Dan Rodricks: Keeping a legacy of Baltimore philanthropy alive as Israel goes to war again

Last Sunday in Israel, Richie Pearlstone and fellow travelers heard horror stories of 10/7 from terrorized people who had lived until that day in the kibbutzim near the Gaza Strip.

In a phone call from Tel Aviv on Monday, he described what he had heard the day before: “A woman said, ‘My husband went out to defend the kibbutz with a gun. He got killed. We managed to survive.’ A guy said, ‘I went out to defend the village and they kidnapped my wife and my two kids.’ Another guy said, ‘I watched them kill an old lady in a wheelchair.’ I mean, the stories are beyond horrendous.”

Pearlstone traveled to Israel after the Hamas attacks because he’s been an active supporter of the country for many years, and his Baltimore relatives have long and deep ties to the Jewish state. Bonds with their biblical homeland are in the blood. It’s an important piece of the story of the Jews who made Baltimore their home in the 20th century.

Pearlstone’s grandfather, the late Joseph Meyerhoff, was a wealthy Baltimore business owner and philanthropist and a generous supporter of Israel at its founding and throughout his life. “He was friendly with most every political person in Israel until his death in 1985,” Pearlstone said. “My parents, Jack and Peggy Pearlstone, had leadership roles throughout their lives with the Associated [formerly Associated Jewish Charities of Baltimore], and much of the fundraising they did for the organization and their own personal philanthropy went to support Israel. I followed the example I saw from grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles.”

In the 1990s, Pearlstone served as president and national chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, now known as the Jewish Federations of North America.

He traveled to Israel on Oct. 19 in his role as a past and honorary board member of the Jewish Agency For Israel (JAFI). The organization is raising hundreds of millions of dollars — not for war, but to help people who have been displaced by the Hamas attacks.

Pearlstone traveled to Ashkelon, the Baltimore Jewish community’s sister city in southern Israel, just a few miles from Gaza. Hamas rockets destroyed homes and killed Israelis in Ashkelon. So JAFI is working with a nonprofit company, Amigour, to help provide and rebuild housing, particularly for needy Israeli elderly, and others uprooted by Hamas attacks.

“The people in Israel are traumatized,” Pearlstone said. “They’ve [also] lost faith in the government.”

That’s because, he explained, in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks, those most directly affected did not see the Israeli government help them. It was nongovernmental organizations, secular and religious, that came together to help Israelis harmed or left homeless.

And then there’s the big question about the failure of Israel’s vaunted intelligence apparatus to detect Hamas’ preparations for Oct. 7.

“They were not prepared, didn’t have the imagination that this could happen, that’s my opinion,” Pearlstone said. “An inquiry will tell you what the failures were, but basically the army failed the citizens and the government of Israel failed with assistance. But the civilian population came together after being so apart.”

That’s a sentiment echoed many times since Oct. 7 — that, despite the divisiveness and mass protests sparked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right, ultranationalist government since his return to power last December, Israelis have been united by an existential threat.

“I never hesitate about supporting the people of Israel,” Pearlstone says. “But that’s separate from what I feel about the current government. I am disappointed and disheartened by the present government and what it has done to civil society. In fact, when I was in Israel last April, I joined many Israeli friends there and walked alongside them in the protests.”

I asked Pearlstone if he had any concerns about Israel’s reaction to the Hamas attacks. We’ve seen and heard a stream of grim news reports about civilian casualties in Gaza, and, as of Friday, the Hamas-run Health Ministry claimed 6,747 people had been killed in Israel’s bombardments. There are increasing calls for a cease-fire so more humanitarian aid can reach people in Gaza.

“This is a very complicated situation, and there is no easy answer,” Pearlstone said. “I absolutely have humanitarian concerns and, at the same time, I believe Israel has the right to defend itself and its people.”

On Wednesday, Thomas Friedman, warning of the risk of a much broader Middle East war in his New York Times column, proposed a solution in one long sentence: “Declare an end to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and overhaul Israel’s relations with the Palestinian Authority so that it becomes a credible, legitimate Palestinian partner that can govern a post-Hamas Gaza and forge a broader two-state solution including the West Bank.”

But that won’t happen, Friedman writes, without the support of the U.S. and a global alliance, and that won’t happen under Netanyahu and his ruling coalition.

As Pearlstone said: “A very complicated and complex situation with no easy answers.”

In the meantime, he keeps the family legacy alive by focusing on the people of Israel, especially its neediest, as more war looms along its borders.

“The country’s waiting for the ground offensive to start,” he said, referring to Israel’s plans to send troops into Gaza. “Nobody knows when it will start. But everybody understands this will be the real start of the war.”