Andrea “Andi” Cantor (Courtesy of Andi Cantor)
In January 2025, Andrea Cantor, who goes by Andi, experienced what many people would call their worst nightmare.
Her sister, who usually sends her daily messages, hadn’t reached out to her in a couple of days. While Cantor was in Philadelphia, her sister had made aliyah to Israel. She couldn’t just go knock on her door.
“I got really nervous. I remember I was making a presentation, and on the other hand, I was looking up hospitals in Israel,” Cantor said.
Cantor found her sister, eventually. She was in a hospital on an air ventilator suffering from sepsis. Quickly, she began to make plans to travel to her sister’s bedside in Israel with her mother. Cantor’s coworker at the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia helped her book flights with a travel agent. They flew the next day.
The end of the story is a happy one — her sister recovered. What transpired before that ending while she was stressed and pressured by her sister’s condition is a big reason why Cantor loves the Philadelphia Jewish community and her coworkers at the Federation.
“The Jewish Federation of Philadelphia has a handful of full-time staff members who work in Israel, and Jewish Federation’s Director of Israel and Global Operations Tali Lidar picked up my mom and me from the airport. She drove us to the hospital. She spoke with doctors, she made sure that the hospital could use our phone at the hotel. My network with the Jewish Federation was unbelievably supportive,” Cantor said.
It wasn’t just her coworkers, either. When other folks found out about what happened, Cantor heard from them too.
“The love and support I felt from the Philly Jewish community at that time was beyond what I could ever imagine,” she said.
For Cantor, the connections between the work she and her colleagues do at the Federation and the results on the ground in Israel were apparent during the journey to her sister’s side. Cantor’s sister rode to the hospital in an ambulance provided by Magen David Adom, an organization that received an emergency grant from the Federation.
Cantor said that what she saw at the hospital helped spark her love for what she does back in Philly even further.
“It really re-energized me to the work that we are doing,” she said. “Seeing the beauty and diversity of Israel, the families of different backgrounds sitting in these hospital rooms … it breaks the barriers of misconceptions of the country and underscores the difference we are making in people’s lives through philanthropy.”
Cantor, who is also co-president of Neshama Hadassah, a Women of Vision strategic planning committee member and a participant of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Executive Accelerator program, grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and attended Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy and Politz Hebrew Academy. She grew up secular, became Orthodox, and now describes herself as a “wandering Jew.”
“I just think there’s so many different paths to cultivate Jewish identity. And I’m so proud to work at the Jewish Federation because we facilitate and we provide so many opportunities to help multiple generations connect with their individual sense of what it means to be Jewish,” Cantor said.
The work that the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia does is for the entirety of the region’s Jewish community, and Cantor especially understands that importance because of her diverse background of Jewish experiences. Today, she gets to make sure that the environment for Philadelphia Jews is one that allows each and every one to find what works best for them.
“I think a core tenet, especially being in the communications department, is really believing in radical creativity, inclusion and the importance and power in sharing stories,” she said. “I want to, when we’re talking about our Jewish community, talk about our full Jewish community.”
Communications is where Cantor wants to be, and where she feels like she can make a great impact. Whether it’s in times of joy or crisis, Cantor is glad to be a voice to and for the Philadelphia Jewish community.
“From a communications perspective, stories have the ability to remind us of our shared humanity and the power each of us has to make a difference. At the Jewish Federation, we provide a centralized voice and a trusted voice in times of crisis, to give information and reassure our community about what’s being done in these moments, such as on Oct. 7 when we really had to mobilize quickly, and connect people with ways to help,” she said.