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In light of the pressing needs brought about by the Coronavirus pandemic, the Dan David Foundation has decided to step outside its usual funding remit and provide targeted emergency aid to medical and other institutions, with a focus on countries where the Foundation is particularly active. The Foundation has allocated USD 3 million to help fund hospitals and other organizations dealing with this unprecedented crisis. The first round of recipients included the Italian Red Cross as well as a number of hospitals in Israel, namely the Shamir Medical Center, Emek Medical Center, Reuth Rehabilitation Hospital and Ziv Medical Center. The funds were used to purchase respirators, personal protective equipment and address other urgent medical needs which will assist these organizations in testing and treating Coronavirus patients.

In a second phase, the Dan David Foundation focused donations on the educational sector. Due to the pandemic, many organizations in this field have had their funding depleted or frozen. Organizations including the Israel Center for Educational Innovation, the Jewish Agency for Israel, the Tamar Center Negev, Merchavim – The Institute for the Advancement of Shared Citizenship in Israel and the Jerusalem African Community Center were financially supported by the Dan David Foundation to fill funding gaps, assisting them in continuing their valuable work.

The Italia Judaica project is a documentary history of the Jews in Italy by Shlomo Simonsohn, Professor of Jewish History at Tel Aviv University. Its purpose is to locate, identify and research documentary material pertaining to the history of the Jews in Italy and to publish the results systematically. Hitherto, 25 volumes have appeared and another 8 are awaiting publication.

The Etz Hayyim synagogue in Hania is the only surviving Jewish monument on Crete, following the destruction of the island’s community in 1944.
The building goes back to the Venetian period and became a synagogue in the 17th century. After the Holocaust, it remained abandoned and desecrated for half a century until it was painstakingly restored and re-dedicated in the late 1990s.
The Dan David Foundation is proud to support the continued maintenance of this monument that stands as witness to 2,300 years of Jewish life on Crete.

The Lod Music program offers a musical education to talented youths in the low-income and underdeveloped central Israeli town of Lod. Run jointly with the Lod Foundation, the program provides 30 three-year scholarships to local schoolchildren for musical training in jazz and light music.

The program includes five weekly hours of private instrumental lessons for each student, theory and ensemble sessions conducted by top teachers. The students receive professional training and continuous supervision, and perform at local events.

Teaching the next generation to respect nature is key to protecting the environment and securing humanity’s future. That is why the Dan David Foundation supports educational projects run by Israel’s Nature and Parks Authority that involve local communities, and especially children, in efforts to protect nature, landscape and heritage through field trips and hands-on experiences. The activities that the Foundation supports include:

• The Adopt-a-class program, which focuses on schools in peripheral areas and members of minority groups and runs activities throughout the school year. These include a series of preparatory meetings followed by field trips to nature reserves and heritage sites.
• Coexistence programs, which mix classes of Arabic- and Hebrew-speaking children from different backgrounds, to create a sense of joint ownership and responsibility towards the environment that transcends all barriers. The program includes preparatory meetings and three field trips, during which the classes are divided into small, mixed working groups to help students get to know each other and enrich their shared learning experience about their natural surroundings.

First Steps is a competition for small and medium-sized businesses in Jerusalem that supports young entrepreneurs wishing to open or develop their venture in the Israeli capital. While Israel has a well-established pipeline for funding high-tech startups, entrepreneurs wishing to invest in more traditional ventures often struggle to secure initial capital, particularly if they are young and can offer few financial guarantees.

Run jointly with the Jerusalem Foundation and the Mati Jerusalem Business Center, the First Steps competition provides winners with a no-interest, no-guarantee loan as well as expert support in drawing up a business plan and launching a successful commercial enterprise.

The competition focuses on creative business ideas with positive social impact, which have the potential to create jobs in Jerusalem. The project is inspired by Dan David’s personal history, as he faced very similar challenges at the start of his business career, which he was able to jumpstart thanks to a no-guarantee loan by a fellow entrepreneur who believed in his dream.

The Dan David Foundation provides a number of grants supporting the humanities and social sciences at Tel Aviv University. These include:

• Support for the establishment of a practical studies track in journalism at Tel Aviv University’s School of Communication.
• Grants for research in Biblical Archaeology under the supervision of Prof. Israel Finkelstein, Tel Aviv University. Projects include excavations at Megiddo, the study and interpretation of First Temple epigraphy and the study of the origins and context of Biblical texts.
• Grants awarded through the School of History at Tel Aviv University to support postdoctoral researchers, graduate students and conferences.

Inaugurated in 1996, the Dan David building at Tel Aviv University was built to provide the university with additional classroom space as it faced a major increase in enrollments, following the mass immigration to Israel from the Soviet Union during the early 1990s. Today, the Dan David building continues to play a central role in campus life and is fondly remembered by university alumni from all faculties.

Opened in 2018, the Dan David Center for Human Evolution and Bio-History Research – part of the Natural History Museum at Tel Aviv University – hosts one of the most important anthropological collections in the world. It records the evolution of humans in the Middle East from 1.5 million years ago to the present, and holds artifacts not found anywhere else in the world, including the remains of the first modern humans out of Africa.

The Center aims to become a global focal point for research into human evolution by using advanced methods of scientific inquiry such as ancient DNA analysis and micro-CT scanning. It also hosts a cutting edge exhibition titled “What makes us human?” that tells the evolutionary story of our species to the broader public using innovative and interactive displays aimed at both children and adults.
 

The Dan David Foundation also sponsors multiple archaeological digs at prehistoric sites across Israel, such as the Misliya and Manot caves, which have been the sources of recent major discoveries illuminating the origin of our species’ first forays out of Africa.
 

The Dan David Foundation is a partner of the Israel Antiquities Authority in the creation of the IAA’s new campus in Jerusalem, mainly through the construction of the Dan David Archaeology Building. As part of the IAA’s new headquarters, this building will be a key venue for researching, storing and displaying newly unearthed archaeological finds from across Israel.

The Name Your Hero Competition for Israeli high school students is an essay contest linked to the Dan David Prize. Run in conjunction with the Dov Lautman Unit for Science Oriented Youth at Tel Aviv University, the project encourages high school students to make a difference and present their choice of candidate and/or suggestions for fields of focus for the Prize. The winning essays are rewarded with a small scholarship and are reviewed by the Dan David Prize Board to be taken into consideration when selecting the fields for the following year.