“If donors could close the aspiration gap, billions of additional big-bet dollars would flow to the world’s most challenging problems, and millions of lives could change for the better for generations to come.”

“Without broader avenues to share the lessons learned, failures are wasted. As foundations continue to embrace risk-taking, they would be well advised to commit to evaluating and sharing the outcomes in practical and public ways.”

“We are all peers, learning together, regardless of position. When Moses himself was transported through time and space to Rabbi Akiva’s study house, he took a seat in the back, observing from among the students.”

“The great dilemma of liberal Judaism is the flipside of the great discovery of liberal Judaism: maybe God didn’t say you had to, so why would you continue doing this? All of non-literalist Judaism is an attempt to answer that question.”

“The beauty of digital media is that it turns breadth vs. depth into a false choice. In our case, by vastly expanding our overall audience, we are greatly increasing our ability to go deeper and deeper with more and more people.”

Related Grantee: 70 Faces Media

“As human beings it is in our nature to learn from our experiences, and as Jews it is our responsibility to learn from our experiences; learning which ultimately impacts the formation of our identities and enhances our personal agency.”

Related Grantee: M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education

“A thick institution is not one that people use instrumentally, to get a degree or to earn a salary. A thick institution becomes part of a person’s identity and engages the whole person: head, hands, heart and soul.”

Related Grantee: Moishe House

“When staff and board members at foundations need trusted information about philanthropic practice, there’s one source that tops their list: their peers.”

“Never before was there a civil, secular Jewish state. This is the first time we have had such a thing. One would expect that special circumstances such as these would result in a different type of Jewishness.”

Related Grantee: 929

“Jewish communal service is a privilege and being CEO is a remarkable opportunity. But it’s not a right. While we should respect seniority, institutions function better as meritocracies. Our community deserves nothing less.”

“Great advice is always a hammer: an organizing principle that works across many domains. To get the most mileage out of a single hammer, don’t stop at using it to tackle your current pet problem. Use it everywhere. Ideas don’t get worn down from use.”

“The central aim of text study is to learn how to read a text, that is, that the text must induce the student to think, to make comparisons with the associations that occur to him, to ask and question. The point is that it is not the teacher but rather the text itself that stimulates the student; the text itself should bring the student to pose questions and to seek the answers.”