Tony Gelbart

Tony Gelbart is an American-Israeli businessman and philanthropist best known as a co-founder of Nefesh B'Nefesh. Working with Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, he helped build an organization designed to address the practical barriers that can deter Jews from moving to Israel: the cost of relocation, employment uncertainty, professional licensing, bureaucracy, social adjustment and the challenge of finding a community.

Gelbart's contribution went beyond financing a Zionist cause. He helped create an operating institution that accompanies immigrants before and after their move, connects them with Israeli public systems and develops programs around concrete needs. His philanthropy consequently became a form of institution-building—an investment in the human infrastructure that enables families, professionals, young adults and lone soldiers to turn the idea of aliyah into sustainable lives in Israel.

From an idea to the first aliyah flight

Nefesh B'Nefesh grew out of conversations between Gelbart, then described as a Florida businessman and philanthropist, and Rabbi Yehoshua Fass. After a relative of Fass was killed in a terrorist attack in Israel in March 2001, the two sought a practical response for Jews who wanted to make aliyah but were concerned about financial pressure, career disruption and the difficulties of absorption. The organization was established in 2001 and operated its first chartered aliyah flight in the summer of 2002.

The partnership brought together complementary abilities. Fass supplied a communal perspective and the animating vision; Gelbart contributed business experience, fundraising capacity and long-term organizational thinking. Rather than relying only on an ideological appeal, they set out to identify the points at which prospective immigrants became stuck and provide structured help. The emerging model combined advance information, financial assistance where appropriate, bureaucratic guidance, employment support and social counseling.

Connecting philanthropy with national institutions

With Gelbart as a founding leader, Nefesh B'Nefesh developed from a private initiative into an organization working alongside the Jewish Agency for Israel, Israeli government ministries and major Jewish organizations. In 2008, Nefesh B'Nefesh and the Jewish Agency formed a collaborative framework intended to streamline North American aliyah. Nefesh B'Nefesh focused on promoting aliyah and assisting applicants, while the Jewish Agency retained responsibility for determining eligibility with the relevant authorities.

This connection between a philanthropic organization and public institutions allowed Nefesh B'Nefesh to do more than help one immigrant at a time. Its government advocacy work identified recurring obstacles, supplied practical information and engaged ministries on procedures affecting new immigrants. Gelbart thus helped advance an approach in which successful absorption depends on coordinated institutional work, not merely enthusiasm or a one-time grant.

The scale of the undertaking indicates how far that model grew. According to the supplied research, Nefesh B'Nefesh had assisted more than 75,000 people with aliyah by August 2022; later figures in the material place the total above 80,000 since 2002. Each number represents a complex personal decision involving a home, career, education, family relationships and community ties.

Linking aliyah to Israel's practical needs

Doctors and medical professionals

One of the clearest expressions of the organization's problem-solving approach has been its work on medical licensing and employment. In 2008, Nefesh B'Nefesh and the Legacy Heritage Fund offered fellowship grants to immigrant physicians and began working directly with Israel's Ministry of Health to make the conversion of professional licenses more efficient.

In 2019, the organization launched MedEx, bringing prospective immigrants in the medical professions together with representatives of the Ministry of Health's licensing division, the Israel Medical Association, health funds and hospitals. Instead of requiring applicants to negotiate each institution separately from abroad, the program created a concentrated point of access. By 2023, more than 3,800 medical professionals from a range of specialties had made aliyah through Nefesh B'Nefesh, according to the supplied material. In 2024, the initiative was expanded into the International Medical Aliyah Program, or IMAP, in partnership with the ministries of Aliyah and Integration and Health. The program illustrates how the institution Gelbart helped establish connected Jewish immigration with a pressing Israeli need: strengthening the healthcare workforce.

Employment and regional settlement

Absorption does not end at the airport. A viable career, a professional network and an appropriate place to live often determine whether immigrants can establish lasting lives. Nefesh B'Nefesh developed employment guidance and networking services and introduced UpGrade in 2021 to provide career training for immigrants.

The organization also connected aliyah with the development of communities beyond central Israel. Go North, launched in 2008 with the Israeli government and Jewish Agency and supported by the Russell Berrie Foundation, offered incentives and assistance to immigrants settling in northern Israel. A comparable Go South program followed in 2013, and the two were combined as Go Beyond in 2017. The initiative framed aliyah not simply as population growth, but as a source of skills, families and communal energy for the Negev and Galilee.

Standing beside young people who serve Israel

Another major area of work has been support for immigrants serving far from their families. In cooperation with Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, Nefesh B'Nefesh established a Lone Soldiers Program for immigrant members of the IDF, regardless of their country of origin. The program supports approximately 3,500 lone-soldier immigrants each year, according to figures in the supplied research.

This assistance recognizes that young immigrants may be coping simultaneously with military service, Hebrew, bureaucracy and separation from their families. The Ori program, launched in 2019, extended related support to female lone national-service volunteers from around the world. Such programs express a broad understanding of absorption: bringing a person to Israel is only the beginning; a durable community must stand behind that person during demanding periods of service and transition.

A permanent home and a community of immigrants

In November 2021, Nefesh B'Nefesh opened a new aliyah campus in Jerusalem, opposite the Supreme Court and near Israel's government complex. The permanent center provided a setting for consultations, events, professional meetings and immigrant services. Its location also reflected the organization's evolution from an initiative identified with charter flights into an institution embedded in Israeli civic life.

Nefesh B'Nefesh also established the Bonei Zion Prize to recognize the contributions of immigrants from English-speaking countries in fields including education, science and medicine, community service, culture and young leadership. The prize shifts attention from aliyah as a single moment of arrival to immigrants' subsequent work as educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, artists and builders of Israeli institutions.

An entrepreneurial model of philanthropy

Gelbart's work exemplifies philanthropy joined to execution. He helped establish a system, recruit partners and develop responses to problems encountered on the ground. Group flights, career services, license conversion, regional settlement and support for lone soldiers are different parts of one central idea: aliyah succeeds when immigrants can build a home, profession and community in Israel.

As Nefesh B'Nefesh expanded and formed public partnerships, Gelbart's role as a founder and strategic leader remained central to its story. He applied methods associated with business—planning, fundraising, partnership-building and the removal of operational bottlenecks—to a Jewish and Zionist objective with direct human consequences. The result was not solely a philanthropic campaign, but an organization able to accompany people through one of the most consequential transitions of their lives.

Why Tony Gelbart's legacy belongs in Moreshet

Tony Gelbart merits inclusion in Moreshet because his contribution connects a longstanding Zionist ideal with the practical mechanisms of the twenty-first century. He helped build an institution that made North American aliyah less fragmented by providing information, professional guidance, community support and an organizational address. Its work has touched tens of thousands of immigrants while also affecting Israeli systems that absorbed doctors, other professionals, soldiers and national-service volunteers.

Documenting Gelbart's story on Moreshet.com matters to Jewish and Israeli heritage because it shows how a vision becomes an institution, and how philanthropy can give people more than money: it can give them a workable path to begin again. His legacy can be seen in families that built homes in Israel, in the communities that received them and in an organizational model linking Diaspora Jewry with Israeli society.