Nearly $1 billion in university donations signal historic investment in Israel’s future after Oct. 7

Tel Aviv University reported a record 25,500 students for the 2026–27 academic year, with incoming first-year enrollment jumping roughly 10 percent.

By Gabriel Ostrovsky, The Algemeiner

A series of record-breaking gifts to Israeli universities has directed nearly $1 billion toward scientific research, medical education, technological innovation, and the development of the Jewish state’s next generation of talent.

Amid war, international criticism, and mounting pressure on Israeli academic institutions, some of the world’s wealthiest Jewish philanthropists have made a series of eye-popping commitments to Israel’s future.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre, a succession of donations to Israeli universities has channeled over $900 million into higher education, scientific research, and medical training.

The latest came Saturday, when American billionaire investor John Paulson announced a $250 million donation to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the largest in the institution’s history.

The gift will finance a new Faculty of Engineering, expand medical and biomedical research, advance treatment of trauma and post-traumatic stress, and support a new public-policy think tank.

Hebrew University’s historic Mount Scopus campus will be renamed in honor of Paulson and his wife, Alina.

“This gift is also meant to show support and international solidarity with Israel,” Paulson said. “If there was ever a time to step up and support the country and its institutions, this would be it.”

Paulson’s contribution brings his cumulative support for Hebrew University to $296 million, including earlier investments in computer science and electrical engineering facilities.

The announcement came just days after another American philanthropist, Steven H. Lavin, pledged $30 million to Hebrew University to help address Israel’s growing physician shortage.

Lavin’s donation will establish a center using artificial intelligence, simulation, and other technologies to expand medical training capacity.

The initiative aims to allow universities to train more doctors without proportionately increasing demands on clinical instructors.

“Because of the severe shortage and growing shortage of doctors—and psychologists and technicians—both before the war but also more and more visibly in the aftermath of Oct. 7, we decided to focus on that area,” Lavin told eJewishPhilanthropy.

The investment surge comes amid signs of renewed growth across Israeli higher education.

Tel Hai University, near the Lebanese border, is opening its first academic year as Israel’s 11th research university, with enrollment rising approximately 7 percent to 5,000 students despite the devastation wrought by the war in northern Israel, according to Israel Hayom.

Meanwhile, Tel Aviv University reported a record 25,500 students for the 2026–27 academic year, with incoming first-year enrollment jumping roughly 10 percent.

The figures suggest that Israeli higher education is attracting growing numbers of students even as its institutions confront international boycott campaigns and the lingering effects of war.

The Jerusalem donations follow several similarly ambitious investments elsewhere in Israel.

In July 2024, Bar-Ilan University announced a $260 million donation from an anonymous North American Jewish benefactor, also among the largest gifts ever made to an Israeli university.

The money was designated for expanding deep-tech scientific research, reflecting the donor’s conviction that Israel’s technological resilience depends on fundamental scientific breakthroughs.

In May 2025, Jonathan and Mindy Gray donated $125 million to Tel Aviv University, the largest gift in its history, to expand medical education and research.

The institution’s Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences was renamed in their honor.

The gift is intended to increase enrollment capacity, recruit leading researchers, and strengthen Israel’s biomedical capabilities.

The wave of philanthropy has also extended to the humanities.

In June 2025, American philanthropists donated $10 million to Shalem College, a small Jerusalem-based liberal arts institution that emphasizes Jewish and Western intellectual traditions and seeks to cultivate Israel’s next generation of civic leaders.

The gift doubled the college’s endowment and permanently funded its core curriculum.

Another $1.5 million donation followed in April 2026, underscoring growing philanthropic investment not only in Israel’s scientific and technological future but also in its intellectual and cultural life.

The wave began in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre.

In December 2023, Canadian-Israeli philanthropist Sylvan Adams announced a $100 million donation to Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, intended to help rebuild and strengthen southern Israel following the Hamas attacks.

The investment targets education, technological development, sustainability, climate science, and global health, reinforcing the university’s role as an economic anchor for Beersheba and the wider Negev.

Expanded engineering faculties can produce the specialists needed by Israel’s technology industry. Medical investments could alleviate physician shortages.

New research facilities can strengthen cooperation between universities and industry, while investments in Beersheba and Jerusalem could help distribute economic opportunities beyond metropolitan Tel Aviv.

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