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.
Denne historien er fra May 20 - June 02, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra May 20 - June 02, 2024-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
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Can the Media Survive?
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In a time of war, there is a danger in surveying the world as if it were a novel.
Trust the Kieran Culkin Process
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The Funniest Vampires on TV
What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
