The Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation is a private grantmaking foundation funded by Jay Schottenstein, an Ohio retail magnate and member of the one of the wealthiest retailing families in the United States. The foundation gives almost exclusively to Jewish cultural and religious organizations.

Schottenstein Family

Business Ventures

Jay Schottenstein is currently the CEO of American Eagle Outfitters and part owner of Retail Ventures, Inc., which has significant stakes in retail outlets such as Value City Furniture, Filene’s Basement, and DSW Shoe Outlets. He is part of a family of retail entrepreneurs that have founded or have significant stakes in companies such as insurer SafeAuto and M/I Homes, a large midwestern home builder. ¹

Jay is the son of Jerome Schottenstein, whose Lithuanian-born father Ephraim founded the Schottenstein Stores Corporation in 1917, after several years selling outdated and overstock goods from a horse and buggy in Columbus, Ohio. Schottenstein Stores is now a holding company for several retail brands directed by Jay and other family members, and ranks among the 250 largest private enterprises in the United States. ²

Family Controversies

In 2010, two sisters of Jay Schottenstein sued him for breach of trust, asserting that he improperly used family trusts to maintain his positions at publicly traded and closely held family companies, by favoring certain family trusts that provided him means of control. The suit was eventually settled out of court. ³

In 2019, an Oregon therapist hired by Jay to treat his adult son sought a protective order, accusing the son of orchestrating a campaign of harassment and intimidation against him. The therapist alleged that his patient stole millions from his father and wasted it on drugs and prostitution, and blamed Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein for abetting their son’s behavior. ⁴

Grantmaking Activities

Jewish Causes

Large, recurring grantees of the foundation include the Mesorah Heritage Foundation, which translates ancient Jewish texts into English and sponsors scholarship on Jewish religious traditions and texts. ⁵ The foundation helped to support the Schottenstein Talmud, an English translation of rabbinic debates on Jewish laws governing all aspects of life, including business transactions, religious observance, kosher slaughter, and marriage and funeral customs, written between roughly A.D. 200 and 500 by scholars in the Jewish academies of Babylonia,. The project was originally supported by Jay’s father Jerome, and then by the Schottenstein family and the foundation after Jerome’s death in 1992. ⁶ The foundation has also given multi-million grants to Gemilos Chasodim Chasdel Moshe, a private charity in Brooklyn, New York that supports Orthodox Jewish families and communities. ⁷

The foundation’s largest grantee in the past several years has been Friends of the Israeli Antiquities Authority, a private charity supporting the Israeli government agency that oversees archeological sites in the country. ⁸ The agency is currently constructing the Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein National Campus for the Archaeology of the Land of Israel, an interactive museum and research center that will house the Dead Sea Scroll manuscript fragments and other ancient artifacts. ⁹

Foreign Policy

In 2015, the foundation gave a $1 million grant to United Against a Nuclear Iran,¹⁰ a bipartisan foreign policy group founded in 2008 by Ambassador Mark D. Wallace, the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, and Ambassador Dennis Ross to advocate for policies that would thwart development of nuclear weapons by Iran. The group is led by a board of advisors that includes former Governors Jeb Bush (R-FL) and Bill Richardson (D-NM) and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. ¹¹

1. “#100 Schottenstein family.” Forbes. February 2016. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/profile/schottenstein/#78374f96578e
2. “Schottenstein Stores Corp.” CompanyHistories.com. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.company-histories.com/Schottenstein-Stores-Corp-Company-History.html
3. Vardi, Nathan. “The Schottenstein Family Feud.” Forbes. June 30, 2010. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.forbes.com/2010/06/30/schottenstein-family-feud-business-billionaires-schottenstein.html#2a8d40961022
4. Saul, Emily. “Billionaire’s son is hooker-loving drug addict who threatened shrink: suit.” New York Post. September 16, 2019. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://nypost.com/2019/09/16/ohio-billionaires-son-is-hooker-loving-drug-addict-who-threatened-shrink-suit/
5. “About MHF.” Mesorah Heritage Foundation. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.mesorahheritage.org/Content/intro.html
6. Berger, Joseph. “An English Talmud for Daily Readers and Debaters.” New York Times. February 10, 2005. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/books/an-english-talmud-for-daily-readers-and-debaters.html
7. Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, Amended Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990PF), 2016, Part XV, Line 3
8. Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, Amended Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990PF), 2016, Part XV, Line 3; Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, Second Amended Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990PF), 2015, Part XV, Line 3
9. “Our Home.” Friends of the Israeli Antiquities Authority. Accessed January 10, 2020. https://www.friendsofiaa.org/our-home
10. Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein Foundation, Second Amended Return of a Private Foundation (Form 990PF), 2015, Part XV, Line 3
11. “About Us.” United Against a Nuclear Iran. Accessed January 9, 2020. https://www.unitedagainstnucleariran.com/about