolution of Jewish arts, culture and community.
The global view of Peoplehood entails helping to reestablish Jewish life in places where it once thrived, particularly in Eastern Europe. Major grantees in Poland include JCCs in Kraków and Warsaw, the Kraków Jewish Culture Festival, the Jewish Genealogy & Family Heritage Center, the Taube Jewish Heritage Tourism Program, the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, and the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.
While the Koret Foundation has been making grants in the Jewish community for the past 30 years and Taube Philanthropies for the past 12 years independently, the Initiative provides a strategic framework for collaborative grant-making. "Collaborative funding is the wave of the future," notes Tad Taube, President of the Koret Foundation and Chairman of Taube Philanthropies.
