Sheldon Adelson: His Own Man

With the passing of Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish people has lost a true hero.

In these hyper-partisan times, it is almost impossible to see beyond a man’s political legacy. Sheldon Adelson poured capital into Republican politics to a degree previously unseen in America. He also backed politicians on the Israeli right, and even launched a newspaper, Israel Hayom, to give the Israeli right a comprehensive voice in journalism.

But while we often disagreed about politics, we were united by one thing: our deep love for, and commitment to, the future of the Jewish people.

Sheldon and I first met in the early 2000s at an event at Tel Aviv University where we were both being honored. We hit it off immediately. As hard-charging businessmen, we shared a certain impatience with the hidebound bureaucratic approach of established American Jewish institutions, and their failure to engender a strong sense of Jewish identity among younger non-Orthodox Jews. We agreed about the need for a completely new approach to engaging them with Israel.

Every time Sheldon came to New York, we’d meet for lunch at Barney Greengrass on Amsterdam Avenue. We saw each other at least twice a year, and in between I’d send him care packages that included the restaurant’s famed pickled herring and smoked salmon, which he loved. He was a casino mogul who never gambled, a man of infinite vigor who met difficult physical challenges as he aged. One thing my wife Judy and I saw immediately was how much Sheldon loved his family, especially his wife Miri. Theirs was a full partnership built on a depth of love that you could sense the first time you met them.

But his love was not just for his family. He loved the Jewish people as well, and expressed it through his philanthropy: He was a major donor to Yad Vashem and to the Israeli-American Council. But above all, he expressed it through his heroic commitment to Birthright Israel, the most successful single program for building Diaspora Jewish identity in modern history.

Charles Bronfman and I started Birthright in 1999 along with a group of donors who each committed $5 million over five years, with a similar gift from the Israeli government and a smaller contribution from the federations. Birthright quickly became immensely popular, overcoming the challenges of institutional skepticism and the fears caused in the early 2000s among American Jewish parents by the Palestinian Intifada. Tens of thousands of young Jews came to Israel each year.

But it never faced a tougher challenge than the financial crisis of 2008, when the Israeli government slashed its contribution to the program, and neither the Jewish community nor private donors felt they could pick up the slack. It was Sheldon who stepped in, without being asked, and poured millions of dollars into keeping it going. He single-handedly saved Birthright.

It was Sheldon who stepped in, without being asked, and poured millions of dollars into keeping it going. He single-handedly saved Birthright.

By the time he passed away, Sheldon had given more than $400 million of his own money to Birthright, making him by far the biggest single donor in its history, and one of the biggest Jewish donors to any single project in our people’s history.

There were people who saw Sheldon’s support for Birthright as proof that it had somehow become a “right-wing” program. But the truth was quite the opposite. If you ask Charles Bronfman — hardly a right-winger — he’ll agree that at no point did Sheldon even hint at trying to influence the program ideologically.

Why did he do it? Because he saw Birthright for what it was: An incredibly powerful tool for building a healthy sense of Jewish pride among young Jews from across the diaspora. While so many people criticized Birthright as too shallow, too short, and a waste of communal money, Sheldon believed in it. Over the years, when studies showed that the trip had major long-term impact, not just on participants’ relationship with Israel, but with their overall Jewish commitment—his investment was proven right. Sheldon helped turn Birthright into a ritual in the lives of nearly a million Jews.

Sheldon was possibly the proudest Jew I ever met. And he acted on that pride. Though his actions and statements sometimes rubbed liberal Jews the wrong way, there was a great deal to learn from his unwavering Jewish pride and his willingness to stand up to anti-Zionists and anti-Semites with conviction and courage.

Sheldon was possibly the proudest Jew I ever met. And he acted on that pride.

We were not always of one mind on philanthropic questions. For years, I wanted Birthright to explore follow-up projects that would harness the enthusiasm created by the trip. Sheldon disagreed. “It’s all about the trip,” he would say. He had incredibly acute business instincts—pretty much all his business efforts were successful—and he understood Birthright through this entrepreneurial lens. He understood the secret of its success. And as a canny investor, he would put his money only into something he knew would pay off.

In a Jewish world where turf-conscious bureaucrats run the show and most private philanthropists are concerned more with social status and the plaques and plaudits of other Jews, Sheldon was one of a kind. He didn’t care about any of that. Sheldon was his own man, and I admired him for it. He trusted his own judgment, he didn’t give a fig about what other people thought of him, and above all, he took action. An energetic street fighter of a kind that used to be more common among Diaspora Jews, he didn’t have the benefits of a large inheritance or an elite education. He built an empire with his own hands and used the wealth he had created to help his fellow Jews.

Every Jew who cares about the future of our people should mourn the loss of Sheldon Adelson. We are unlikely to see another like him.

Michael H. Steinhardt is the Chair of the Steinhardt Foundation for Jewish Life.