Kushner: Crimes, Misdemeanors and Philanthropy

[I first published this blog post on 12/06/2006.]

“Behind every great fortune is a great crime,” my friend Charlie used to assure me on the golf course as we discussed the meaning of life. He exaggerated to make his point that it is commonly understood that people break laws in the pursuit of wealth. Lately we don’t have to look far to find proof.

When the wealthy donate the products of their ill-gotten gains to charities we face some meaty moral issues. Do yeshivas, synagogues and federations have the obligation to investigate the source of the munificence that donors offer? How far must they go to be sure that the money is clean and that the donor is not a crook? Are there circumstances when accepting money from a scoundrel is morally right?

In a recent local example Harold Kushner, a billionaire real estate developer and businessman in Essex County, made substantial donations to Jewish charities including Yeshiva University and a local yeshiva, subsequently named after him, the Kushner Academy. Now said individual has been arrested for allegedly paying prostitutes in an effort to suborn the perjury of witness that could testify that he made illegal contributions to political candidates.

This is not a “great crime” but the full story of Kushner’s fortune has not yet unraveled. We may derive some moral guidance in today’s scandal ridden times at what some people argued regarding earlier ill-gotten gains.

Back in the eighties New Yorker, Ivan Boesky made millions of dollars through the exploitation of illegal insider information. He did not earn his fortune honestly and through hard work. We know that he broke laws with impunity.

Are Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Jewish?

Mazal tov again - update: Jared and Ivanka had a baby girl 7/17/11. Enews reports on the video below.

//orig. post 7/17/09//
Yes, Jared Kushner is a Jew and Ivanka Trump, not born a Jew, says that she is going to convert so she can marry Jared.

UPDATE 10/27/09: The Times reports they got married 10/25/2009: "Ivanka M. Trump, the daughter of Ivana M. Trump of Palm Beach, Fla., and Donald J. Trump of New York, is to be married Sunday to Jared Kushner, a son of Seryl Kushner and Charles B. Kushner of Livingston, N.J. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein is to officiate at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J...."

The Star-Ledger reported their engagement in July - wishing them a "hearty mazel tov."



Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner engaged; a hearty mazel tov
by Vicki Hyman

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, both scions of real estate magnates (one a felon, but okay) and themselves moguls-in-the-making, are engaged to be married. Trump tweeted the good news, calling it "truly the happiest day of my life," and People confirmed the blessed match on Thursday.

Kushner is the publisher of the New York Observer and the son of powerful New Jersey developer Charles Kushner, who spent more than a year in prison for tax fraud, among other things. Trump, a former fashion model, is a vice-president in dad Donald Trump's company, and has appeared alongside him in "The Apprentice." She also has her own jewelry line. She recently told New York magazine that she and Kushner and both very ambitious: "That's what makes it so amazing to be in a relationship with someone who is supportive of that."

Kushner hails from an Orthodox Jewish family, and Trump says she plans on converting to Judaism.

Bloomberg: Why Rich People are Nasty Rotten SOBs

We've posted quite a bit recently about several ultra-wealthy personalities who by-and-large have been described as having rude, nasty personalities.

A writer over at Bloomberg has given this general coincidence of wealth and rudeness some thought and come to the conclusion that it is not an accident.

Want to Be Rich? It’s About Being Rude to People: Matthew Lynn
...If you want to make a lot of money, just try being rude to people.

Hold on, that doesn’t make sense, you may say. Surely the way to get on in life is to be as polite as possible. A soft cloud of charm can carry even the lamest executive all the way to the boardroom. Tell everyone you meet they are fantastic, listen to their ridiculous suggestions, buy them a drink as they launch into a tedious anecdote, and they will think you are great. The way to the top is to be courteous, you say.

No less an authority than Dale Carnegie in his self-help classic book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” makes the point emphatically. Rule No. 1 for making people like you: Become genuinely interested in them. Rule No. 2: Smile.

Rich and Rude

New research has turned that wisdom upside down. The richer people are, the ruder they are, according to Dacher Keltner, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Keltner and co-researcher Michael Kraus videotaped 100 undergraduate students who didn’t know each other, and studied their body language during one-minute gaps in conversation.

The results were clear: Students from a higher socio- economic background were more likely to be rude during the silence. They would doodle, fidget or start grooming themselves. Less-privileged students made far more effort to engage with the other person, making “I’m interested” signals such as laughing or raising eyebrows.

In short, the richer people were a lot ruder, while the poor were a lot more polite.

The psychologists viewed the results as basic animal behavior. The higher up the food chain you are, the fitter and stronger you are. The wealthier animals are signaling that they don’t need anyone. The poorer animals are ingratiating themselves because they need help.

No Reliance

“It is the experience of wealth that leads individuals to become disengaged,” Keltner says.

There is much truth to that. The richer you are, the less reliant you are on other people. It doesn’t matter much what others think of you, since you are unlikely to be asking them for a favor any time soon.

And yet while the rich may be rude because they are wealthy, it is just as likely to be the other way around. Just as plausibly, they are wealthy because they are rude.

Carnegie and other self-help writers have missed the point the last few decades. Getting ahead in life isn’t about making people like you. It is about getting them to serve your interests.

Success depends, more than anything, on an inner ruthlessness. As anyone who has spent much time with chief executives will know, they are mostly an unpleasant bunch.

They bully, cajole, threaten and fume. There are very few examples of them flattering or charming their way to the top. They are more likely to be shouting and raging at people, demanding the impossible, and casting old friends and colleagues aside the moment they become an inconvenience. The accumulation of wealth requires an ability to crush rivals, stamp on employees, and sweep aside all opposition. Charm doesn’t come into it.

As your bank or hedge fund slides toward insolvency, just carry on barking at your secretary, snubbing waitresses, and blanking old friends who nod at you in the elevator. Everyone will assume you are still loaded -- and will hold off pulling the plug on you for a few more days at least.

The Travis Bickle Award goes to Professor Alvin Rosenfeld

In recognition of his strange rhetoric and bizarre opinions we are giving a Travis Bickle Award to Professor Alvin Rosenfeld.

The occasional award is given to the person who best personifies the Travis Bickle character in the movie Taxi Driver.

In the movie Taxi Driver the plain-man-hero Travis Bickel laments the filth and pornography that he sees all around him. His real desire is to confront a powerful patrician politician whom, he believes, is responsible for that decay.

The real Bickel is not heroic enough to go after the big gangster, though he certainly prepares and trains to do so. Instead he ends up killing a small time bad-guy - an ordinary lowlife like Bickel himself - and therby saves two girls from suffering.

The newspapers and parents praise Bickel as a hero.

This story encapsulates the Travis Bickel Complex. You prepare all your life for a confrontation with a powerful and alien evil foe. But in the end you take on a small time enemy who is just like you. And you come out acclaimed as a hero.

In the case of Rosenfeld, the professor trained and prepared to take on a powerful outside foe -- worldwide antiSemitism and the Holocaust. But then, instead of pursuing the real enemy, the professor now has turned to go after a smaller, more familiar enemy -- in this case a handful of progressive Jewish intellectuals.

Should we acclaim him a hero? I don't know. But I do know that he merits this latest Travis Bickle Award.

Links to the professor's essay and the NY Times story:

Essay Linking Liberal Jews and Anti-Semitism Sparks a Furor
By PATRICIA COHEN

The American Jewish Committee, an ardent defender of Israel, is known for speaking out against anti-Semitism, but this conservative advocacy group has recently stirred up a bitter and emotional debate with a new target: liberal Jews.

An essay the committee features on its Web site, ajc.org, titled “ ‘Progressive’ Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism,” says a number of Jews, through their speaking and writing, are feeding a rise in virulent anti-Semitism by questioning whether Israel should even exist.

In an introduction to the essay, David A. Harris, the executive director of the committee, writes, “Perhaps the most surprising — and distressing — feature of this new trend is the very public participation of some Jews in the verbal onslaught against Zionism and the Jewish State.” Those who oppose Israel’s basic right to exist, he continues, “whether Jew or gentile, must be confronted.”

The essay comes at a time of high anxiety among many Jews, who are seeing not only a surge in attacks from familiar antagonists, but also gloves-off condemnations of Israel from onetime allies and respected figures, like former President Jimmy Carter, who titled his new book on the Mideast “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid.” By spotlighting the touchy issue of whether Jews are contributing to anti-Semitism, both admirers and detractors of the essay agree that it aggravates an already heated dispute over where legitimate criticism of Israel and its defenders ends and anti-Semitic statements begin.

The essay, written by Alvin H. Rosenfeld, an English professor and the director of the Institute for Jewish Culture and the Arts at Indiana University in Bloomington, castigates a number of people by name, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tony Kushner, the historian Tony Judt, the poet Adrienne Rich and the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, in addition to a number of academics....

Jew-of-the-Week Award Goes to Charles Kushner

This week's Jew of the Week award goes to real estate tycoon and convicted felon Charles Kusher of New Jersey. Amy Klein reports in the Bergen Record that he has bargained down his two year sentence agreement for tax fraud by taking 500 hours of treatment for an imaginary drug problem.

He will now be going from Alabama Federal prison to a halfway house in Newark where, we presume, he will resume running his business empire. And... instead of serving in prison until December or January as originally agreed, Charles effectively is out.

Update: The AP reports 4/2 via the Bergen Record that Mr K already arrived in Newark by Limousine and will be going home for Shabbos:

NEWARK -- Real estate magnate Charles Kushner, who was convicted of campaign violations, tax violations and retaliating against a witness -- his sister -- has been transferred to a Newark halfway house and may begin working soon.

Kushner arrived Friday at the Newark halfway house where he will spend five months, pulling up in a blue Cadillac De-Ville, The Star-Ledger reported Saturday.

The millionaire developer started serving a two-year prison sentence less than a year ago, after being convicted of making illegal campaign contributions, cheating on his taxes and trying to retaliate against his sister after she helped authorities make their case against him.

By completing a 500-hour drug and alcohol treatment program while he was at the Federal Prison Camp in Alabama, Kushner was able to cut at least four months from his prison term and qualified for a transfer to the halfway house.

Prosecutors were outraged at the early release and tried to keep Kushner at the Alabama prison while they investigated whether he or others had lied to get him into the treatment program.

While at the halfway house, Kushner must work, and he is expected back at his Florham Park real estate management company as early as next week.

As long as Kushner goes to work and meets other requirements, he is allowed to request furloughs to spend weekends at home. If he exhibits good behavior, he could be fully freed from federal custody by August.

Well done Charles! You truly deserve the prestigious tzvee.blog Jew-of-the-Week Award.