Departures of note

Jack Ukeles was a prominent Jewish social scientist and policy researcher whose five-decade career blended research, data, and strategic problem-solving with idealism. He taught at elite universities, advised city and state governments on policy planning, and conducted community surveys for Jewish organizations around the world. From the 1980s through the 2000s, he was among the most prominent members of a cohort of Jewish social scientists who helped set the agenda for organized Jewish life, advising philanthropists and nonprofit leaders on issues such as intermarriage, attachment to Israel, population trends, and declining engagement with Jewish institutions.

In 1981 he joined the Jewish nonprofit world as senior planning officer of the New York Federation of Jewish Philanthropies (now UJA-Federation of New York), where he led the charity's first scientific study of the New York area's Jewish population as well as major studies on senior services and Jewish poverty. Five years later he founded Ukeles Associates, Inc., leading consulting projects for secular and Jewish nonprofits for 28 years.

Born into a religious Zionist home in New York, Ukeles attended the Yeshiva of Flatbush and was accepted in 1955 into the first class of Bar-Ilan University in Israel, where he was a student leader. He and his wife, Mierle, made aliyah to Jerusalem in 2012. He was remembered for his integrity, wisdom, and compassion, and for mentoring generations of Jewish communal professionals.