Sheryl Sandberg, the former Meta COO, announced on Thursday that she is endowing a new scholarship fund at Camp Ramah in California in honor of her late husband, Dave Goldberg.
“Camp Ramah is where Dave built friendships that lasted decades. It’s where he developed a sense of independence that shaped the rest of his life. It’s where his Jewish identity took root and grew into something he held onto always,” wrote Sandberg in a post on Facebook. “And all of this was made possible by the scholarship he received each year from his synagogue that allowed him to attend.”
Goldberg, who was the former CEO of Survey Monkey, died in 2015 after sustaining a head trauma when he fell off a treadmill while on vacation in Mexico with his family.
Goldberg’s brother, Rob, announced the scholarship fund alongside Sanberg and her current husband, Tom Bernthal.
Reflecting on her late husband’s experience at Ramah, the Conservative movement’s Jewish summer camp network, Sandberg said that he had developed an understanding of “Jewish Theology” there and had “passed that spirit of positive questioning on to our children when they were young.”
“More children deserve a summer like that. A place that makes them more themselves and stays with them long after they leave,” Sandberg wrote. “The scholarship will make it possible for 30 children with the greatest financial need to experience Camp Ramah in California each summer for many decades to come.”
Camp is considered one of the more successful levers in solidifying Jewish identity, but it comes at a cost: Each four-week session at Ramah in California costs $6,730.
Sandberg’s history of Jewish philantropy
Sandberg, the author of “Lean In,” the bestselling book about women’s equity in the workforce, has long been a prominent donor to Jewish and Israeli causes.
In 2019, Sandberg donated $2.5 million to the Anti-Defamation League, and in 2021, she gave United Hatzalah, the Jerusalem-based volunteer first responder organization, $5 million in honor of her parents.
“Dave, we miss you every single day,” Sandberg wrote. “This scholarship is for the piece of your heart that you always left at camp.”
