Jay Ruderman

Jay Ruderman

Jay Ruderman (April 2014)
Born Jay Seth Ruderman
(1966-03-16) March 16, 1966
Occupation Activist and Philanthropist
Spouse(s) Shira Menashe Ruderman (m. 2002)
Parent(s) Morton Edward Ruderman, Marcia Jortner Ruderman
Website www.rudermanfoundation.org

Jay Seth Ruderman (born 16 March 1966) is an American activist and philanthropist. He is the President of the Ruderman Family Foundation, which focuses on the inclusion of people with disabilities and on the education of Israeli leaders regarding the American Jewish community. The foundation maintains offices in Boston, Israel and New York City. He is married to Israeli-American Shira Menashe Ruderman. They live in Greater Boston and have four children.

Early life and education

Ruderman was born on March 16, 1966. He is the oldest of three siblings and attended public schools in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. He received his undergraduate degree from Brandeis University, where he served as president of the student body in 1986-87. He earned his JD from Boston University School of Law in 1993.

Career

Ruderman began his career as Assistant District Attorney in Essex County, Massachusetts. He later worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), first as Deputy Director of the New England office and then as Leadership Director of the Jerusalem office. He served in the Israel Defense Forces as Liaison with the Jewish Diaspora. He has been President of the Ruderman Family Foundation since 2008.

Activist philanthropy

Ruderman built the Ruderman Family Foundation from a local foundation serving the Boston Jewish community to one with an international focus. His leadership seeks to change the priorities of society and advocate for the rights of people with disabilities in their communities.[1]

The philanthropic strategy of the Foundation is to go narrow and deep. It focuses on a limited number of issues and works with the media to raise awareness of those issues in society.

The foundation maintains major partnerships with the Government of Israel and many national Jewish organizations in the U.S. and Israel. Key nonprofit and denominational partners include the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, Union for Reform Judaism, Chabad Lubavitch, and the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. The foundation partnered with The Rohr Jewish Learning Institute creating Toward Inclusion, a course that will advocate for the inclusion of people with disabilities.[2][3]

Signature programs of the foundation include the Ruderman Prize in Inclusion, which recognizes Jewish organizations around the world that serve as exemplars of disability inclusion. Twenty Ruderman Prizes have been awarded since 2012.

An additional signature program is the Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion, which has been given annually since 2013 to an individual for outstanding accomplishment in the field of disability inclusion. In 2013 the award was given to Michael Stein, co-founder and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability. In 2014 it was given to Ari Ne’eman, President and co-founder of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

The foundation brought delegations of members of Israel’s Knesset to the United States to expose them to the diversity of the U.S. Jewish community in 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2016. This was also instrumental in establishing the Knesset Caucus on Israel-U.S. Relations.

In 2013, with funding from the Foundation, Haifa University launched the Ruderman Program in American Jewish Studies, the only degree-granting program of its kind in Israel. In conjunction with the foundation's 2015 Inclusion Conference, the Israel Office has organized a national advocacy network of families and organizations promoting inclusion of people with disabilities.

The foundation created the ADVANCE Conference series in 2011, 2012, and 2013 to educate the Jewish funding community about the issue of disability inclusion. As a result of those meetings the Disability Peer Network was founded at the Jewish Funders Network by the Foundation and others.

In November 2015 in Boston, the foundation convened over 500 leaders and activists for the first-ever international Ruderman Inclusion Summit. Plenary speakers included former Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), author Ron Suskind, Special Olympian Loretta Claiborne, MIchigan State Supreme Court Justice Richard H. Bernstein, and journalist and NPR host John Hockenberry (see videos online). The Summit also featured 20 breakout sessions and a new series of "Inclusion Talks".

Also in November 2015, the Foundation organized a series of high-level events in Israel, focusing on the relationship with American Jews. These included the high-level Conference on Israel-American Jewish Relations, with speeches by former Israeli President and Nobel Peace Laureate Shimon Peres, former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut), and U.S. Ambassador Daniel B. Shapiro; a public meeting of the Knesset Caucus on Israel-U.S. Relations; and the formal opening of the third year of Haifa University's Ruderman Program in American Jewish Studies.

In late 2015, after celebrity billionaire and high-profile Presidential candidate Donald Trump publicly mocked the disability of New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, Ruderman's response to Trump – that such behavior is wrong even between children in a playground, let alone for someone who should be a role model, and that the Foundation would offer him sensitivity training – was reported in hundreds of media outlets around the world, including The New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fox News, NBC News, and CNN.

Ruderman White Paper

In March 2016, the Ruderman Family Foundation released its first White Paper- a two-year media study and overview (2013-2015) on media coverage of law enforcement use of force and disability- in order to change the public’s awareness of people with disabilities and the civil rights battle they face for full inclusion and equality. The study was authored by David M. Perry, a disability rights journalist and Associate Professor of History at Dominican University, and Lawrence Carter-Long, one of the world’s foremost authorities on media representation of disability. It concluded that disabled individuals make up a third to half of all people killed by law enforcement officers and make up the majority of those killed in use-of-force cases that attract widespread attention, including Eric Garner, Kajieme Powell, Tanesha Anderson, Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland. This was true both for cases deemed illegal or against policy and for those in which officers were ultimately fully exonerated. The authors argue that the media ignored the disability component of these stories, or, worse, told them in ways that intensified stigma and ableism. The Ruderman White Paper received international attention for bringing this issue to light and hopes to start a larger dialogue about the need for greater law enforcement training when it comes to interacting with people with disabilities. The study was covered by media outlets including NBC News, Al Jazeera, Russia Today, International Business Times and New York Magazine.

A second White Paper was released by the Foundation in July 2016 and revealed that the most unrepresented minority in Hollywood is people with disabilities- a group that had not been included within the recent #OscarSoWhite ‘diversity crisis’ conversation. Despite those with disabilities representing nearly 20% of the US population, an 95% of characters with disabilities on TV are portrayed by able-bodied actors. The report, co-authored by actor Danny Woodburn, one of the most recognizable actors with a disability and most famously known as playing Mickey on Seinfeld, and Kristina Kopić, Advocacy Content Specialist at the Foundation, also surveyed hundreds of actors who have visible and non-visible disabilities to document their experience. A plurality of actors with disabilities worked less than once a year and were constantly subjected to negative stigma and preconceived bias on the part of casting agents and producers. Ruderman and Woodburn co-authored an Op-Ed[4] in the Los Angeles Times discussing the issue, and the findings were also published in The Washington Post,[5] Mic,[6] Variety,[7] Yahoo News, Chicago Tribune, The Columbus Dispatch, Philly.com, IndieWire,[8] IMDB, Vulture[9] MXDWN.com[10] and Teen Vogue.[11]

Ruderman Studio-Wide Roundtable on Disability Inclusion

On November 1, 2016, Jay and the Ruderman Family Foundation put together the Ruderman Studio-Wide Roundtable on Disability Inclusion, bringing together industry experts from the film and television industry to discuss the need for disability diversity in all aspects of the production process. The panelists, which included Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin, Speechless creator Scott Silveri, Speechless star Micah Fowler, Seinfeld's Danny Woodburn, Mad TV's Orlando Jones, and Walking Dead producer Glen Mazzara, highlighted successful examples and offered best practices in the quest to reach wider audiences and achieve greater authenticity through disability inclusion. The event received extensive coverage for its groundbreaking effort, being featured in the Los Angeles Times,[12] BuzzFeed,[13] Yahoo!,[14] Nonprofit Quarterly[15] and The Mighty.[16]

Ruderman Prize In Inclusion

In 2012, the Ruderman Family Foundation launched the annual Ruderman Prize In Inclusion- an international $250,000 prize awarded to companies and organizations operating innovative services that foster the full inclusion of people with disabilities. The award spotlights the work being done and the models that can be replicated across the world. Past winners include organizations in Russia, United Kingdom, United States, Mexico, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Argentina.

Me Before You Controversy

In response to the release of the 2016 film Me Before You, Ruderman condemned the film's widely criticized portrayal of disability, in which the protagonist–who is paralyzed–ends up committing suicide because he feels his life is not worth living. Ruderman was widely quoted as stating, "To the millions of people with significant disabilities currently leading fulfilling, rich lives, it posits that they are better off committing suicide."[17][18]

Op-eds

Ruderman has authored many opinion pieces on the issues of philanthropy, inclusion of people with disabilities and U.S. Jewry-Israel relations.

In a Huffington Post piece,[19] Ruderman asked “When Will Disability Slurs End?” after a spate of derogatory terms were used in the public sphere. After the Boston Marathon bombing, he looked at those who were injured and became a person with a disability in an instant.[20] After the United States Congress passed the ABLE Act, Ruderman co-authored an op-ed in The Hill with Rep. Gregg Harper about what the next steps are in order to level the playing field for people with disabilities.[21]

In his piece "Oceans that Divide",[22] he discusses the widening gap between how Israeli leaders view the U.S. Jewish community and how U.S. Jewry views Israel and how important a strong relationship between the two is critical to Israel’s survival.

In March 2015, Ruderman authored an op-ed about what billionaires and philanthropists owe the Jewish community.[23] In October 2015, he followed that with a widely read piece urging nonprofits to not allow major donors to co-opt their mission and crowd out other stakeholders.[24]

In April 2015, following the Germanwings airliner crash, Ruderman and colleague Jo Ann Simons co-authored an op-ed in CNN highlighting the wrongful stigma associated with mental illness.[25]

With over 13,000 followers, Ruderman is one of a small group of foundation presidents who are active on Twitter. He discussed the reasons he engages on social media in a GrantCraft piece[26] and in Nonprofit Quarterly, where he urged his fellow philanthropists to utilize Twitter.[27] In the Chronicle of Philanthropy in October 2015, Ruderman argued for philanthropists to engage more hands-on in the causes they support, and to also use their resources to drive messaging and impact.[28]

In February 2016, surrounding the 2016 US presidential primary races, Ruderman wrote a piece in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency stating that American leaders must be pushed harder on disability inclusion. He pointed out that candidates including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and John Kasich each acknowledged the need for change, but that more can, and must, be done to address one of the most systematically segregated and marginalized minorities in the US.

In May 2016, Ruderman penned a piece in Boston Magazine questioning why inclusion and diversity in Hollywood does not presently extend toward people with disability in the same fashion as it does with other minority groups. He focused on the recent casting of Jake Gyllenhaal as Jeff Bauman in the upcoming film Stronger, which focuses on Bauman's attempt to walk again and adjust to his new circumstances after losing his legs in the Boston Marathon bombing. Presently, the majority of characters with disabilities are not portrayed by actors with disabilities and their opportunities for roles in general have also been limited.

Interviews and quotes

Ruderman has been interviewed and quoted in many articles and different publications. In this Bloomberg Businessweek article, he is quoted discussing the potential cutting of U.S. aid to Israel.[29]

In this wide ranging interview with Jewish News Service (JNS), Ruderman discusses the state of inclusion in the Jewish community, philanthropy and the relationship between U.S. Jewry and Israeli leaders.[30]

Ruderman, his wife Shira, and his sister Sharon sat down with The Jewish Journal to discuss the roots of the foundation, their view on philanthropy and how the foundation is helping to transform the Jewish community.[31]

In September 2015, The New York Times prominently featured Ruderman and the foundation in an article on how foundations can be run effectively by family members.[32]

Ruderman was quoted by JNS in their article covering 2016 Genesis Prize recipient Itzhak Perlman. Perlman, a world-renowned violinist, contracted polio as a child and discussed his experience with disability living in Israel.[33]

During summer 2016, Ruderman was featured in a number of media outlets with the launch of the 5th annual Ruderman Prize in Inclusion, including the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and San Diego Jewish Journal.

Board memberships

Awards to the Ruderman Family Foundation

References

  1. ↑ "Foundations Should Take a Look at the Largest Poverty Minority. Think Inclusively, Act Inclusively", The Huffington Post, "60 Seconds with Jay Ruderman: The real measure of impact
  2. ↑ Lubavitch, Chabad. "JLI Toward Inclusion". Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
  3. ↑ "Join Us: "Toward Inclusion: Perspectives on Disability, Social Responsibility, and Belonging"". The Jewish Week | Connecting The World To Jewish News, Culture & Opinion. 2016-03-31. Retrieved 2016-05-24.
  4. ↑ Times, Los Angeles. "Why are we OK with disability drag in Hollywood?". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  5. ↑ Butler, Bethonie (2016-07-16). "Almost all disabled TV characters are played by able-bodied actors. Can we fix that?". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  6. ↑ Mic. "There's a Huge Problem in How Television Represents People With Disabilities". Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  7. ↑ Wagmeister, Elizabeth (2016-07-13). "Able-Bodied Actors Play 95% of Disabled Characters in Top 10 TV Shows, Says New Study". Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  8. ↑ Calvario, Liz (2016-07-16). "Disabled Characters on Television: 95% of Roles in Top 10 Shows Played By Able-Bodied Actors — Report". Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  9. ↑ "A New Study Says 95 Percent of Actors Playing Disabled Characters in TV's Top 10 Shows Are Able-Bodied". Vulture. Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  10. ↑ "Push for Diversity in Television Turns to the Issue of Disability | mxdwn Television". television.mxdwn.com. Retrieved 2016-07-18.
  11. ↑ McNamara, Brittney. "On Top of Being Racist and Sexist, Hollywood Is Also Ableist". Retrieved 2016-07-15.
  12. ↑ Times, Los Angeles. "Disabled actors and advocates plead to Hollywood: 'Give us a chance, please!'". latimes.com. Retrieved 2016-11-11.
  13. ↑ "Filmmakers Asked Marlee Matlin To Teach A Non-Deaf Actress "How To Be Deaf"". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2016-11-11.
  14. ↑ "Actors With Disabilities Speak Up: "Just Give Us A Chance"". Retrieved 2016-11-11.
  15. ↑ "Activist Ruderman Foundation Takes Up Discrimination against Actors with Disabilities| Nonprofit Quarterly". Non Profit News For Nonprofit Organizations | Nonprofit Quarterly. 2016-11-03. Retrieved 2016-11-11.
  16. ↑ "This Infuriating TV Statistic Affects You Whether You Realize It or Not". The Mighty. Retrieved 2016-11-11.
  17. ↑ "'Me Before You' director responds to controversy over film's ending". Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  18. ↑ "The director of Me Before You is #sorrynotsorry about its controversial ending". Retrieved 2016-07-01.
  19. ↑ Huffington Post
  20. ↑ Times of Israel
  21. ↑ The Hill
  22. ↑ in the Huffington Post
  23. ↑ on JTA website
  24. ↑ "Stop Enabling Donors' Outsized Influence on Jewish Life - Opinion". The Forward. Retrieved 2015-10-22.
  25. ↑ "End the stigma of mental illness (Opinion) - CNN.com". CNN. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  26. ↑ on GrantCraft website
  27. ↑ "Why Every Philanthropist Should Be Active on Twitter". Nonprofit Quarterly. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  28. ↑ "Ruderman Family Foundation" (PDF).
  29. ↑ on Bloomberg website
  30. ↑ on JNS website
  31. ↑ The Jewish Journal on boston.forward.com
  32. ↑ Sullivan, Paul (2015-09-11). "When Family Members Run Foundations, Scrutiny Never Ends". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2015-10-21.
  33. ↑ "With $1 million Genesis Prize, violinist Itzhak Perlman eyes a more inclusive world". Retrieved 2016-07-08.
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