“…if we don’t tackle the quest for meaning in the Jewish world, at some point all of our programs are going to run out of steam”

I think reflection and ideas in the Jewish world today are devalued. We’re extremely focused on programs and on rapid fixes to social problems, and we’re good at it. We come up with really creative programs. But we’re not so good at dealing with the underlying causes of the problems we’re trying to solve. And philanthropy is about solving problems. So I make a point of elevating the conversation and including these more thoughtful elements in the communal discourse, because if we don’t tackle the quest for meaning in the Jewish world, at some point all of our programs are going to run out of steam.

Andrés Spokoiny, as quoted in Danielle Berrin, “Inside the Mind of a Philanthropist”,Jewish Journal (20-26 November 2015), 46.