Dear ORT Friends and Leaders,
Last week I had the privilege of participating in a panel discussion alongside the heads of several Jewish and Israel-supporting organizations. The room was full of friends, supporters, and partners. We spoke about Israel, Jewish life, education, philanthropy, and the challenges facing our communities. But one brief comment I made during that conversation has stayed with me.
I suggested that all of us on that stage represented something deeply countercultural. I know, I know. At first glance, that seems like an odd statement: when you hear the word “counterculture,” you probably imagine rebellion. We think of movements that challenge convention, reject institutions, and push against established norms. In America and much of the Western world, being countercultural is often associated with breaking away from tradition.
But every era has its dominant culture, and every era needs people willing to challenge it. The dominant culture of our age doesn’t come with a manifesto. It comes through a thousand daily messages. And right now, the dominant message tells us to focus on ourselves, to curate our image. to pursue attention. It tells us to measure success by visibility rather than substance, to consume more.
To belong less. We’ve built technologies that allow us to know what strangers had for breakfast on the other side of the world, but millions of people feel profoundly lonely. We’ve become experts at connection and novices at community. And this culture rewards immediacy, selfishness, isolation.
Judaism doesn’t do that. Our tradition rewards responsibility. The culture celebrates individualism and ‘what do I want.’ Judaism celebrates covenant and ‘what I’m responsible for.’ These aren’t the same questions, and the difference matters.
Because the great Jewish institutions that sustained our people were all built on a profoundly different understanding of what it means to live a meaningful life. Synagogues, schools, families, communities aren’t built around self-expression. They’re built around mutual obligation, commitment, and showing up for one another. Around accepting that our lives become larger, richer, and more meaningful when we dedicate ourselves to something beyond ourselves.
That’s why I left that panel feeling inspired. Each organization represented on that stage serves a different mission. Yet beneath the differences was a shared conviction: that the answer to the challenges of our time is more belonging, more empowerment. Not isolation and cynicism.
This is where ORT’s mission becomes especially important. Because for nearly 150 years, ORT has stood for one of Judaism’s most powerful ideas: dignity comes through capability. In a world increasingly obsessed with quick fixes, ORT believes in building human potential, in agency, and in education. This, too, is countercultural.
The Talmud teaches that Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, all Jews are responsible for one another. And that requires action and commitment, not just sympathy.
That idea has sustained us for thousands of years, helping us build schools before there were governments to build them, creating communities before there were social networks to connect them. It inspired generations to invest not only in themselves, but in those who would come after them. Welcome to the chain of our history, which remains as radical today as it was then. In a culture of spectators, complaints, and fragmentation, being part of something like this is revolutionary. Every day, ORT’s students, educators, supporters, and donors choose that revolution. They connect; they advance, and they empower.
Thank you for standing with ORT and for helping us build a stronger Jewish future. One student, one family, and one community at a time.
Shabbat shalom,
Dov
Dov Ben-Shimon
Chief Executive Officer, World ORT