World
The Buffett Connection
Long before
Israeli deal,
Warren
Buffett
made his
mark on
Jewish
community.
Warren
Buffett
Chanan Tigay
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
New York
W
arren Buffett is not
a Jew, and in fact
describes himself as
an agnostic. Still, the billionaire
investment guru, who earlier this
month made big news when his
Berkshire Hathaway corporation
bought an 80 percent share in
Israeli metalworks conglomer-
ate Iscar for $4 billion, for years
has been making his mark on
the U.S. Jewish community back
home — though sometimes in a
roundabout way.
"Proportionally, if you look
at the number of Jews in this
country and in the world, I'm
associated with a hugely dispro-
portionate number," said Buffett,
the second richest man in the
world. His life "has been blessed
by friendship with many Jews.".
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's Jewish
newspaper. "At the time, the
Omaha Club did not take Jewish
members, and the Highland
Country Club, a golf club, didn't
have any gentile members,"
Lipsey recalls. "Warren volun-
teered to join the Highland"
— rather than the gentile club
— "to set an example of non-dis-
crimination."
Buffett happily recalls the
fallout from his application."It .
created this big rhubarb," he says.
"All of the rabbis appeared on my
behalf, the ADL guy appeared on
my behalf. Finally they voted to
let me in."
But that wasn't the end of the
story. The Highland had a rule
requiring members to donate a
certain amount of money to their
synagogues. Buffett, of course,
wasn't a synagogue member,
so the club changed its policy:
Members now would be expected
to give to their synagogues or
churches. But that still didn't
quite work, Buffett recalls with
a laugh, because of his agnosti-
cism.
In the end, the rule was .
amended to simply ask that
members make some sort of
charitable donation, and the path
to Buffet's membership was clear.
"He's an incredible guy," says
Lipsey, today the publisher of
the Buffalo News. In 1973, the
Sun won a Pulitzer prize for local
investigative specialized report-
ing for an expose on financial
impropriety at .Boys Town, Neb.
"Warren came up with the key
source for us knowing what was
going on out there," Lipsey says.
Buffett himself researched Boys
-Town's stocks to bolster the story,
Lipsey adds.
In the 1960s, Omaha Rabbi
Myer Kripke decided to invest in
his friend Buffett's new business
venture. Their wives had become
friendly, he says, and the four-
some enjoyed playing an occa-
sional game of bridge. "My wife
had no card sense and I was cer-
tainly no competition to Warren,
who is a very good bridge player
and a lover of the game," said
Rabbi Kripke, rabbi emeritus of
Omaha's Conservative Beth El
Synagogue. "He's very bright and
very personable and very decent.
He is a rich man who is as clean
as can be."
Rabbi Kripke, father of philos-
opher Saul Kripke, bought a few
shares in Berkshire Hathaway
and quickly sold them, doubling
his money, he says. Recognizing
a good thing when he saw it, he
bought a bunch more shares in
his friend's company, shares that
by the 1990s had made Rabbi
Kripke — who says he never
earned more than $30,000 a year
as a rabbi — a millionaire.
The Israeli government stands
to reap about $1 billion in taxes
on Buffett's purchase of Iscar.
Shortly after announcing the
deal, Buffett was surprised to
learn that a Berkshire subsid-
iary, CTB International, was
purchasing a controlling inter-
est in another Israeli company,
AgroLogic.
In Israel — which Buffett
plans to visit in the fall — the
hope is that the deals will con-
tinue: Buffett has not ruled out
future purchases and, consider-
ing his status, observers say oth-
ers may look at Israeli companies
now that Buffett has done so.
"You won't find in the world a
better-run operation than Iscar,"
Buffett says. "I don't think it's an
accident that it's run by Israelis."
The Sun newspaper group was
not Buffett's 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.
In 1989, he purchased a major-
ity of the stock in Borsheim's
Fine Jewelry and Gifts, a phe-
nomenally successful jewelry
store, from the Friedman family.
"He has many friends in the
Jewish community," says Forrest
Krutter, secretary of Berkshire
Hathaway and a former presi-
dent of the Jewish Federation
of Omaha. Buffett's former
son-in-law, Allen Greenberg, is
a Jew, and now runs the Buffett
Foundation, much of whose
work has dealt with reproduc-
tive rights and family-planning
issues. Buffett's personal assistant
is Ian Jacobs, who goes by his
Hebrew name, Shami.
Buffett counts the late
Nebraska businessman Howard
"Micky" Newman and philan-
thropist Jack Skirball as among
his "very closest friends!' Further,
Buffett says his "hero and the
man who made me an invest-
ment success" was Ben Graham.
Graham, along with Newman's
father, Jerry, ran a New York fund
called Graham-Newman Corp.
"After besieging Ben for the
three years after I-received my
degree from Columbia, Ben and
Jerry finally hi-red me," Buffett
says. "I was the first gentile ever
employed by the firm — includ-
ing secretaries — in its 18 years
of existence. My first son bears
the middle name Graham." ❑
Answering
Israel's
Critics
The Charge:
Israel has approved the des-
ecration of a Muslim cemetery
in Jerusalem, allowing the
Simon Wiesenthal Center to
build a museum on top of it.
The Answer:
Previous rulings by Muslim
authorities have allowed build-
ing on the site. Declaring the
location a Muslim holy site
now would only serve to give
a political advantage to those
authorities: The Wiesenthal
center has agreed to move or
protect by fencing any graves
found during construction.
— Allan Gale,
Jewish Community Council
of Metropolitan Detroit
May 25 2006
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