MIRIAM ADELSON often tells a story from her childhood: Around 1950, when she was 4 or 5 years old and the state of Israel itself was one or two, she wanted to dress up for Purim as Queen Esther. Esther, the Tanakh tells us, was a beautiful Jewish woman who married gentile King Ahasuerus. She used her bravery, smarts, and station to thwart a plot to slaughter the Jews. But Miriam didn't get to be Esther. Her family, like most Israeli families at the time, had no money. Her mother dressed her up in her older brother's clothes instead. Miriam Adelson is now 78 and worth $30 billion. She is effectively a queen-the fifth-richest woman in America and the richest Israeli.
When she met her late husband, the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, in the late 1980s, she was a divorced addiction doctor who had left Tel Aviv for New York to pursue a research fellowship on methadone treatment. She had dedicated her life to lifting up the weak. But like almost all Israelis of her generation, the protection of the Jewish people, the security of the state of Israel, is her true calling. So after she married Sheldon in 1991, she leaned in. As Cicero put it, endless money forms the sinews of war.
Through the 1990s, Adelson learned her weapon. She switched from making modest donations to Democrats-common practice among Jewish Americans-to making large donations to Republicans, then unexpected and strange. In Israel, she and Sheldon backed Benjamin Netanyahu, a then-young right-wing zealot and Washington insider who rose to prominence by equating peace with surrender. The Netanyahu bet paid off. In 1996, he defeated sitting prime minister Shimon Peres. Two years earlier, Peres had won the Nobel Peace Prize, along with Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, for negotiating the first Oslo Accord.
この記事は New York magazine の May 20 - June 02, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です ? サインイン
この記事は New York magazine の May 20 - June 02, 2024 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
SLOP started seeping into Neil Clarke's life in late 2022. Something strange was happening at Clarkesworld, the magazine. Clarke had founded in 2006 and built into a pillar of the world of speculative fiction. Submissions were increasing rapidly, but “there was something off about them,” he told me recently. He summarized a typical example: “Usually, it begins with the phrase ‘In the year 2250-something’ and then it goes on to say the Earth’s environment is in collapse and there are only three scientists who can save us. Then it describes them in great detail, each one with its own paragraph. And then—they’ve solved it! You know, it skips a major plot element, and the final scene is a celebration out of the ending of Star Wars.” Clarke said he had received “dozens of this story in various incarnations.”
The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
Can the Media Survive?
BIG TECH, Feckless Owners, CORD-CUTTERS, RESTIVE STAFF, Smaller Audiences ... and the Return of PRINT?
Status Update
Hannah Gadsby's fascinatingly untidy tour through life after fame and death.
A Matter of Perspective
A Matter of Perspective Steve McQueen's worst film is still a solid WWII drama.
Creator, Destroyer
A retrospective reveals an architect's vision, optimism, and supreme arrogance.
In Praise of Bad Readers
In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
First, he nearly dropped out of Oscar hopeful A Real Pain. Then he convinced Jesse Eisenberg to change the way he directs.
The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
The Water-Tower Penthouse
Gigi Loizzo and Angel Molina's apartment on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx looks out on Yankee Stadium.
