[Archived from January 09, 2009]
Over the past several years, the Foundation for Planned Giving’s Ellen and Milton Cantor Israel Scholarship Fund has provided an annual scholarship to a high school junior or senior from the greater Louisville area to help defray the cost of the trip and enable that individual to participate in an approved month-long educational opportunity in Israel.
The Foundation has accepted applications for the Cantor Scholarship for the summer of 2009. Students interested in the program must have made written application to the Ellen and Milton Cantor Israel Scholarship Fund by February 15.
Each candidate also had to include the recommendation of his or her rabbi or an appropriate Jewish communal professional. Scholarship recipients had to commit to participate in voluntary community activities upon their return from Israel.
The fund was originally established by Milton Cantor in 1997 in memory of his wife, Ellen. When he passed away in 2002, the fund was named in memory of them both. Their son, Howard, lives in Florida and receives letters from each of the fund recipients when they return home from Israel.
“The letters mean a lot to me,” he said. “The fund was important to my parents, and its value is evident in the reactions I hear from the students. They describe the impact the trip has had on them and how it has literally changed their lives. It has been wonderful for our family to be a part of it.”
His sister, Elece Kovel, agreed that the letters she receives make her realize how much the Israel trip means to the recipients of the Cantor scholarship. She knows that the additional funding has made it far easier for students to take advantage of the opportunity to study in Israel. “Each year we have great difficulty determining which student should receive the scholarship,” she says, “since all the applicants are highly qualified and are anxious to go to Israel. We just hope they have a good experience.”
