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, he describes himself as an agnostic.<\/p>\nWarren Buffett is not a Jew; in fact, he describes himself as an agnostic.<\/p>\n
Still, the billionaire investment guru, who made big news in May when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in the Israeli metalworks conglomerate, Iscar, for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish community back home \u2014 although sometimes in a roundabout way.<\/p>\n
\u201cProportionally, if you look at the number of Jews in this country and in the world, I\u2019m associated with a hugely disproportionate number,\u201d said Buffett, the second-richest man in the world. His life, he added, \u201chas been blessed by friendship with many Jews.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Israeli government stands to reap about $1 billion in taxes on Buffett\u2019s purchase of Iscar. Shortly after announcing the deal, Buffett said he was surprised to learn that a Berkshire subsidiary, CTB International, was purchasing a controlling interest in another Israeli company, AgroLogic.<\/p>\n
In Israel \u2014 which Buffett plans to visit in the fall \u2014 the hope is that the deals will have longer legs: Buffett himself has not ruled out future purchases there and, considering his status as a leading investor, observers say others also may take a look at Israeli companies now that Buffett has done so.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou won\u2019t find in the world a better-run operation than Iscar,\u201d Buffett says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s an accident that it\u2019s run by Israelis.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the first companies Buffett acquired after launching Berkshire Hathaway, the Omaha-based investment and insurance giant, was The Sun Newspapers of Omaha, then owned by Stan Lipsey, one-time chairman of The Jewish Press, Omaha\u2019s Jewish newspaper.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the time, the Omaha Club did not take Jewish members, and the Highland Country Club, a golf club, didn\u2019t have any [non-Jewish] members,\u201d Lipsey recalled. \u201cWarren volunteered to join the Highland\u201d \u2014 rather than the Omaha \u2014 \u201cto set an example of nondiscrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buffett happily recalls the fallout from his application.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt created this big rhubarb,\u201d he said. \u201cAll of the rabbis appeared on my behalf, the [Anti-Defamation League] guy appeared on my behalf. Finally they voted to let me in.\u201d<\/p>\n
But that wasn\u2019t the end of the story, Buffett said. The Highland had a rule requiring members to donate a certain amount of money to their synagogues. Buffett, of course, wasn\u2019t a synagogue member, so the club changed its policy: Members now would be expected to give to their synagogues, temples or churches.<\/p>\n
But that still didn\u2019t quite work, Buffett recalls with a laugh, because of his agnosticism.<\/p>\n
In the end, the rule was amended to ask simply that members make some sort of charitable donation, and the path to Buffet\u2019s membership was clear.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s an incredible guy,\u201d said Lipsey, today the publisher of the Buffalo News. In 1973, The Sun won a Pulitzer Prize in local investigative specialized reporting for an expose on financial impropriety at Boys Town, Neb.<\/p>\n
\u201cWarren came up with the key source for us knowing what was going on out there,\u201d Lipsey said.<\/p>\n
Buffett himself researched Boys Town\u2019s stocks to bolster the story, Lipsey added.<\/p>\n
In the 1960s, Omaha Rabbi Myer Kripke decided to invest in his friend Buffett\u2019s new business venture. Their wives had become friendly, he said, and the foursome enjoyed playing the occasional game of bridge together.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife had no card sense and I was certainly no competition to Warren, who is a very good bridge player and a lover of the game,\u201d said Kripke, rabbi emeritus of Omaha\u2019s Conservative Beth El Synagogue. \u201cHe\u2019s very bright and very personable and very decent. He is a rich man who is as clean as can be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kripke, father of the noted philosopher Saul Kripke, bought a few shares in Berkshire Hathaway and quickly sold them, doubling his money, he said.<\/p>\n
Recognizing a good thing when he saw it, he bought a bunch more shares in his friend\u2019s company, shares that by the 1990s had made Kripke \u2014 who says he never earned more than $30,000 a year as a rabbi \u2014 a millionaire.<\/p>\n
Asked if he credits Buffett with his financial success, he didn\u2019t hesitate.<\/p>\n
\u201cEntirely, yes,\u201d he said. \u201cI never had much of an income.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sun newspaper group was not Buffett\u2019s only early purchase of a Jewish-owned company. In 1983, sealing the deal with a handshake, Buffett bought 90 percent of the Nebraska Furniture Mart from Rose Blumkin, a Russian-born Jew who moved to the United States in 1917.<\/p>\n
In 1989, he purchased a majority of the stock in Borsheim\u2019s Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a phenomenally successful jewelry store, from the Friedman family.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has many friends in the Jewish community,\u201d said Forrest Krutter, secretary of Berkshire Hathaway and a former president of the Jewish Federation of Omaha.<\/p>\n
Buffett\u2019s former son-in-law, Allen Greenberg, is a Jew, and now runs the Buffett Foundation, much of whose work has dealt with reproductive rights and family-planning issues. Buffett\u2019s personal assistant is Ian Jacobs, who goes by his Hebrew name, Shami.<\/p>\n
Buffett himself counts the late Nebraska businessman Howard \u201cMicky\u201d Newman and philanthropist Jack Skirball as among his \u201cvery closest friends.\u201d<\/p>\n
Further, Buffett said his \u201chero and the man who made me an investment success\u201d was Ben Graham. Graham, along with Newman\u2019s father, Jerry, ran a New York fund called Graham-Newman Corp.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter besieging Ben for the three years after I received my degree from Columbia, Ben and Jerry finally hired me,\u201d Buffett said. \u201cI was the first gentile ever employed by the firm \u2014 including secretaries \u2014 in its 18 years of existence. My first son bears the middle name Graham after Ben.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Warren Buffett is not a Jew; in fact, he describes himself as an agnostic. Still, the billionaire investment guru, who made big news in May when his Berkshire Hathaway corporation bought an 80 percent share in the Israeli metalworks conglomerate, Iscar, for $4 billion, for years has been making his mark on the U.S. Jewish […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":623,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621\/revisions\/623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}