JNS
"I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery," he said.
Morris Kahn, the Israeli entrepreneur whose business success helped shape the country’s modern economy, and whose philanthropy transformed fields ranging from medicine to the environment, died in New York on Jan. 1. He was 95 years old.
Born in 1930 in Benoni, South Africa, to a Jewish family of Lithuanian descent, Kahn was active as a youth in the Habonim Zionist movement and dreamed of building his life in Israel from an early age.
He realized that dream in 1956, making aliyah with his wife, Jacqueline, and their two young sons, Benjamin and David. Kahn said he was driven by a sense of belonging to the Jewish people and responsibility for the young state’s future. They built a home in Beit Yanai, a beachside moshav in central Israel, where Kahn lived for most of his life.
His early years in Israel were marked by struggle and experimentation. He tried agriculture, launched small industrial ventures and partnered with kibbutzim and development towns, consistently combining business with social purpose.
That ethos would define his career. In 1968, he launched Israel’s Golden Pages telephone directory, a venture that became a cornerstone of the country’s business infrastructure and later gave rise to Amdocs, which he co-founded with Shlomo Meitar in 1982. Under his vision, Amdocs grew into a global leader in telecom billing and customer-management software, helping lay the groundwork for Israel’s high-tech economy.
When Kahn and Meitar sold Amdocs, it became one of the first Israeli unicorns, yielding a billion dollars after it went public in 1998.
During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Kahn mobilized Golden Pages’ communications systems to relay some 50,000 messages between soldiers and anxious families, later founding Lev Zahav to support troops at the front—an early example of his instinct to act when the country needed him most.
In later decades, Kahn increasingly devoted his energy and resources to philanthropy and what he called “venture philanthropy.” He founded Israel’s underwater observatory in Eilat, supported groundbreaking medical research, and championed environmental protection through Zalul, an organization seeking to protect Israel's seas and rivers.
He was a primary benefactor of Save a Child’s Heart, which provides life-saving cardiac care to children from developing countries, and the Jinka Eye Project in Ethiopia, sending Israeli teams of doctors and volunteers to help local medical personnel cure eye disease in children.
As chairman and a key financer of SpaceIL, he helped launch Israel’s first lunar mission, "Beresheet"—an ambitious project that inspired a generation, even after the spacecraft crash-landed on the moon. He was also a key supporter of LEAD, a nonprofit organization he founded to nurture leadership skills among young Israelis.
Among his many honors, Kahn was chosen to light the first torch at Israel’s 71st Independence Day ceremony in Jerusalem, given the Bonei Zion Lifetime Achievement Award in 2018, and awarded honorary doctorates by Tel Aviv University, the University of Haifa and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Kahn often described giving as a personal obligation rather than a financial transaction, citing words by poet Kahlil Gibran that reflected his philosophy: “You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”
He lived by the Jewish maxim that saving one life is tantamount to saving an entire world and was fond of telling interviewers, "I don't want to be the richest man in the cemetery."
Dafna Jackson, CEO of the Kahn Foundation and Kahn's trusted adviser, recently dedicated a park bench for him in New York's Central Park, near an apartment he owned. "It was a place to pause, reflect and appreciate life, friendship and connection," he shared.
Widowed in 2011, Kahn is survived by his sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Remembered for his modesty, imagination and unwavering Zionist commitment, he was a visionary who left a legacy inseparable from the story of Israel itself—a nation built by dreamers who dared, gave all they could and never stopped believing.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog eulogized Kahn as "an entrepreneur and a visionary" in a post on X on Thursday afternoon.
"His dreams reached all the way to the moon, yet he always remained firmly grounded in his love for Israel and care for the Israeli people," tweeted the head of state. "From leading the 'Beresheet' space project to nurturing young leadership and protecting the environment, Morris Kahn’s impact was felt around the world."
Kahn was "deeply committed to safeguarding the values and democratic character of the State of Israel" and worked "tirelessly to promote our country’s good name around the world," according to Herzog.
"Morris's profound contribution to Israel and his trailblazing leadership will remain etched in our hearts forever. I send my deepest condolences to Morris’s family. May his memory be a blessing," he concluded.
