With its $10 million dollar grant to the Taube-Koret Campus for Jewish Life, the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of San Francisco has shown its commitment to the mammoth Palo Alto project.
The gift was the JCEF’s largest ever to a capital project. Why this one? First, the magnitude of the CJL requires equally magnanimous donations. The $150 million, 8.5-acre, 340,000-square-foot campus will include a JCC, federation and other agency offices, as well as a new Jewish Home and assisted living facility.
It’s ambitious beyond reckoning, but the CJL is becoming a reality thanks to donors such as the JCEF, the family of Kenneth and Barbara Oshman ($10 million), and the Koret Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture (a combined $15 million grant).
We applaud the foresight of Tom Dine, CEO of the S.F.-based Jewish Community Federation, the directors of the endowment and all the donors. They understood that the CJL would never get beyond an architectural drawing unless deep Jewish pockets got behind the project.
That said, the $10 million gift is less than 10 percent of the total cost of the campus. CJL Executive Director Shelley Hebert told j. she expects to fill the coffers up to the $112 million mark soon, which would account for 75 percent of costs. That leaves tens of millions yet to be raised, (and construction is set to begin next spring).
Where will that money come from?
Considering how resourceful Hebert has been in the past, we expect she will rally others from around the Jewish universe to take the project across the financial finish line.
Large capital grants, like that from the JCEF, make headlines. What doesn’t make headlines is the steady drumbeat of generosity from average Bay Area Jews contributing to their federations (not to mention their synagogues and day schools) year in and year out.
Those small donations add up, allowing foundations and federations to play a big role in projects like the Campus for Jewish Life.
Thanks to the wallets, large and small, of the entire Bay Area Jewish community, our leaders can make big dreams — like the Campus for Jewish Life — come true.
Projects like the campus don’t just happen because a few leaders think it would be nice. They happen because the collective will of the Jewish community deems them necessary.
We continue to monitor with delight the progress of the CJL. It’s one more shining example of the vibrancy of the growing South Bay Jewish presence and the Bay Area Jewish community as a whole.