5 minute read
Sheldon Adelson: From Boston to Biliionaire
Sheldon Adelson From Boston to Bill ionaire
BY SUSAN SCHWAMM
perhaps not an exagger-It’s ation to say that Sheldon Adelson, who passed away this week at the age of 87, had helped to stem the tide of intermarriage in the Jewish world.
Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were the primary backers of Birthright trips to Israel. For many Jewish non-affiliated teens, the free trip to Israel was their only connection to the Holy Land and its people. For many, it awakened in them a desire to connect back to their roots – or at least, not to throw away their esteemed heritage.
FROM CABS TO CASINOS
Adelson started out from humble beginnings. His father, Arthur, drove a cab in Dorchester, Massachusetts; his mother worked in a knitting store. Sheldon became an entrepreneur at a young age when he borrowed money from his uncle to obtain a license to sell newspapers in Boston. He was 12 years old.
Since that endeavor, for 75 years, Adelson made his name in business, using his keen eye to turn what some saw as dust into gold. His gilded hands lit up Las Vegas and Asian cosmopolitan cities with his casinos, and he turned business conventions into a rewarding, profitable industry.
“If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,” Adelson said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas.
Adelson never graduated college, dropping out of City College of New York before graduation and serving in the Army. After a series of starting small businesses, Adelson hit his stride in the ‘80s with a technology trade show, starting computer convention COMDEX in 1979 before selling his stake in 1995 for more than $800 million.
At 55, Adelson started in the casino business. He was the first to build a convention hall in his Sands casino in 1989 – a move that other owners replicated – when he purchased it for $128 million. The convention
hall would keep rooms full during the week, filling the casino’s coffers with patrons and roulette players Monday through Thursday.
Adelson expanded his enterprise into Asia, bringing casino gambling to Macao, the only place in China where casino gambling is legal. A lack of land didn’t present a problem to the entrepreneur. He built land there by piling up sand to create the Cotai Peninsula. Rapidly, Adelson’s Macao’s casino revenue outstripped profits from his Las Vegas holdings.
His success in Macao led him to expand to Singapore, where his Marina Bay Sands hotel and its infinity pool became a signature of the skyline.
GOING POLITICAL
It wasn’t just slot machines and roulette where Adelson made his mark. Adelson poured money into politics as well, donating with record-breaking funds to politicians and parties he aligned with. As such, Adelson had a number of domestic and international leaders who listened to his advocacy. President Trump, in particular, was the recipient of sums of Adelson’s money. Adelson donated $25 million for Trump’s benefit in 2016 and another $75 million in 2020. In fact, Sheldon and his wife, Miriam, sat front and center at Trump’s inauguration four years ago.
In 2018, President Trump honored Miriam Adelson with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
“To protect the sacred heritage of the Jewish faith, Miriam and Shel-
Adelson bought his first casino at the age of 55 Sheldon and Miriam with Amb. David Friedman
Sheldon and his wife Miriam at the Trump inauguration
Prime Minister Netanyahu with Sheldon and Miriam
don have supported Jewish schools, Holocaust memorial organizations, and helped Jewish Americans visit the Holy Land,” Trump said during a reception in the White House’s East Room.
“The world has lost a great man,” President Trump said after Sheldon’s passing. “Sheldon lived the true American dream. His ingenuity, genius, and creativity earned him immense wealth, but his character and philanthropic generosity gave him his great name.”
ISRAEL IN MY HEART
Although Trump had many advocates for Israel on his team, Adelson was extremely influential in pushing for the Jewish State.
In 2017, Adelson asserted, “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel.”
Sheldon and his wife, Miriam, poured at least $410 million into Birthright trips, bringing thousands of Jewish teens on trips to the Holy Land. Those trips brought youngsters to key places in Israel, cementing a love for the Land and instilling Jewish values at a seminal age.
The 19th-richest American used his $35 billion fortune to help shape policy when it came to Israel. It was in the ‘90s when Adelson began pouring his money into Israeli causes. He began underwriting congressional trips to Israel run by AIPAC.
When George W. Bush was president, Adelson tried to get President Bush to deter Condoleezza Rice from pursuing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Bush told Adelson that Sheldon and his wife shouldn’t worry about Rice’s negotiations, because “at the end of the day, it’s going to be my policy, not Condi’s.”
Adelson endeavored to influence President Obama into bombing Iran. Instead, Obama infamously signed the Iran nuclear deal with the rogue nation. But Trump, a few years later, walked back the deal, an action that Adelson thoroughly supported and
encouraged.
Adelson was a key advocate for moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. President Trump made the record-setting move in May 2018. A few months ago, in September 2020, Adelson bought the U.S. ambassador’s palatial residence in Herzliya for a record $67 million, ensuring that future administrations would have a hard time reversing Trump’s move.
Adelson’s influence also helped President Trump and his administration to recognize the legitimacy of settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. In January 2019, Trump reversed long-standing bipartisan U.S. policy that saw settlements as illegitimate obstacles to peace because they make a geographically viable Palestinian state impossible.
Adelson, with a heart of gold, lent Jonathan Pollard a private plane so Jonathan and his wife could fly freely to Israel after sitting 30 years in jail in the United States.
Adelson, with his Israeli-born wife, truly felt “libi ba’Mizrach.”
In a 2010 speech, Adelson, a U.S. Army veteran, lamented that “the uniform that I wore in the military, unfortunately, was not an Israeli uniform.” He added: “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel, because even though I am not Israeli-born, Israel is in my heart.”
On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Adelson “will forever be remembered” for his work strengthening ties between the U.S. and Israel.
