Issue N°1
April 2015 MEDIA - REVIEW - DIGITAL - CAREERS - EVENTS
NEWS
LETTERS FOR RAPFOGEL High Profile New Yorkers Defend Former Met Council Head To AG By WAY NE BARRETT
William Rapfogel speaking at the Met Council's Builders Luncheon in 2011.
W
illiam Rapfogel, the city’s legendary giant of the Jewish nonprofit world and good friend of indicted ex-Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is in prison for looting $9 million from the organization he ran for two decades, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. A reverse Robin Hood for poor Jews, the 59-year-old Rapfogel, who pocketed $3 million and was caught with $420,000 in cash, appeared unlikely to prompt much support when he pleaded guilty last year. Exploiting a mine lode of public subsidies funneled mostly through Silver, Rapfogel admitted to financing what court papers called “a lavish lifestyle” by taking up to $30,000 a month from an insurance company his organization delibLETTER EXCERPT
JULIUS BERMAN Chair of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany “We could always rely on Willie’s fertile mind – whether it be in the communal affairs arena or that of poverty – to come up with new, innovative ideas and programs that would advance the cause to which he and the organization was devoted.”
16
erately overpaid. Every dollar consumed by this scam was a dollar less for services to the poor. Nonetheless, 70 Rapfogel backers, including 19 rabbis, several politicians, and some of the city and country’s most prominent leaders of Jewish organizations, petitioned Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to go easy on Rapfogel, who The New York Times said was frequently called the “prince of the Jews.” The letters—sent shortly before his April guilty plea—were obtained by City & State (C&S) under the Freedom of Information Act. They are a triumph of congeniality over conscience, with the call of the club taking precedence over the betrayal of the mission. The Jewish poor are invisible in this correspondence. Asked if the letters had any effect on the A.G. or the court’s handling of the case, a Schneiderman spokeswoman, Elizabeth DeBold, emailed C&S that they “had no impact” partly because “it was clear from the substance of the letters” that Rapfogel had “concealed the full extent of his misconduct from the letter writers.” In fact, the letters were written six months after Rapfogel’s arrest, a period clogged with one juicy news story after another detailing his misconduct. It’s hard to imagine the letter-writers didn’t see them. Schneiderman took five weeks to provide slightly redacted copies of the petitions, which were submitted by Rapfogel’s attorneys. Schneiderman’s office said it had no records related to a fund created by Rapfogel that raised much of the $3 million he was required to pay in restitution, a part of his plea deal with Schneiderman. No explanation of what happened to the $3 million he stole was ever made public. Since Rapfogel was not required to name the beneficiaries whose generosity to this fund allowed him to minimize his personal financial accountability, it’s impossible to tell if the
letter-writers also donated. The letters credited Rapfogel for acts of kindness that he was paid $410,000 a year to do at Met Council, and for his devotion to his kids, one of whom got $350,000 of Rapfogel’s criminal booty to buy a house. Many of the letters praised Rapfogel’s “integrity,” paying only passing reference to his crimes. Even if the letters had no impact on the handling of the case, they offer a window into a circle of wink-andnod philanthropic connections starkly similar to the political culture long occupied by Rapfogel and his wife Judy, who has been Silver’s chief of staff since he arrived in the assembly in 1977. Three of the letters were written by men who have made the Jewish Daily Forward’s list of the 50 most powerful Jews in America in recent years—Julius Berman, the chair of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of the Orthodox Union’s Kosher Division, and Shmuel Lefkowitz, the chief lobbyist for Agudath Israel of America. Lefkowitz, who personally appealed to Schneiderman on the basis of their own long-term relationship, explained Rapfogel’s misdeeds by writing: “We are all only human.” Genack, the most influential certifier of kosher food in the country, has a track record of questionable ethic endorsements. Years after a massive 2008 federal raid on the largest supplier of kosher meats led to prosecutions of plant supervisors and illegal immigrant workers, Genack did an op-ed that blasted the 27year jail term for the CEO and co-owner of the plant, Sholom Rubashkin, a member of a prominent Orthodox family. Genack said the fraud case “sullied our justice system” and was “grossly overzealous.” Earlier, he’d called the Kubashkins “good people,” despite the evidence of their use of hundreds of illegal workers, including many children allegedly exposed to chemical dangers at the plant. Other national notables on the letter list include: • Howard Friedman, the first Orthodox president of AIPAC; • Richard Stone, ex-chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; • Malcolm Hoenlein, the Conference of President’s longtime executive director; Grand Rebbe Moishe Rabinowich, leader of the Munkatsh sect; • Ruth Lichtenstein, publisher of the Orthodox newspaper Hamodia; • Raphael Butler, former president of the Orthodox Union; • Steven Weil, current top executive of the Union. Rapfogel “used his contacts in the political, communal and business communities for every cause that arose,” wrote Hoenlein, including, apparently his own. Letter writers well known in New York
were: • Joseph Potasnik, president of the Board of Rabbis; • Michael Miller, who runs the Jewish Community Relations Council; • David Niederman, executive director of the United Jewish Organization of Williamsburg and North Brooklyn; • Assemblyman Dov Hikind; • CUNY trustee Jeff Wiesenfeld;
LETTER EXCERPT
MICHAEL MILLER Executive Vice President, CEO, Jewish Community Relations Council “Willie’s character was such that his sincere desire to serve the needy overwhelmed everything else…He regularly quoted from the Torah about the imperative of serving those who were less fortunate…Mr. Attorney General, I beseech you to be compassionate as you determine Willie Rapfogel’s fate…I hope you have seen that his righteousness far overweighs his imperfections.”
• Former state Democratic Party executive director Chung Seto; • NYU city affairs expert Mitchell Moss. Hikind was acquitted of corruption charges in the late '90s, even though two leaders of a Borough Park charity were convicted of bribing him. Rapfogel swooped in at the time to help Hikind keep the charity’s services going. Lobbyists George Arzt, John LoCicero, Joni Yoswein and Yehiel Kalish also sent letters, as did former elected officials Harrison J. Goldin, Lew Fidler, and Herb Berman. Yoswein, a former assemblywoman, described her and Rapfogel’s joint meeting with a congressman whose views on Israel required massaging, citing Rapfogel’s successful persuasion as a rationale for early release. Ex-City Councilman Herb Berman, who died within months of writing the letter, was the recipient of a $4,500 contribution in 2001 from Rapfogel’s co-defendant, insurance executive Joseph Ross, funneled through Rapfogel, who was the bundler. The donation to Berman was part of $120,000 in Ross/Rapfogel engineered contributions that became part of the Schneiderman NYNmedia.com