Josh Kraft, the president of the New England Patriots Foundation, will receive the Lappin Foundation’s Inspirational Jewish Leader Award on Sept. 15 at Temple Emanuel in Newton.
“The word used to describe Josh most is inspiration, and Josh is an inspiration,” said Debbie Coltin, president and executive director of the North Shore-based Lappin Foundation.
Kraft, who is the son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is a Boston resident and spent 30 years with the Boys & Girls Clubs – including 12 as the leader of the organization’s Boston branch – where he raised $132 million for the organization. At the clubs, he also served as the founding executive director of the Gerald and Darlene Jordan Club in Chelsea, which originated in the basement of a public housing development in 1993, and led the development of a new facility in 2002.
“I’m honored, but this is about everyone else – the folks I get to work with, and the folks that have been impacted by a lot of different people coming together and working together,” Kraft said in an interview.
Kraft first connected with the Lappin Foundation in 2021 after it was revealed the Duxbury High School football team used antisemitic slurs for a decade. After the foundation learned of the pattern, it reached out to the Duxbury Student Union, and enrolled 18 students in its Holocaust Symposium for Teens. The six-week symposium was endorsed by Salem State University’s Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and the Holocaust Legacy Foundation. After the 18 students completed the symposium, they went to Washington, D.C., where they toured the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Kraft spoke at the ceremony at the completion of the symposium at Duxbury High and lauded the students for enrolling in the program. “Your courage, 18 of you, none Jewish, to stand up, go through this program in the summer when you could be doing a lot of other things, really moves me and I know it will move my family,” he said. Kraft told the group that he had lost relatives in the Holocaust and had a relative that survived. “They are not here,” Kraft said, “but you have connected with all of them and their spirits.”
Said Coltin, “He was one of the last ones to leave. He was so taken with what the students said, and he left an impression on them, and they left an impression on him. And since that time, we’ve had a wonderful relationship with him.”
Over the last few years, Kraft also has spoken at two virtual educational summits about antisemitism sponsored by Lappin: “Two Steps Forward Against Antisemitism,” held in 2022, and “U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism in K-12 Schools,” this past spring.
Coltin said the Sept. 15 event will serve as the organization’s main fund-raiser of the year. She said the group hoped to raise $650,000 for its annual campaign.
The organization was started by philanthropist Robert Lappin, who died in 2020. Over the years, Lappin donated more than $30 million to Jewish nonprofits and also created Youth to Israel Adventure, or Y2I, which has brought over 3,000 North Shore teens on subsidized trips to Israel since its inception. He also created the Lappin Foundation, which coordinates the Y2I trips, and runs Jewish educational programs year-round in Greater Boston.
In addition to the free trips for Jewish teens to Israel, the foundation also runs numerous programs ranging from interfaith outreach and antisemitism and Holocaust education for schools and law enforcement, to educating families with young children. It also offers a free Jewish-book-of-the-month club for children ages newborn through eight, and a speakers’ bureau. Ido Aharoni Aronoff, a former Israeli ambassador and frequent speaker at Lappin events, will serve as the keynote speaker at the Sept. 15 event, and will discuss “Israel and the Jewish People Post-October 7th.”
Earlier this summer, Coltin served as a guide for New England Patriots rookies who toured the Auschwitz exhibition in Boston. “Providing this extraordinary learning experience for the rookies should serve as a model for other sports teams, including professional, college, school, and youth,” she said. “The alarming rise of antisemitism across the country and around the world, in our classrooms and in board rooms, on the sports field and in locker rooms, demands more attention be paid to educating young people about antisemitism and all forms of hate. The Patriots seized the opportunity to do just that, providing these young adult athletes with the power of knowledge.” Θ
The Sept. 15 event cochairs are Bob Ogan and Colette Phillips. For more information and tickets, visit lappinfoundation.org.
