Home > It was a hot and humid night
By Haim Handwerker
On a hot and humid Manhattan summer night, some 70 businessmen were on the balcony of developer Ofer Yardeni’s large penthouse in the Ritz Plaza building for a most unusual encounter.
The guest was Rabbi Yoshiyahu Pinto of Ashdod. Yardeni invited prominent Jewish American businessmen active in real estate, most not religious, to hear a Torah lesson and receive a blessing from the rabbi. The event, which started at 7:30 P.M. - the rabbi himself only came at 9 - ended at 1 A.M. After the rabbi finished his lecture, a line of 20 guests stretched out in front of his room; the New York real estate executives and financial barons had come to consult with the rabbi and receive a blessing.
The real estate people asked to consult the rabbi on personal as well as professional matters. New York property prices have skyrocketed, and many of the businessmen wondering whether the market would continue to soar came that night to receive the rabbi’s blessing and hear his counsel. Some of the executives worried that the market would crash while they were in the middle of a project, which could simply mean their financial ruin.
Pinto, who is very popular in Israel among politicians and other public figures, and who is also well known as an arbitrator among criminals, is seen as someone with almost magical powers. On that night, on the balcony of the Ritz Plaza penthouse, the rabbi was transformed into the object of admiration of several prominent players in the New York real estate market.
The rabbi is also said to be close to another real estate baron who has become a dominant player in New York - Yitzhak Tshuva. Pinto was the man who affixed the mezuzah on the doorpost of the Plaza Hotel.
Tshuva did not attend Yardeni’s event, nor did the cream of the cream - the members of the Zackendorf and Rose families. However, many of those in attendance were in the top two or three percent of the real estate industry - and that too is very high up indeed.
Yardeni, who manages real estate assets, mainly residential buildings, with a total value of some $1 billion, invited many of his real estate friends to the evening event. Among the guests were: Charles Dayan; Neil Weiss; Greg Weingast, who manages 80,000 housing units and who came in from Washington specifically for the occasion; Alan Fried, who is very active in New Jersey; Dov Shlein, a former manager at Republic Bank; and attorney Steve Levin, who represents Canadian financial institutions. Most of those who attended were not Hebrew speakers.
Yardeni was the one who convinced the executives to spend the evening with the rabbi. He told them that he has known Pinto for more than four years and that the rabbi was the person who had given him the strength to move ahead with his business dealings. Yardeni also donates money to help finance the rabbi’s activities.
In addition to the rabbi, Likud MK Uzi Landau, who is trying to expand his circle of contacts in the U.S., also appeared. Pinto complimented Landau, calling him an honest man, and expressed his wish that one day he would be the prime minister of Israel. However, the audience was less interested in Israeli politics; Landau realized this and acted wisely. Even though he was offered the opportunity to speak, he declined. "In my family, it is the custom that when a rabbi speaks, no one adds anything afterward," he said.
Pinto opened the evening with a Torah lesson, explaining the importance of keeping promises. If you made a vow, you must uphold it, he told the gathered guests, who were exclusively male, "otherwise your wife or even your children might die."
Another suggestion the rabbi made was to "be happy with what you have," and a third piece of advice was to remember that life is full of ups and downs, even in the difficult moments, and that one day things will turn around.
Most of the attendees did not understand the rabbi’s remarks and had to make do with Yardeni’s translation. It seemed this did not stop many of them from standing in line to consult with Pinto and ask for his blessing. The event ended after everyone who wanted to meet with the rabbi individually had done so.