As the recently retired southwest regional director at American Associates, Ben-Gurion University (AABGU), Philip Gomperts facilitated what is widely believed to be the largest charitable gift in Israel’s history.
During his nearly three-decade career at AABGU, the United States-based fundraising arm of the Negev-based research university, Gomperts befriended Howard and Lottie Marcus, an unassuming couple from Great Neck, New York, who had the foresight to make a brilliant early investment.
Howard and Lottie fled Nazi-Germany for the United States in the 1930s, where they met and fell in love. The two lived a frugal life — Howard worked as a dentist—— and when the young couple was seeking an investment opportunity, they turned to a friend, Benjamin Graham, known as the “father of value investing.”
Graham introduced them to his promising student at Columbia Business School: Warren Buffett. The Marcuses invested in Buffett’s company, which became Berkshire Hathaway. At the time, the stock was trading at $12 per share. Over the course of their life, they continued buying shares of the company, never selling their stock. The price soared — today it trades at over $400,000 per share — and their investment eventually became worth millions of dollars.
When the couple retired, they relocated to a modest apartment in Southern California. In 1997, they met Gomperts, and he introduced them to the Ben-Gurion University’s research in desalination, water management and related areas. The Marcuses came to believe water played a critical role in bringing peace to the Middle East.
Meanwhile, few of those who knew the Marcus couple were aware of their wealth, including their daughter, Ellen. When Ellen learned of the money her parents had, she told her parents to leave her enough so that she and her daughter would never go hungry and to donate the rest of their estate to the cause Lottie and Howard had grown to care about.
By the time Lottie died at age 99 in 2015 — less than two years after Howard passed in 2014 at age 104 — the investment in Berkshire Hathaway was worth more than $400 million. They opted to leave their estate to the university.
“My parents were Holocaust survivors who met in New York, and they felt increasingly strongly as their lives went on it was important for the Jews to have safe refuge and the State of Israel was that place,” Ellen Marcus said in an interview. “That’s why they ultimately decided to leave almost all of their estate to BGU.”
The funds helped create an endowment that raises nearly $20 million annually in perpetuity for the university. “It makes a huge difference to the development of the university,” Gomperts said in an interview about the endowment.
The funds helped create an endowment that raises nearly $20 million annually in perpetuity for the university.
Ellen Marcus is the vice chair of the board of governors at BGU. In 2017, she received an honorary doctorate at BGU’s 47th Board of Governors meeting. A visit to the university for the naming of the Marcus Family Campus led her to developing a personal stake in its success.
“I began to become very excited about the university and quite impressed with the university, and my excitement and passion has continued to grow, and I was instrumental in my parents donating most of their estate to BGU, and when they did that, I made a decision I would do whatever I could do to help facilitate my parents’ money being used carefully and wisely, and that’s why I have continued to become increasingly involved in BGU,” she said.
She spoke to the Journal in advance of the AABGU April 25 event, “Celebrating the Remarkable,” which will be honoring Gomperts for his stewardship of the gift from the Marcus family. “I don’t need to be honored — I did it as a labor of love — but it feels nice to be recognized,” Gomperts told the Journal in a phone interview.
The upcoming virtual event is also recognizing AABGU immediate past president Toni Young and sex therapist and Shoah survivor Dr. Ruth Westheimer, who will receive her first honorary doctorate from an Israeli university. Israeli actress-producer Noa Tishby is emceeing the program.
In a Zoom interview from his home in Denver, AABGU CEO Doug Seserman joked the event was for anyone who “likes sex and loves Israel,” referring to the inclusion of Westheimer, known as “Dr. Ruth,” in the program.
As for Gomperts, Seserman said he set a standard for donor relationship management in the Jewish community. Like the expression, “Be like Mike,” a reference to NBA legend Michael Jordan, Jewish fundraisers who learn how successful Gomperts was will want to “Be like Philip,” Seserman said.
For more information about the April 25 program, visit aabgu.org/events/celebrating-the-remarkable.
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