Steve Weitzman is the Ella Darivoff Director of the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and serves as well as the Abraham M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures in Penn’s department of Religious Studies. Much of Weitzman’s research focuses on Jewish antiquity and its impact on modern imagination, reflected in books like The Origin of the Jews: the Quest for Roots in a Rootless Age (Princeton University Press), winner of a National Jewish book award, but he also has an interest in contemporary religious life, publishing The FBI and Religion: Faith and National Security Before and after 9/11 (University of California Press). Weitzman’s interest in the study of philanthropy began when, as director of the Jewish Studies program at Indiana University, he attempted to begin a program in its study in partnership with IU’s School of Philanthropy. Although he left IU before that effort could launch, J-Phil represents a second effort to encourage a deeper understanding of philanthropy as a part of Jewish social and cultural life.

Lila Corwin Berman is Professor of History at Temple University, where she holds the Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History and directs the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. She is author of a forthcoming book titled, The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex: The History of a Multi-Billion Dollar Institution(Princeton, 2020). Berman has also written Speaking of Jews: Rabbis, Intellectuals, and the Creation of an American Public Identity(California, 2009), a finalist for the Jewish Book Council’s Sami Rohr Prize, and Metropolitan Jews: Politics, Race, and Religion in Postwar Detroit(Chicago, 2015), with support from the National Endowment of the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. Her scholarly articles have appeared in several publications, including the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, AJS Review, Jewish Social Studies, American Jewish History, and Religion and American Culture. She has also written columns—including ones about American Jewish philanthropy—for the Washington Post, the Forward, and the Jewish Week.