Israel turns one hundred in 2048
What She becomes is being decided now
Strategic Advisory for those ready to build - not just react
We work with families, philanthropists, and institutions to help build a stronger, more diversified Israel and the next generation of Diaspora Jews connected to her.
OUR PRACTICES
2048 is the thesis. While much of Israel’s second century will be built from within, the Diaspora has a vital role to play: investing catalytic capital to transform the regions central to Israel’s future, building new ways to connect the next generation to her, and guiding the institutions that grasp what it will take for Israel to thrive at 100.
We carry that out across three practices:
Capital Advisory — Real estate investment in the Negev and the Galilee alongside Israeli development partners. Learn more →
Next-Generation Engagement — Using youth sports as a bridge between young American Jews and communities across Israel. Learn more →
Strategic Consulting — Strategy for a generational horizon: starting from where an institution needs to be and working back. Learn more →
THE HORIZON
Three times in history, the Jewish people have held their future in their own hands. The first ended in exile. The second ended in longing. The third is now — and what we make of it is the work ahead.
Israel’s centennial — May 14, 2048 — is far enough off for serious work to compound, but close enough that the decisions made today can be traced to where they lead.
That work runs on a timeline longer than a political cycle and shorter than a generation — too long for the clocks philanthropy, politics, and venture capital traditionally keep. Each answers the thing in front of it: the crisis, the election, the exit. 2048 Strategies was built to do the work the long game requires.
A Country Not a Coastline
Israel today is a country where the majority of its population and economic activity live in a narrow coastal strip. This is not an accident of geography. It is a pattern that hardened over seventy-five years and now defines the country’s risk profile — strategically, economically, and demographically. October 7 revealed what the numbers already told us: a country built around one center leaves everything outside it exposed.
The language itself is part of the problem. Israel uses the word “periphery” to describe regions an hour or two from Tel Aviv — Netivot, Sderot, Karmiel, Beer Sheva. No country of comparable size would treat places at those distances as periphery — they would simply be the country. In Israel, it has been institutionalized as marginal: the Central Bureau of Statistics maintains a formal peripherality index ranking every locality from “most peripheral to most central.” A label that began as descriptive shorthand has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Capital flows to the center because the center is where capital is expected to flow. The regions outside the coastal corridor remain underbuilt because the country has spent seventy-five years calling them peripheral. Building a genuinely distributed Israel begins by treating the periphery as the country it is.
The ground-level evidence already supports the reframing. The communities along the Gaza border — the most exposed in the country during October 7 — are now home to more residents than they were before the war, with more than 90% of evacuated residents returned and roughly 2,500 new arrivals choosing to make those communities their homes. In the north, government data places the return rate at 87%, and recovery is still in progress. Beer Sheva is quietly becoming the southern anchor of an Israel built across all of its geography — the urban center the Negev has always needed. The Galilee offers in the north what Beer Sheva does in the south, and waits, similarly, for serious commitment. The communities are ready, the fundamentals are sound, and the need is unambiguous.
By 2048, Israel should be a country built across all of its geography — anchored by a robust North and South: the Negev dramatically expanded with Beer Sheva at its core, and the Galilee developed as an ecosystem across the region rather than concentrated in any single city. A country more vibrant economically, more sound demographically, and more secure strategically because it is distributed rather than concentrated in the center. Government investment since October 7 has begun the work; what completes it is private capital deployed on the same horizon. This is the country Ben-Gurion saw — its future depending on the Galilee and the Negev as much as on the coast. It is not charity. It is the country Israel set out to become.
From Abstraction to Connection
Capital That Matches the Vision
A generation of American Jewish families is building wealth at a scale their parents never saw. Most of that wealth will be deployed over the next twenty-five years — the exact window that determines what Israel looks like at its centennial. The question for these families is not whether to engage with Israel. It is how.
Two well-established channels carry American Jewish capital to Israel today: philanthropy that strengthens institutions, and venture investment that fuels Israeli innovation. Both have produced extraordinary results. Philanthropic giving has built hospitals, universities, social services, and emergency relief infrastructure. Tech investment has helped make the country a global center of entrepreneurship. These channels work and will continue to do so. What has been harder to find is a third: patient capital deployed at scale into the regions that will define what the country becomes.
2048’s capital advisory work is that third channel. In partnership with Israeli development firms focused principally on the Negev and Galilee, the focus is real estate development in those regions: real returns on a long horizon, deployed into the regions that will define the country’s next chapter, for families who think in decades and who want their Israel exposure to do more than sit on a balance sheet. At its core, this is impact investing — there are returns, but the impact on the country is far greater than the monetary return alone. The choice these families are making is to deploy a portion of their Israel-aligned capital toward the country Israel set out to become.
These are not conventional real-estate deals measured on a quick exit. They are a different kind of investment, measured on the horizon it takes to build a region — which is also why the usual yardstick understates them, and why the families who see it earliest are rewarded for their patience.
That choice is catalytic. When families committed to Israel deploy patient capital into the Negev and Galilee, they signal to other investors, to residents considering relocation, and to businesses choosing where to build that these are durable opportunities rather than subsidized projects. Public investment is necessary; private capital is what makes public investment compound.
CURRENT WORK
Investment in the North and South. 2048 advises high-net-worth individuals and family offices on long-horizon investment in the Negev and the Galilee. The primary current focus is real estate development, in partnership with Israeli development firms focused principally on the Negev and Galilee. The Urban Moshava in Sderot — a mixed-use development nearing completion that applies the community-cohesion principles of Israel’s early moshavot to one of the towns most affected by October 7 — illustrates the kind of work 2048 advises clients into. Engagements typically involve equity participation in ground-up and mixed-use real estate development, structured at the project level on a project-by-project SPV basis for qualified clients. Additional projects are underway in other priority communities. Venture development — partnerships with Israeli operators to structure and launch new ventures aligned with the same thesis — is an adjacent capability for clients who want to participate on the operating side.
Next-Generation Engagement. Founded by professional basketball player and JAB Camp founder Jared Armstrong, in partnership with 2048, JAB Courts has refurbished or is completing eighteen courts in thirteen Israeli communities — towns and kibbutzim across the North and South. The Resilience Tour is underway now, bringing these courts together as a coordinated initiative across ten cities deeply affected by October 7. Each court is named for the family or community member whose support makes it possible. The next phase moves the work from a major-donor model to a peer-cohort one — structured engagement at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah age.
Strategic Consulting. 2048 Strategies advises Jewish communal organizations, Israel-focused nonprofits, and emerging strategic ventures on strategic planning, governance, board and leadership development, major-donor cultivation, and institutional restructuring. Current engagements include a multi-month project with a major Israel-focused 501(c)(3) on governance reform, financial transparency, Charity Navigator strategy, and donor stewardship; advisory to a new organization on long-term reputational strategy for Israel and the Jewish community; and ongoing work with an Israel-focused sports organization on US-based youth engagement and donor cultivation. The institutions carrying the work of the second century need strategic infrastructure built for the horizons that work requires. The practice exists to help them build it.
HOW 2048 WORKS
2048 is the thesis. 2048 Strategies is the operating firm that carries it. The work runs across three lines:
Capital Advisory — A practice within 2048 Strategies. Long-horizon investment in the Negev and Galilee, in partnership with Israeli development firms focused principally on those regions.
Next-Generation Engagement — Initiatives connecting American Jewish young people to specific Israeli communities at the age attachment actually forms. JAB Courts is the first.
Strategic Consulting — A practice within 2048 Strategies. Strategic counsel for institutions building the capacity their next chapter requires.
Each practice has its own audience and its own work — and all three operate from a shared thesis and on a shared horizon.
LEADERSHIP
Brian Shankman founded 2048 after nearly thirty years at AIPAC, where he most recently served as Chief Strategy Director for National Affairs. From 2013 to 2021, as Director of Regional Affairs and Development, he was the primary architect of a strategic development plan that grew the organization’s annual revenue from $99 million to $315 million, leading a national operation of approximately 220 staff across ten regional offices. From 2021 to 2025, as Chief Strategy Director, he served on the small senior leadership team responsible for one of the most consequential institutional shifts in the organization’s history. Across both roles, he led more than twenty senior-level missions across the Gulf, Europe, and Asia, working with American policymakers, foreign leadership, and major donors on the trilateral US-Israel-third country relationship. He partnered directly with the Executive Committee, Development Chair, and President of the organization on its strategic priorities, and developed dozens of professionals who today lead Jewish communal and Israel-focused organizations across the field.
He holds degrees from Indiana University and The Fletcher School at Tufts University, lived in Israel for three years, and is fluent in Hebrew and Spanish. He lives in Cabin John, Maryland, with his wife Debora and their two sons.
Adam Leibowitz joined 2048 as Partner. Adam has spent over two decades as a real estate operator and developer, having co-founded Double A Development in Nashville in 2005. The asset classes led by Adam and his team include a portfolio spanning hotel, office, retail, self-storage, multi-family, mixed-use, industrial, and single-family. Beyond real estate, he is co-owner and board member of medical billing company Elevos Revenue Management & Reporting, and co-owner and president of Field Optimiz, a field-services management software company. He has taught graduate-level real estate finance as an Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt’s Owen Graduate School of Management, holds an MBA from Vanderbilt and a Bachelor of Arts from Emory University, and serves on the board of Camp Ramah Darom. He has previously served on the AIPAC National Council and the FIDF Southeastern Board. He partners with Brian on 2048’s capital advisory practice, including the operating-side venture development work. Adam lives in Atlanta with his wife and three children — two college-age sons in the US and a daughter serving in the Israel Defense Forces.
Brian leads firm strategy and client relationships, anchoring the Strategic Consulting practice and the Next-Generation Engagement work in partnership with Jared Armstrong. Adam anchors the Capital Advisory practice and the operating-side venture development work.
Read the founder’s letter →
Current Focus
Active Pipeline
Malesuada maximus finibus cubilia tempor dui maecenas fermentum cras integer aenean porttitor. Mauris sagittis vestibulum lectus fames penatibus turpis non. Tincidunt vivamus aptent imperdiet elit a dictum eget. Malesuada maximus finibus cubilia tempor dui maecenas fermentum cras integer aenean porttitor. Mauris sagittis vestibulum lectus fames penatibus turpis non. Tincidunt vivamus aptent imperdiet elit a dictum eget.
Northern Border
Kiryat Shmona
Israel’s northernmost city, positioned for major reconstruction and expansion. Government plans include 6,800 new housing units and NIS 12 billion in regional investment over five years.
Why NOw
Post-ceasefire rebuilding underway. Government committed to “build bigger” with new railway station, food tech hub, and university expansion planned.
Lower Galilee
Karmiel
Gateway city to the Galilee with improved rail connections making it practical for families seeking affordability with access to central employment. Strong demand from young professionals.
Why NOw
Infrastructure investments making northern cities accessible. New neighborhoods and technical college under development. Multicultural community with strong integration.
Northern Negev
Ofakim
Rising Negev city now connected by rail to Tel Aviv (1 hour) and Be’er Sheva (15 min). New apartment sales in the Negev jumped 85% in 2024. Major expansion plans approved.
Why NOw
Rail connectivity transforms accessibility. Government’s Blueprint Negev initiative targets 500,000 new residents regionwide. Strong price appreciation potential.
Companies we work with
Our Value
Why you should Work with us
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar.
Work with Us
This work is for those who recognize 2048 as a North Star for the State of Israel and the Jewish people. Every engagement begins with a conversation about fit.
To start one, write to us at info@2048strategies.com.
Capital@2048strategies.com
Nextgen@2048strategies.com
Consulting@2048strategies.com
Info@2048strategies.com
The American Jewish community has built a remarkable infrastructure for Israel engagement — Jewish day schools, youth movements, the teen trip, Birthright, summer programs, gap years. Each plays an important role. Each has produced relationships that last a lifetime. Together they represent decades of serious investment in connecting American Jewish young people to Israel, and they will continue to matter.
Identity forms early. Bar and Bat Mitzvah is the threshold Jewish tradition itself names — the age at which a child becomes responsible for the practice of Judaism in their own right. It is also, in developmental terms, the age at which the cognitive capacity for chosen, symbolic identity emerges — the first time a child can hold what being Jewish means as a question they themselves answer rather than as something passed down. What is shaped in that window influences everything that follows.
And that window is where the engagement landscape has its largest gap. The community has world-class programs for sixteen-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, and twenty-two-year-olds. The space for twelve- and thirteen-year-olds — at scale, in a structured way, around real connection to specific Israeli places — has been waiting to be built.
2048’s next-generation work builds Israel attachment at the age attachment actually forms, through projects that create real, continuing relationships between American Jewish young people and specific Israeli communities. The first of these is JAB Courts — founded by professional basketball player and JAB Camp founder Jared Armstrong, in partnership with 2048: basketball courts refurbished across Israel’s North and South in towns and kibbutzim where the cost of October 7 was most acutely felt. Each court is named for the American family, congregation, or community whose support makes it possible — a specific place a Bar or Bat Mitzvah class can know, fund, visit, and return to. The next phase of the work is structured class engagement at the Bar/Bat Mitzvah age, taking the program from a major-donor model to a peer-cohort one. Additional formative-age initiatives will follow.
By 2048, the generation of American Jewish young people now reaching their teens will have grown up with specific Israeli communities they helped build and specific people they have known since middle school. That generation is the difference between a diaspora that drifts and a diaspora that stays.