Sheldon Adelson To Donate $200M Annually

Sheldon G. Adelson, a Boston native purported to be the world’s richest Jew, has made history by pledging to give $200 million annually to Jewish philanthropy. The foundation currently being established by Mr. Adelson, a casino and resort mogul, promises to change the face of Jewish philanthropy. The new entity will be a major boon to American and Israeli causes, with a pledge to dole out more than $200 million to Jewish causes annually—the largest-ever pledge by a Jewish foundation.

The creation of the foundation comes on the heels of the announcement in October 2007 by Adelson and his wife, Miriam, an Israeli physician, to give $25 million to Yad Vashem—the largest donation received by the Holocaust museum in Jerusalem by a single donor. The Adelsons, who live in Las Vegas, are also funding the construction of Las Vegas’s first Jewish high school—M.I.S. Hebrew Academy, scheduled to open in fall 2008.

Adelson recently contributed an additional $25,000,000 to the organization Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel. The gift is anticipated to be given annually for the foreseeable future. Mr. Adelson said, “The Birthright Israel program is more than just an idea whose time has come. The program’s success in creating and maintaining Jewish continuity and a commitment to Israel is unparalleled. I remember how moved I was by my first visit to Israel. Israel is the heart and soul of the Jewish people. We are privileged to be able to play a small role in helping tomorrow’s Jews create a connection to Judaism and Israel today. What happens to the Jews of the Diaspora depends upon the fate of the Jews in Israel.”

According to Taglit, in terms of sheer numbers, at a cost of $2,500 per person, the Adelsons’ gift of $60 million to date means that an additional 24,000 Jews between the ages of 18 and 26 will be able to visit Israel through Taglit-Birthright Israel. The extra capacity provided by the Adelson gift will help eliminate the long waiting lists that have resulted from the program’s overwhelming popularity, the organization said.

“I recently met Mr. Adelson and came away thinking that if only we had a dozen or so philanthropists on the scale of a Sheldon Adelson, who understand the importance of Jewish education and continuity, so much can be accomplished in that realm,” said Ezra Friedlander, CEO of Friedlander Group PR, a New York based public-relations company.

Adelson also founded Freedom’s Watch, a group that advocates America’s continued involvement in the war in Iraq, and is run and supported, in part, by former officials of the Bush administration. Adelson also has funded the Boston-based Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. This foundation initiated the Adelson Program in Neural Repair and Rehabilitation (APNRR) with $7.5 million donated to collaborating researchers at ten universities. Mr. Adelson has publicly pledged billions to medical research and has encouraged researchers to contact him with ideas that need to be funded.

“Keeping your word,” Adelson said, is of paramount importance in business. Another value-based commitment, he said, is to charity. He learned this value from his father who, though living in deprivation, kept a box on the family’s kitchen table where, said the father, “I am putting money for the poor people.”

“Listen, son, you have to do this,” Adelson quoted his father, “because there are always people who are poorer than you are.”

Adelson said he is honoring the lessons taught him in his youth by supporting a number of charitable organizations, none more important than free drug-rehabilitation clinics in this country and Israel that are run by his wife, Miriam.

Adelson, 73, the third-richest American and chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited, which operates the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center) is a billionaire who grew up in a poor immigrant family in Dorchester. His family immigrated to the United States from the Ukraine. The son of a Boston cabdriver, he borrowed $200 from his uncle to sell newspapers at age 12. In the 1980s, he made his first significant mark in the business world as the founder of the computer industry’s premier trade show, COMDEX. Adelson sold the company to a Japanese corporation for $862 million in 1995.

In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry. The following year, Mr. Adelson and his partners constructed the Sands Expo and Convention Center, the only privately owned and operated convention center in the United States. Today, his net worth stands at $20.5 billion, according to Forbes.

Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, said that Adelson’s landmark donation is a monumental step in Jewish philanthropy. “I certainly think that donations like his raise the bar,” he said. “This new foundation will really serve as a role model for other foundations as to how to appropriately put money to use to strengthen the Jewish community in America, in Israel, and around the world.”

In 2007, Adelson made an unsuccessful bid to buy a controlling interest in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. When this failed, he proceeded with parallel plans to publish a free daily newspaper to compete with Israeli, a newspaper he had co-founded in 2006 but had left. The first edition of the new newspaper, Israel HaYom, was published on July 30, 2007.




By 5TJT Staff - Published on 21/02/2008