Elie Horn, the founding partner and chairman of Cyrela Brazil Realty, recognized as one of the largest building and real estate companies in Brazil, has donated $120 million to the University of Haifa. The award will establish the Ahavat Olam Scholarship Program, which aims “to strengthen Israeli society and ensure that young adults are given equal opportunities to succeed.” The Elie Horn pledge is the largest donation ever made in Israel for student scholarships, the university said.

Previously, Elie Horn and his wife Susy established HaGaon M’Vilna Campus Synagogue, which supports Jewish educational programs and scholarships to strengthen Jewish life on campus.

In recognition of his “philanthropy, support of the State of Israel and its people, and his ongoing commitment to campus life,” the University of Haifa awarded Elie Horn a 2022 honorary degree.

U.S. Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, was assaulted at a campaign event on June 28. David G. Jakubonis, 43, has been charged with assaulting Zeldin with a sharp object and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

Authorities said that Jakubonis climbed onto the stage outside a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in Baldwin, NY, near Rochester, and approached Zeldin with a pointed object. Videos of the incident show the attacker attempting to lunge toward Zeldin, but people in the crowd and behind the stage jumped in to respond. Zeldin sustained a minor scrape in the incident. Jakubonis is being held, pending a hearing.

Dozens of stolen ancient artifacts that belonged to U.S. billionaire Michael Steinhardt were recently returned to Italy, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office said. Steinhardt, a former hedge fund manager, was once among the world’s most prominent collectors of ancient art. Steinhardt had bought the looted items, including statues and ceremonial vessels, without seeing evidence of their provenance, investigators said.

The announcement follows a years-long investigation into Steinhardt, who avoided charges after he surrendered 180 artifacts, worth an estimated $70 million, and agreed to a lifetime ban on acquiring antiquities.

Sheryl Sandberg has announced that she will leave Meta, the parent company of Facebook, after 14 years as its chief operating officer under Mark Zuckerberg’s leadership. When Zuckerberg hired the Google executive, she called the move “to help another young company grow into a global leader the opportunity of a lifetime.” She said she plans to focus on her personal philanthropy and her foundation, Lean In, and will also remain on Meta’s board of directors. Zuckerberg praised Ms. Sandberg, thanking her for teaching him how to run a company, he said. He has named Javier Olivan, a longtime product executive who has overseen much of Facebook’s growth over the past decade, as Meta’s next COO, The New York Times said.

A Harvard graduate, Ms. Sandberg served as the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers during the Clinton administration, and made her name in Silicon Valley by helping to build Google’s nascent targeted ads business into a multibillion-dollar juggernaut.

After joining Facebook, she developed its advertising business , helping to create some of Facebook’s advertising formats for desktop computers, before successfully building its mobile advertising strategy. By 2016, Facebook’s revenue was $27.6 billion, compared with the $153 million it generated in 2007 before Ms. Sandberg joined. The ads business remains Meta’s main financial engine.

Ms. Sandberg’s reputation grew with the 2013 publication of her business book, Lean In, a manifesto for working women based on her experience in government and business. It became a bestseller and launched her personal brand.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the U.S. will launch a team to help the Ukrainian authorities prosecute war crimes committed during the Russian invasion; the effort will be headed by Eli Rosenbaum, a 36-year veteran of the Justice Department who previously led U.S. eff0rts to identify and deport Nazi war criminals. Garland announced the initiative during a surprise visit to Ukraine on June 21.

Rosenbaum was head of the department’s Office of Special investigations, and was involved in more than 100 cases t9 revoke citizenship from or deport alleged Nazis. He also served as the department’s director of Human Rights Enforcement Strategy and Policy.

Nearly four months after Russia invaded Ukraine, Kyiv says it has identified thousands o0f suspected war crimes cases. Most notorious have been the allegations of wanton murder of scores of civilians in Bucha, just outside the Ukrainian capital.

Shul member Tom Byrne makes the “Jews in the News” column this month with an announcement that he will appear as Sigmund Freud in a dramatic reading of a new play by Jerry Levin, a member of North Fork Reform Synagogue. The reading will be held on Sunday, June 12, 4 p.m., at the Peconic Community Center on Peconic Lane. Admission free; vaccination required; masks appreciated; registration required at northforkreformsynagogue.org/.

In the playwright’s imagination, Freud, who founded psychoanalysis, and Theodore Herzl, who was instrumental in the creation of the State of Israel, live on the same street in Vienna. Each is transformed by the time in which they live: the rise throughout Europe of nationalism and antisemitism, and the personal and political motivations of each of the two extraordinary men. The result: a clash of giants.

For more information, contact the synagogue.

Joshua Cohen, an American novelist, won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novel, The Netanyahus. The book imagines a college job interview in the 1950s for Benzion Netanyahu, academic and father of the future Israeli prime minister. The novel explores themes of Jewishness and diaspora as Netanyahu’s fatalistic view of Jewish history bumps up against that of the narrator, an assimilated American-Jewish professor. The Pulitzer committee described the novel as “…a linguistically deft historical novel about the ambiguities of the Jewish-American experience, presenting ideas and disputes as volatile as its tightly-wound plot.” The novel also won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award.