Bernard Marcus

Bernard Marcus co-founded The Home Depot in 1978 alongside Arthur Blank and Ken Langone — the company that became the largest home improvement retailer in the world with more than $150 billion in annual revenue — and has spent the decades since directing his personal fortune into a philanthropy centered on two pillars: American veterans and Israel. Born May 12, 1929, in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Russian Jewish immigrant parents, Marcus earned his pharmacy degree from Rutgers University before building a career in retail that culminated in the Home Depot founding at age 49. He served as CEO until 2002 and has since operated through the Marcus Foundation, which has donated more than $2 billion across his lifetime giving.

Marcus is among the most generous pro-Israel donors in American history. His giving has supported Israeli medical research — he funded the construction and operation of the Marcus Brain Center at Sheba Medical Center, Tel HaShomer, one of the leading neurological centers in the Middle East — as well as Israeli educational institutions, museums, and cultural organizations. He co-funded the Museum of the Bible in Washington D.C., which has significant programming on the biblical roots of the Jewish people's connection to the Land of Israel. His political giving has been substantially directed toward Republican candidates whose Israel positions he has endorsed, and he has been a major funder of campaigns against congressional candidates he views as anti-Israel. His giving to AIPAC and to the Republican Jewish Coalition has been among the largest in those organizations' donor bases.

Marcus has spoken publicly about his Jewish identity as inseparable from his philanthropic orientation: he has described his giving to Israel as the fulfillment of a personal obligation rooted in the history of Jewish vulnerability and the miracle of Israeli statehood in his own lifetime. Born the year before the stock market crash, he has said that the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 — which he was old enough to witness — was the defining event of Jewish history in the twentieth century. At Rank 28, Marcus represents the self-made American Jewish philanthropist whose immigrant family story produces a particular intensity of commitment to Israel's permanence.