Jewish Culture

Naomi’s belief was that there are innumerable facets to Jewish life and experience. Our goal is to preserve Jewish culture, tradition and values, to allow people to explore their heritage, roots, and history while simultaneously defining and redefining their own Jewishness. We hope to emphasize Jewishness as a culture and ethnicity, and Judaism as a religious tradition and as a venue for accessing spirituality. The Naomi Foundation™ hopes to encourage a culturally literate community which can critically analyze and explore Judaism.

Naomi also had a deep belief in the power of community. Naomi devoted her life to a deep focus on creating home and carried generations of family history within her. She was committed to community in the classroom, in the home, in the greater kehillah (Hebrew for “community”). The Naomi Foundation’s goal is to support those who contemplate the meaning of “home,” who are devoted to creating community, and who are working to create values of togetherness and mutual support.

Yiddish Language Learning and Yiddish Culture

Naomi’s life-long mission was to improve the attitude toward and effectiveness of teaching Yiddish worldwide. Our goal is to highlight Yiddish as a spoken and written language, one that is modern, young and relevant, and imbued with strong cultural significance. By supporting eminent Yiddish scholars and instructors, we hope to promote Yiddish language instruction. We encourage building community around the language by cultivating the humor and richness of Yiddish culture. We hope that Jews and non-Jews alike will recognize the thriving Yiddish community, and that the Naomi Foundation™ will help secure Yiddish culture for future generations.

Inspiring Youth and Learners

Naomi believed that every person was a valued learner. Our goal is to make each person feel his or her own potential and ability to contribute. By encouraging curiosity, critical thinking, and learning in formal and informal ways, we hope to bring together traditional learning techniques and pedagogy with first-hand and experiential learning. While The Naomi Foundation™ understands the difficulties of educating children and world citizens, our goal is to emphasize that education is a fundamental right. Furthermore, education empowers learners to become active and engaged citizens of this world. The Naomi Foundation™ hopes to broaden the definition of “learner,” to include a wide range of learning styles, needs, and expressions.

Training the next Generation of Teachers

Education is impossible without a generation of qualified, well-trained, motivated, inspired and inspiring educators who believe in the deep significance of their own work. By encouraging a broad understanding of education, both in and out of the classroom, individual and in groups, teacher-to-student and peer-to-peer, The Naomi Foundation™ hopes to foster respect for the large responsibility of the teaching profession and its ability to impact future generations, and therefore, the world. In her lifetime, Naomi supported teacher-training programs as a means to ensure quality teaching.

Medical Research

As the Foundation has been established in the name of Naomi Prawer Kadar who lost her life in a battle with cancer, one of The Naomi Foundation’s top priorities is advocacy for cancer care and cancer patients. The Foundation’s goal is to support academic and research institutions as well as organizations providing hope for patients and providing assistance to families, especially to those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Naomi Foundation™ will support organizations that see cancer patients not only as sick people but as whole humans, with emotional, mental, and communal lives.