Few of them had ever met or even heard of her, but tens of thousands of St. Louisans and hundreds of thousands of others around the world had their lives changed through the quietly relentless commitment of Cheryl Ann (“Cheri”) Fox.
Cheri, who grew up in St. Louis, passed away on August 11th in Israel, after a long battle with breast cancer. She was 69.
Although she’d lived in Israel for more than 40 years, Cheri had a major impact in her hometown through her position as executive director of the Fox Family Foundation. Established by her parents in 1987, the foundation supported numerous nonprofits in St. Louis and Israel over decades. The Foundation focused on education from early childhood through college; medical research at hospitals and universities; and gifts to the Jewish community and other religious institutions. In addition, the Foundation supported numerous charitable organizations providing cultural and civic benefits to the community, including art museums, theaters, parks, and the St. Louis Zoo.
Grantees learned that Cheri approached her work with rigor. Winning her funding recommendation required not only a strategic fit with the foundation’s mission but proof of effectiveness. Once the foundation’s support was obtained, nonprofits found Cheri to be a source of much more than financial support, she was a constant source of advice and counsel.
“She really understood what nonprofits needed to be effective and she helped them get there,” her brother Steve commented. “It didn’t matter how big or small the organization was,” her sister Pamela Fox Claman recalled. “She took such a deep dive with every single one.”
In Israel, at least two of those deep dives resulted in a seminal impact.
Early in the 2000s, she recognized that food insecurity was a major unaddressed issue in Israel. In response, Cheri helped found The Forum to Address Food Insecurity and Poverty with a group of other funders and became its co-chair. The Forum funded research, created action plans, and fostered the strategic collaborations needed to raise awareness about nutrition issues — and then began tackling the challenge.
This work led her to help found Leket – Israel Food Bank. Realizing that one organization alone would not have the impact needed, she helped orchestrate a merger in 2009 between The Israel Food Bank and Table to Table to form what is now known as Leket Israel, Israel’s largest food and food distribution network, delivering 100 percent nutritious food to 330,000 Israelis in need per week. And in turn all of this work led to her becoming a longtime board member and major supporter of the Chicago-based Global FoodBanking Network, which operates in more than 40 countries.
Cheri was also deeply passionate about the environment, for which she became an early advocate in Israel. In 2018, after many years of groundwork, she co-founded a new unit of the Jewish Funders Networks (JFN) — the Green Funders Forum (GFF) — to mobilize the Jewish philanthropic community. Starting with seven members, the organization has become JFN’s largest peer network, with Cheri serving as co-chair right up until her last days. Prior to the founding of GFF, Cheri had been a very active member and leader of JFN, serving as co-chair from 2001 to 2004.
Mark Charendoff, former president of JFN, credited Cheri with playing “a critical role” in the organization’s early days. “She was one of the first Israel-based voices, and at a time when the role of Israel in JFN was still unsettled and ambiguous,” he wrote in an email after Cheri’s death. Under her leadership as co-chair, “she began a complete reimagining of the JFN, helping to steward it from an annual conference to a full-fledged international organization with offices in New York and Tel Aviv. Her warmth and wisdom touched thousands of philanthropists and foundation professionals and inspired a new chapter in Jewish philanthropy.”
Cheri’s efforts on food issues and the environment were only among the highlights of a philanthropic career that stretched across continents. She ran her own private foundation, Maor, which supported an array of health research, environmental, food and education-related organizations in the U.S. and Israel. She supported the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the Silent Spring Institute in nearby Newton, Mass. to advance cancer research. She supported the Jerusalem-based Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, which seeks to cultivate a love of Jewish learning among Jews worldwide, and her Modern Orthodox community in Jerusalem, which has helped define a religious space for women alongside men in the synagogue. Her Jewish identify and faith informed her commitment to Tikun Olam – helping create a better world for generations to come.
Cheri’s connection to Israel began with her lasting love of dance. During her summer break before her senior year at Ladue High School (class of ’72) she toured Israel as part of a Jewish-folkdance troupe. “I danced my way through the country … with the top Israeli folkdance choreographers,” she later said in an interview.
She began to lobby her parents to let her move to Israel, but they insisted on college first. After a stint at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., she completed her undergraduate work at the University of Michigan. She then spent a few years in Boston working in early childhood education before earning her MA in public health in 1982 at Columbia University in New York. It was then that she finally moved to Israel.
The move reflected an independent streak that marked her for life — nurtured, perhaps, by her place in the family. As the eldest of the five Fox children, she was her mother’s helper in raising the rest of them, her surviving siblings, Jeff, Steve and Pamela, recalled. “She was always there for us in those early days and later, for everyone,” Jeff said. She was also – for as long as her siblings could remember — practical, modest, responsible, down-to-earth, kind and approachable.
In her later years, she was a joyfully devoted grandmother as well.
Cheri’s three daughters — Avigail, of Washington, D.C., Naomi, of Israel, and Miryam, also of Israel — will continue her legacy with the Maor Foundation, where they remain committed to funding and advocating for change.
Besides her daughters, she is survived by her father, Ambassador Sam Fox; her siblings, Pamela Fox Claman, of Israel, Jeff Fox, of St. Louis, and Steve Fox, of St. Louis; and four grandchildren. She was predeceased by her mother, Marilyn Fox, and a brother, Greg Fox.
She will be dearly missed by her family, friends and community around the world.
Donations in her memory may be made to Leket Israel (leket.org).
