Project Inspire 2026 Convention - Dr. Jonathan Donath - Daily Giving - Keynote Session

Ladies and gentlemen, one of the partners in Project Inspire over the weekend and for all the work that we do is daily giving. I'm going to save the concept of daily giving to the daily giving co-founder who is with us today. However, I want to say that daily giving is just an is people who had ideas and actually carried them out. You know, people we all we all come up with ideas. We all especially are going to leave this weekend. We heard something that, wow, that's such a great idea. That's such a great way for me to involve and for me to invite and for me to do and to get involved with. And sometimes we're like, it's a good idea one day. Right? And here is just another example of someone who had an idea. It sounds so obvious to so many of us when we hear it and yet there's only one person that I know that actually did it. So, we're Bar Hashem. Project Inspire is a beneficiary of daily giving. Um, and I know that we had a staff member going around encouraging and signing people up for daily giving. If there's anyone in this room that's not part of daily giving, which wants their dollar to, you know, affect and impact the Jewish people in every category basically that exists today. So, then don't sign up. But otherwise, you should be signing up. And it helps Project Inspire obviously and so many other organizations. Without taking away his entire speech, I just want to say that Jonathan Donut is a dear friend. So, we got to know each other during COVID when we everyone was looking for like ways to help each other online in this online world and that we got connected through that and have been to so many so many different projects and programs together. Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friend, a friend of Project Inspire and a champion of the Jewish people, Dr. Jonathan Donath. Let's roll. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to watch this video, if you don't mind laying down to your side, if you lay to your left side, you should guys, are you fixing that back there? Oh, if you lean to your right side. Hold on. Oh, the dollar should be straight. But if you don't mind leaning to your guys, we got that AV, you taking care of this, guys? Are they supposed to watch the whole video like this? Okay, I guess we'll wait. Um, yeah. Yeah. So, now we turn the other way. Is that it? >> Oh, that side is good. Hold on. Okay, so everyone, if you don't mind looking on >> Yeah, of course. Start it again, guys. Start it again from the top and straight. >> Okay. Right. >> Also, upside down might be better also. Okay. Is we starting from the beginning? >> Okay. Can we cut it? >> Thank you. Okay. This side now, guys. This side. I think it's costing us more than a dollar to run this thing. We starting from the beginning. sound from the beginning. Are you saying that this treatment is not covered by home insurance? Better hurry, Mom. I don't want to miss school. Hi, my name is J. I've been sober for 2 years now. Hey man, you need a dollar. >> Is today giving day? >> Oh yeah. I'm glad we got to share that with you. That actually is the first time that video has been shown publicly. It's going uh a big campaign is starting tonight. So, uh I'm glad you got to see that commercial. My Zadei's name was Rabbi Mosha Holtzer and he stood just 4 feet 8 4 feet 8 in tall. He was a cute little guy with a giant heart. And during the Holocaust he was imprisoned in brutal labor camps in Siberia. And every day the prisoners were given a barely edible tiny piece of bread. And my grandfather looked around and he saw men who were much smaller than him wasting away. it simply wasn't enough. So every day he made a choice. He broke off a piece of his bread and he gave it to one of the starving prisoners so they wouldn't go hungry and they would survive. One frigid morning the guards raided their barracks and they caught my putting on fillain which he had kept hidden to that point and they thought he was a spy and they wanted to make an example out of him and they took him outside to execute him in front of everyone. As as the guards got ready to shoot, all the men, men who he had fed, men who he had saved, they all screamed out, "No, don't shoot." And the guards got so afraid that they would riot against him that they spared my grandfather's life. But this is not just a story about survival or karma or what goes around comes around. It's about the act itself, the daily choice he made to give. Even when he had so little, he didn't give to gain favor. He gave because it was who he was at his core. My grandfather taught me that the reward you get for giving is that you are a giver. After spending seven treacherous years in Siberia, he married my grandmother and they had my mother and her two sisters and they moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts and they lived in near poverty. But he never stopped giving. Every day when my mother and her sisters came home from school, they would sit down at the kitchen table and they would giggle and argue over who got to put that day's penny or nickel into the saddaka box. My mother passed that tradition on to me every day when I got home from school or going to school, giving me a penny or nickel or quarter to go bring to school, teaching me that saddaka is a mitzvah, a good deed that connects us to our purpose. Fast forward 65, 70 years, and I was minding my own business, just a chiropractor, and I watched a video of a near-death experience of Rabbi Alon Anava. And Rabbi Anava says that he wasn't just a secular Jew. He said, "I davka ate cheeseburgers anom." And he died of a drug overdose. And before coming back to life, he basically said that he was in this black abyss of pain and suffering what felt like two billion years. And the message he got was you don't have a single mitzvah to elevate you. Nothing. And the the video is very powerful. I I highly recommend going on YouTube and finding it. And the message he got was really emphatic and clear that while we are here in this world, we must take action to help others. And right after finishing that video, I walked into my local Marv Minion. I put a dollar in the stucker box like we've all done many, many times in our lives. And I had the only epiphany I had in my whole life that no matter how much money I get to stuck, I still get a mitzvah for this $1. And I thought, how can I guarantee that no matter what, I'm doing the mitzvah of Sudaka every single day? So I called up my my website guy Shaul and I said, "What do you think of this idea?" He says, "It's a great idea." I said, "Can you build me a website?" He said, 'Absolutely. And daily giving was born. And we automated a platform to try to get Jews all over the world to give $1, at least $1A every single day. And every day we give the entire amount to a different incredible Jewish nonprofit. We started on January 1st, 2019. And in nine days, we're going to give out our 30 millionth dollar. We have over 24,000 Jews from 51 countries giving a dollar every single day together. And every day they all get an email telling them where the money goes. And it's really fun because you I get told all the time how everyone checks that email. And it and they see it grow and grow and they get to find out more seduckas, who's getting the money. And here's where I want to go off script. I've never spoken about this ever before, but for the first six years after I started daily giving, when I would be somewhere or talking or on a podcast and someone asked me, why do you think you had this to start daily giving? In an instant, I would say my Zadei. Many people thought my Zadei was a Lamman Vnik. He was truly special. And only recently in the last year or so, I started to realize that it wasn't just my Zi, that I'm special, too. We all have a piece of Hashem in us. A piece of Hashem is in us. There's nothing that we can't accomplish. I used to be a massive I still am a massive fan of Charlie Rari. I'm sorry that he's not going to be speaking next, but but I would look at him as a as a businessman and just see, wow, it's amazing what this man is accomplishing and how he's inspiring everyone else. And I'm not different. Every one of you, every one of us, everywhere, we all have a piece of Hashem in us. There isn't nothing we can't accomplish. So, we just spent an incredible Shabas together here at Project Inspire. I was inspired by so many different speakers. And all I'll say is that it's so important to take action right away. So take a minute whether it's right after I finish speaking or after the Rabbi Farhi who's going to inspire you all of us again, but write down maybe a couple takeaways of what you could do to take away from this shabatone and really make an impact. Project Inspire has so many different things that they they they they make it easy for us. So whether it's giving a dollar a day or calling someone a friend who might be sick or starting to learn with a kusa, take action. My grandfather taught me that the reward you get for giving is that you're a giver every day. Use that giving muscle. Thank you so much. >> Sorry. Sorry about that. We uh dealing with a crisis. Just a small detail that the big signs that we hung in the dining room that said we can all make a difference somehow when it was peeled off the wall took all the wall with it. So yeah, the dining room might look a little different the next time we come around here. Thank you, Jonathan Dona. Thank you for inspiring us with your vision and mission, what you continue to do for Israel. Our braha to you is that you continue to do stronger and stronger each year. Mashem