For more than two decades we have sat across the same tables — in Jerusalem conference rooms, Montreal board meetings, New York offices and plenty of late-night conversations — asking the same question: How do Jews feel more connected to one another? Through the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (ACBP), we helped launch Birthright Israel and more than a dozen other initiatives, driven by the belief that if you bring Jews together — on buses, in classrooms, around Shabbat tables — a sense of shared peoplehood can take root.

From the beginning, our work has been guided by a simple idea: “the unity of the Jewish people, whose soul is in Jerusalem.” We have sought to cultivate a sense of Jewish Peoplehood — a global family bound not only by heritage, but by shared values and mutual responsibility.

Today, that unity feels more fragile than ever. In this post-Oct. 7 world, we believe it is urgent to take action to sustain Jewish Peoplehood, so that it can withstand rising antisemitism, political polarization, and threats to democracy both in Israel and across the diaspora.

For decades, our philanthropy focused on connecting Jews through familiar avenues — Birthright trips, summer camps and cultural exchange programs that nurtured identity and community. Now, we believe it is time to go further: creating political networks, advocating for minority rights within Israel, and embedding Israeli culture more deeply in diaspora life. Our new agenda shifts from cultivating bonds to shaping policy, redefining responsibility and tackling the hard questions of Jewish Peoplehood in a time of global uncertainty.

It wasn’t long ago that we believed we were in the golden age of the Jewish people. A set of unique circumstances allowed Jews to constantly say “shehechyanu” for gratitude for what they did. In the United States, the very lessons as documented by de Tocqueville in the 1830s was the concept of creating voluntary associations to achieve important purposes. Combining that ethos with the richness of Jewish values, and the concept of Jewish community permitted us to build an unprecedented diaspora perhaps the greatest since the times of Maimonides.

Metaphorically, we believed that the creation and........

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