‘Awfully, totally surreal,’ Jewish Arizonan tells JNS of winning $1 million from Musk PAC

Offenhartz’s plans for the windfall include charitable giving to Big Brothers, the Jewish National Fund, and to Jewish education in Phoenix.

By Dave Gordon, JNS

After Joshua Offenhartz decided to sign a petition from Elon Musk’s America Political Action Committee, which offered a potential $47 per referral and a shot at $1 million for those in battleground states, he sent it in a group text to family and friends.

“They loved it, but they thought I was crazy,” the Jewish lawyer in Phoenix told JNS.

Signatories to the petition state that they support constitutional principles, with a particular focus on free expression and gun ownership rights.

“I read it. I largely agreed that we need the First Amendment to protect our freedoms of speech, our freedoms of religion,” said Offenhartz, who received the petition in September.

“As an attorney, I believe in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments—the right to protection and privacy, the right to due process.”

“It’s election season, so I sort of sign-up for everything because you never know where interesting information is going to come from that you share with family and friends,” he told JNS.

On Nov. 3, Offenhartz was on a walk with his children, sharing literature for local Arizona candidates when he received a text message from an unknown number informing him that America PAC would be in his neighborhood that day. It wanted to “stop by and say, ‘Thank you for the work you did.’”

Offenhartz’s wife, Shira Offenhartz, thought the family was in the money, but the attorney didn’t want either of them to get their hopes up.

Then a large SUV pulled up in front of the house, a team got out and someone opened the trunk and revealed an oversized check.

“They walked up to the door, and it was sort of like Publishers Clearing House,” he told JNS. “They handed me this $1 million check.”

His heart was pounding and the whole thing felt “awfully, totally surreal,” Offenhartz told JNS. “I teared up and I choked up. It’s really a life-changing moment.”

‘Taught to give’

Offenhartz’s plans for the windfall include charitable giving to Big Brothers, Jewish National Fund and to Jewish education in Phoenix.

“I was always taught to give,” the 36-year-old, born-and-bred Arizonan, who has two young children, told JNS.

His mother, a public school teacher, and his father, a deputy county prosecutor, took the family to Tucson when he was young.

Offenhartz loved the Jewish community there and attended Tucson Hebrew Academy and joined the Conservative movement’s United Synagogue Youth program.

As a University of Arizona student, he joined the Jewish fraternity, the Jewish Law Students Association and the Hillel board. He met Shira at the latter.

He has been a JNF board member for six years and is on the board of the Bureau of Jewish Education.

Visiting Israel has also shaped Offenhartz’s Jewish identity, he told JNS.

He has the “dubious achievement of having traveled to Israel when conflict breaks out.”

After graduating high school, he took part in a USY Birthright trip. While visiting Rosh Hanikra along the northern border in 2006, Hezbollah fired at Israel and kidnapped soldiers.

“That was just real, and an amazing experience to be there, to see the places that I learned about, to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors—very powerful and very moving,” he said of the trip.

“Then being and seeing firsthand the security threat, but then seeing how fragile Israel was firsthand, and having parts of the trip rerouted and rescheduled because of threats, having to shelter in place at times,” he added. “That made it very real.”

“That really solidified any advocacy that I may have been wavering on growing up,” Offenhartz said.

In 2007, he returned to Israel to mark Hillel’s 75th anniversary, and in 2013, he led a Birthright contingent.

On the latter trip, the group left a tour of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem when Jerusalem was struck by rocket fire. It ran into the museum’s parking garage basement shelter.

“I’ve been there during times of conflict. I’ve also been there in times of peace. It helps with my spirituality and my personal belief, but also it helps solidify for me that our enemies tell us what they really think they mean,” he told JNS.

“It really motivates me, because I think we take that blessing for granted, because, as we saw on Oct. 7, Israel is so fragile,” he added.

‘Moving the needle’

Offenhartz has long thought highly of the Tesla and Twitter owner, whose PAC so unexpectedly just gave him $1 million.

“I’m unashamed and unafraid to say that I think that he is a brilliant businessman, and I really am impressed that he is walking-the-walk when most people just talk-the-talk of things that we want to see in the 21st century,” he said.

Offenhartz’s grandfather worked on the Apollo space program. “I’m in love with the idea of SpaceX and Starlink and space exploration,” he said. “I don’t own a Tesla, but I love the idea of electric cars.”

His first private sector job was in and his master’s thesis was about solar energy.

“I believe in that too,” he said. “I’ve always admired Elon Musk as a businessman and the things that he was doing.”

“Maybe if the government wasn’t so hard on the man, trying to do great things. I think that he showed the world, in a different way, that there are smart minds outside of politics that can come up with ideas to move the needle in ways that our political class hasn’t thought of,” he added. “As long as he keeps fighting for values, I certainly can support that.”

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