About Yad Hanadiv

Timeline
Major Initiative Historical
Notable Project
1880
First visit of Baron Edmond to Eretz Israel
1889
First visit of Baron Edmond de Rothschild to Eretz Israel
x
James de Rothschild arrives in Palestine
1917
James de Rothschild arrives in Palestine as an officer of the Jewish Battalion
x
1920
James & Dorothy de Rothschild on Mt. Scopus
1921
James and Dorothy de Rothschild visit Mount Scopus
x
Baron Edmond’s final visit to Eretz Israel
1925
Baron Edmond’s final visit to Eretz Israel
x
1930
Death of Baron Edmond
1934
Death of Baron Edmond de Rothschild
x
1950
Ramat Hanadiv Memorial Gardens
1954
Planting of the Ramat Hanadiv Memorial Gardens
x
Expedition to Hazor
1955
James de Rothschild Archaeological Expedition to Hazor
x
Death of James de Rothschild
1957
Death of James de Rothschild
x
Dorothy de Rothschild, Yad Hanadiv Chair
1957
Dorothy de Rothschild becomes Chair of Yad Hanadiv
x
Rothschild Prizes
1959
Rothschild Prizes first awarded to outstanding Israeli scholars of the Sciences and Humanities
x
1960
Computers for Universities
1962
Computers for Applied Mathematics Departments of Weizmann Institute, Technion and Hebrew University
x
Works of art donated to Israel Museum
1965
Works by Gauguin, van Gogh and Cezanne presented to Israel Museum
x
Knesset Building
1966
Knesset Building inaugurated
x
Educational Television
1966
First broadcast of Educational Television
x
Synagogue restorations
1967
Restoration of synagogues in the Old City of Jerusalem with the Jerusalem Foundation
x
Support for Yeshivot
1969
Support for Yeshivot
x
1970
Support for hospitals
1970
Support for hospitals in Jerusalem, Haifa and Be’er Sheva
x
Centre for Educational Technology
1971
Centre for Educational Technology established
x
Projects for citizens of Jerusalem
1971
Projects with the Jerusalem Foundation to benefit Arabs and Jews in Jerusalem
x
Jerusalem Music Centre
1973
Jerusalem Music Centre - with the Jerusalem Foundation
x
1975
MANOF Youth Village
1975
MANOF Youth Village established with the Ministries of Education and Welfare
x
Israel Institute for Advanced Studies
1975
Israel Institute for Advanced Studies established
x
Open University of Israel
1976
The Open University of Israel admits its first students
x
Rothschild Innovation Prize
1977
Rothschild Prize for Excellence in Innovation and Export (inactive)
x
Rothschild Fellowships
1979
Rothschild Fellowships
x
1980
Ramat Hanadiv Nature Park
1983
Designation of the Ramat Hanadiv Nature Park
x
Fellowships for Torah scholars
1984
Yad Avi Hayishuv Fellowships for outstanding Torah scholars to study in Israel
x
1985
Fellowships in Jewish Studies
1985
Visiting Fellowships in Jewish Studies by Yad Hanadiv and the Beracha Foundation for research in Israel
x
Max Rowe Prize in Education
1986
The Rothschild Prize in Education established in Memory of Max Rowe
x
Support for Basic Research
1988
Support for Basic Research through the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
x
Death of Dorothy de Rothschild
1988
Death of Dorothy de Rothschild
x
HEMDA Science Education Centre
1989
HEMDA Science Education Centre - with the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Tel Aviv Foundation
x
Lord Rothschild, Chair of Yad Hanadiv
1989
Lord Rothschild becomes Chair of Yad Hanadiv
x
1990
Archaeology Curatorship at The Israel Museum
1991
Tamar and Teddy Kollek Curatorship in Archaeology at the Israel Museum
x
School libraries
1991
School Libraries project with CET – development of six model libraries in elementary and middle schools
x
Rare Book Reading Room at NLI
1991
Rare Book Reading Room at the Jewish National and University Library in honour of Sir Isaiah Berlin
x
Supreme Court Building
1992
Supreme Court Building Dedication
x
Jerusalem Seminars in Architecture
1992
First of seven Jerusalem Seminars in Architecture
x
KEF Loan Fund
1992
KEF Loan Fund for Small Businesses with Clore Israel and SACTA-Rashi to assist immigrants and young Israelis
x
Water Research Institute
1993
Water Research Institute with the Technion
x
Hanadiv Fellowships
1994
Hanadiv Fellowships for young scholars of European and Western History
x
1995
Victor Rothschild Memorial Symposia
1995
Victor Rothschild Memorial Symposia established at the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies
x
Support for Archaeological Science
1996
Support for the Kimmel Centre for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute
x
Bruno Awards
1999
Michael Bruno Memorial Awards established for scholars under 50 of exceptional promise
x
2000
Nekudat Hen
2000
Nekudat Hen to promote sustainable agricultural land use, planning, policy and practice
x
Initiative for Applied Education Research
2003
Israel Initiative for Applied Education Research established to provide evidence-based research to decision makers
x
Dorothy de Rothschild Campus of OU
2004
Dorothy de Rothschild Raanana Campus of the Open University of Israel opened
x
2005
Natural History Collections
2005
Natural History Collections and Biodiversity Initiatives
x
JDC-Masira
2006
JDC–Masira – to promote initiatives in Arab society for disabled individuals and their families
x
Avney Rosha
2007
Avney Rosha – The Israel Institute for School Leadership
x
Environment and Health Fund
2007
Environment and Health Fund established
x
Ramat Hanadiv Visitors Pavilion
2008
Ramat Hanadiv Visitors Pavilion – first LEED-certified building in Israel open to the public
x
Plant Gene Bank
2008
Israel Plant Gene Bank with the Ministries of Agriculture and Science
x
Nanotechnology Initiative
2008
Support for Technion Nanotechnology Initiative
x
Humanities Fund
2008
Humanities Fund – with the Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education (VATAT)
x
Arab Women Employment Partnerships
2008
Arab Women Employment Partnerships - with JDC and later with Al-Tufula
x
Hirschfeld Archaeology Fellowships
2009
Yizhar Hirschfeld Memorial Fellowships in Archaeology
x
CET – Arabic Textbooks for Native Speakers of Arabic
2009
CET – Arabic Textbooks for Native Speakers of Arabic
x
2010
National Library Renewal
2010
National Library of Israel Renewal launched
x
GuideStar
2010
GuideStar nonprofit database – with the JDC and the Ministry of Justice
x
Digitization with NLI
2010
Digitization projects with the National Library of Israel, including Hebrew Journals and Jewish Newspapers
x
Yad Hanadiv LEED-certified Office
2012
Yad Hanadiv opens its Silver LEED-certified office
x
Arab Employment Initiative
2012
Arab Employment Initiative – with the Government and JDC
x
Marine Conservation Strategy
2012
Marine Conservation Strategy to promote resilience of the ecosystem in Israel’s EEZ
x
MindCET
2012
Support for MindCET – CET’s Centre for Innovation and Tech Development in Education
x
Arab Excellence Strategy
2012
Arab Excellence Strategy to increase representation of Arab citizens in Science and Engineering studies and careers
x
Alfanar
2013
Alfanar established to manage the Employment Centres of the Arab Employment Initiative
x
Life Sciences Strategy
2013
Life Sciences Strategy to improve national infrastructure in the field
x
Humanities Faculty Planning Initiative
2013
Rothschild Faculty Planning Initiative in the Humanities
x
2015
Teacher Leaders Strategy
2015
Teacher Leaders Strategy to upgrade Professional Development of teachers
x
Ramat Hanadiv Regional Partnership
2015
Ramat Hanadiv Partnership towards a Sustainable Hanadiv Valley
x
2016
NLI Groundbreaking
2016
Groundbreaking for National Library building designed by Herzog & de Meuron
x
2018
River Rehabilitation Strategy
2018
River Rehabilitation- promotion through Integrated River Basin Management
x
Hannah Rothschild becomes Chair of Yad Hanadiv
2018
Hannah Rothschild becomes Chair of Yad Hanadiv
x
Turnaround Schools Strategy
2019
Turnaround Schools Strategy to improve failing elementary schools serving disadvantaged students
x
2020
Early Childhood Programme
2020
Early Childhood Programme to provide every child with the best conditions for healthy development by supporting parents and ensuring quality care and frameworks
x
2021
Gap Year Programme
2021
Transitional programmes that position young Arabs for success in academia and employment
x

Yad Hanadiv seeks innovative opportunities to address the needs of Israeli society. It carries forward a tradition of support for Jewish revival in Palestine begun by Baron Edmond de Rothschild in the second half of the 19th century. Established in its present form in 1958, the Foundation’s work is guided by a distinguished Board of Trustees led by members of the Rothschild family.  

Major projects have included the building of the Israeli Knesset and Supreme Court, establishment of the Centre for Educational Technology, the Israel Institute for Advanced Studies at The Hebrew University, Educational Television, Rothschild Fellowships and Prizes, the Jerusalem Music Centre, Israel’s Open University, the MANOF Residential Youth Centre, the Environment and Health Fund and Avney Rosha - The Institute for School Leadership.

James de Rothschild speaking in Rishon Lezion

Yad Hanadiv is dedicated to creating resources for advancing Israel as a healthy, vibrant, democratic society, committed to Jewish values and equal opportunity for the benefit of all its inhabitants, carrying forward the philanthropic tradition of the Rothschild family.

Yad Hanadiv’s grantmaking is currently focused on the areas of Education, Environment, Academic Excellence, Arab Community and Early Childhood. We also support the operation of the Ramat Hanadiv Nature Park and Memorial Gardens and are cooperating with the National Library in its renewal programme, including the construction of a state-of-the-art, 21st-century National Library for the State of IsraelYad Hanadiv initiates projects in its core areas of focus and does not accept applications for unsolicited grants. 

At the end of the 19th century, the lot of the Jew in Russia was a particularly difficult one, marked by persecution and pogroms. As early as 1880, Baron Edmond de Rothschild and his brother Alphonse organised a committee for the relief of the pogrom-stricken Jews of Russia. At the time, Edmond, the son of James and grandson of Meyer Amschel, was 35 years old. Two years later, he made up his mind to settle Jews from Russia and from elsewhere in Palestine.   

The name ‘Hanadiv’ is the Hebrew word for benefactor and it is appropriate that through the Foundation that bears this name, Yad Hanadiv, he is honoured to this very day. Baron Edmond’s motives were partly philanthropic and partly religious, but he was truly a pioneering Zionist - amongst the first to believe in a Jewish home in Palestine, a national existence for the Jews, a place for the development of the Jewish people. He asked in his will that he and his wife Adelaide both be buried in Palestine as it then was. Twenty years after his death in 1934, his remains and those of his wife were taken from the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, via an Israeli naval frigate, to Haifa. He was given a state funeral and buried on the top of a hill near Haifa in the area known today as Ramat Hanadiv, which overlooks many of the agricultural settlements and towns which Edmond himself had helped found.  

He declared in a speech to the early settlers: ‘I did not come to your aid because of your poverty and suffering for, to be sure, there were many other similar cases of distress in the world. I did it because I saw in you the realisors of the renaissance of Israel and of that ideal so dear to us all – the sacred goal of the return of Israel to its ancestral homeland.’  

Edmond entrusted his son James de Rothschild with the task of carrying on his work. Towards the end of the First World War, the question of a home for the Jews in Palestine was coming to the fore under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann. James de Rothschild had by then settled in England, and he and his wife Dorothy were committed to Zionism and assisted Weizmann with his contacts in Britain. However, it was to the second Lord Rothschild, Walter, to whom the British Government turned and finally, in November 1917, addressed the famous Balfour Declaration:  

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.  

In 1948, the State of Israel was declared based on a 1947 UN resolution. For three quarters of a century the work of Edmond and his son James had been threatened with setbacks and disasters, with wars, disease and famine. It was a fundamentally poor country with a lack of natural resources and no oil, but the Jews somehow managed through the capital which they did possess – technical skills, ingenuity, energy and desperation - to create fertile farms, factories and cities and a living organic Jewish society with a brilliance in scientific technology.  

By 1957, James wrote to the Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, to say that the principles which he and his father had always adhered to were ‘First, that we did our work without regard to political considerations and second, we endeavoured to give to Israel and her people all that we could without seeking anything in return – neither profits nor gratitude nor anything else’. He declared that he was turning all remaining property in their hands over to national institutions, and asking that the State and the people, supported by world Jewry, carry on with the work. He decided to give most of the remaining available funds to the construction of a new Knesset building in Jerusalem, with the hope that the new building should become ‘A symbol in the eyes of all men of the permanence of the State of Israel’.  

James left the door open regarding the future, stating that he wanted to look into the possibility of making a modest contribution towards the advancement ‘of science, art and culture in Israel’. Following James’s death in 1957, his widow Dorothy delivered the letter to Ben-Gurion and reaffirmed to the Prime Minister that she would examine whether some future contribution in the fields James had mentioned might prove feasible. Ben-Gurion responded: ‘…your husband’s letter marks not the closing of his historic life’s work, but the supreme expression of his relationship and identification with Israel. …truly a great father was followed by a son no less great.’  

Dorothy de Rothschild, from the death of her husband until her own death in 1988, gave unremittingly and unswervingly through her endeavours to honour the wishes of her husband and of his father Edmond. Under her leadership, Yad Hanadiv was formed and projects were undertaken that ranged from the establishment of Educational Television, the Open University, the Centre for Educational Technology, the Jerusalem Music Centre in Mishkenot Shaananim and HEMDA- the Centre for Science Education in Tel Aviv.  

Dorothy was assisted by a group of distinguished Advisors, which included Lord Victor Rothschild, the Hon. Amschel Rothschild and Sir Isaiah Berlin [and Lord Jacob Rothschild]. They were later joined or replaced by other family members, Professor Emma Rothschild and Mme Béatrice Rosenberg de Rothschild, and colleagues such as James Wolfensohn – the namesake of James de Rothschild, who served with Wolfensohn’s father in the Jewish Battalion during WWI.  

One of the highlights of this period was the building of the Supreme Court which was completed in 1992. In 1984, Dorothy de Rothschild wrote to Prime Minister Shimon Peres, offering to fund construction of a new Supreme Court building, which she viewed as ‘a development of the work of both my husband and of his father before him’. The aim of both men was to provide some of the essentials needed by the people of Israel since the days of the first Aliyah. These ideals still animate the Foundation and will, hopefully, continue to inspire future generations to come.     

Adapted from a speech delivered at Waddesdon, July 2009 by Lord Rothschild, Chair, Yad Hanadiv  

Lord Jacob Rothschild served as Chair of Yad Hanadiv from 1989 until 2018. He currently serves as the Foundation's President. In 2018, Lord Rothschild's daughter, the Hon. Hannah Rothschild, assumed the role of Chair.

We support effective, creative and innovative responses to critical needs of Israeli society.

We seek a clear focus on sustainable initiatives with potential for broad influence.

We are prepared to take calculated risks.

We emphasize collaborative planning, assessment and attention to quality.

We typically rely on other organisations to implement.

We value sharing of knowledge and enhancement of professional capabilities.

We honour the distinction between the roles and responsibilities of Government and those of philanthropy.

We work closely with our major strategic partners to ensure successful implementation and the ability to overcome difficulties, in the hope of making lasting change.

We do not have all the answers and are committed to listening and to a modest public profile.