--- --- May 20, 2025 # Sylvan Adams One of Israel’s biggest donors by [Ellen Chang](https://time.com/author/ellen-chang/) ## Ellen Chang  Emmanuel Dunand—AFP/Getty Images Two months after the Hamas attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, real estate mogul Sylvan Adams donated $100 million to Ben Gurion University of the Negev, the region’s largest employer. It was one of the biggest gifts ever made to an academic institution in the country and Adams’ largest [single donation](https://www.jns.org/sylvan-adams-billionaire-philanthropist-showcasing-the-real-israel/) to date. “To bring people back, they need economic opportunity,” says Adams, who moved to Tel Aviv from his native Quebec City in 2015. For each of the past nine years, Adams has donated at least that much collectively to his adopted homeland and elsewhere, supporting education, sports facilities, initiatives for the elderly, after-school programs, and health care, including funding a children’s hospital in Holon in 2020 and the Sylvan Adams Emergency Hospital in Tel Aviv in 2022\. Adams, who was [appointed](https://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/bio/sylvan-adams) president of the World Jewish Congress for the Israel region earlier this year, says his giving is based on a Jewish tradition called _tikkun olam_, which in Hebrew means repairing the world. “A lot of my initiatives are going towards sciences where we will use technological innovations that help save mankind and save the planet," he says. TIME100 Philanthropy: Sylvan Adams ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286047/sylvan-adams/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286047/sylvan-adams/"},"headline":"Sylvan Adams","datePublished":"2025-05-20T11:30:53.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-03T00:48:45.292Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286047/sylvan-adams/","keywords":["list","franchise"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e42aea370ab7e3c/6998c6bc47fe51169f55bb8d/T100PHIL-Leaders-Sylvan-Adams.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ellen Chang","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/ellen-chang/"}],"creator":"Ellen Chang","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8e42aea370ab7e3c/6998c6bc47fe51169f55bb8d/T100PHIL-Leaders-Sylvan-Adams.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-philanthropy-2025/7286047/sylvan-adams/","name":"Sylvan Adams"}}]}] ```