Rabbi Ephraim Buchwald is one of the leaders in the movement of Orthodox Jewish outreach in America today.
NJOP sponsors "Shabbat Across America/Canada" and "Read Hebrew America/Canada" campaigns, establishes Beginners Services and the "Turn Friday Night into Shabbat," "Passover Across America" and "Sukkot Across America" programs, as well as free "crash courses" in Hebrew reading, basic Judaism and Jewish history.
Through these programs and advertising campaigns, NJOP has successfully reached more than 1,428,600 Jews in North America and engaged them in Jewish life.
Both NJOP and AJOP were initially funded by significant grants from the AVI CHAI Foundation, a Jewish philanthropy established by Sanford Bernstein, a financial investor who had himself become a Baal teshuva (a returnee to traditional Orthodox observance) and sought to further the cause of education and outreach to alienated and assimilated Jews worldwide.
In May 2001, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by Yeshiva University in recognition of his outreach work.