Every age has its narrative myth about those who acquire great wealth.
In the 21st century, the prevailing story is that of the nerd who parlays technological genius into billions. The Big Tech oligarchs who make their way on to the Forbes billionaires list are envied and feared. But their cool lifestyles, liberal politics, and donations to fashionable and politically correct charities generally protect them from the worst abuse that pop culture can inflict on the famous. The nerd billionaires may sometimes be mocked, but the chattering classes still laud them for funding the causes they support.
That was not the case with Sheldon Adelson. The casino magnate who died this past week at the age of 87 was a throwback to the Horatio Alger rags-to-riches tales of the 19th century.
The son of a Jewish cab driver in Boston, Adelson grew up sleeping on the floor of a two-room tenement apartment and was the model of an old-style serial entrepreneur. He sold newspapers as a boy, acquired vending machines as a teenager, and squeezed a living out of selling toiletries and windshield de-icers before eventually moving up to mortgages, condos, and chartered tours. By the time he was 40, he had become a millionaire, but he had also made and lost his fortune twice.
His big break came when, with four partners, he created the Las Vegas COMDEX computer trade show in 1979. It earned him a half-billion dollars when it was sold in the 1990s. But by then, he had already bought the Sands Hotel, the Vegas casino best known as the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack. He turned the Sands from merely a hotel and gambling den into a profitable convention center. While on his honeymoon in Venice with his second wife, the couple came up with the idea of transforming it into a Disneyland-style version of the Italian city. He spent $1.5 billion to create the Venetian, which opened in 1999, but it paid off and led to the building of even larger megaresorts and casinos in Macao and Singapore, which helped him build a fortune estimated to be $29.8 billion at the time of his death.
What set Adelson apart from other billionaires was not just the way his working-class background never wore off. Rather, it was the way he remained faithful to his Jewish heritage and his unabashed use of his wealth to bolster it.
Adelson and his wife, Miriam, an Israeli doctor who specialized in treating victims of addiction, donated vast sums to science and healthcare facilities. But he was best known for loving Israel and giving lavish support to politicians who backed the Jewish state.
Adelson poured much of his wealth into Jewish and Zionist educational and philanthropic efforts. His support of Birthright Israel enabled it to take hundreds of thousands of young American Jews on trips to Israel, where he had backed countless institutions. He also created a newspaper, Israel Hayom, which broke the Left’s monopoly over the Israeli media and boosted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though their friendship eventually soured.
Like others who gave money to conservative Republicans, Adelson was demonized by the Left. But what really frustrated Adelson’s critics was his single-minded willingness to push for outcomes he wanted, even when other donors were more subtle about their wishes. Adelson donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Republican candidates. But by deciding to back President Trump at a time when most GOP donors were staying away from him, Adelson gained the sort of influence that helped create the most pro-Israel administration ever. Trump’s move of the United States Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as well as other policy shifts, happened for a number of reasons. But it was also due in no small measure to Adelson’s blunt insistence on pushing for desired policy changes.
Some on the Forbes list may laugh at the story about Adelson wearing his father’s shoes on his first trip to Israel so as to fulfill a poor man’s unfulfilled dream. But while the cooler billionaires will leave their mark on the world, Adelson created a unique place for himself in history as one of his people’s great benefactors.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS.org and a columnist for the New York Post. Follow him on Twitter: @jonathans_tobin.
