A recent profile of billionaire investor and philanthropist David Sanford “Sandy” Gottesman noted a rather remarkable fact: The Gottesman family has been a generous contributor to Jewish causes for nearly 150 years.
Led by his grandfather, Mendel, the Gottesman clan came to the United States, and attained success in newsprint and banking. Mendel subsequently created Central National Gottesman. One of the 100 largest private companies in America, CNG remains a major distributor of paper products and is currently headed by a family descendant, Kenneth L. Wallach.
One of the largest investors in Berkshire Hathaway, Sandy is the founder of the investment firm, First Manhattan. His maternal family, the Garfunkels, came to the United States before the Civil War. They sent money to Sir Moses Montefiore to support the purchase of land in Palestine for those making aliyah. Mendel left part of his fortune to build homes in Jerusalem, in addition to funds allocated to help establish Yeshiva University.
Neither the Wallachs nor the Gottesmans court publicity, and it’s rare that they consent to interviews. An occasion when Sandy Gottesman did agree to speak about his benefactions came in 2016, when he acknowledged to a Jerusalem Post reporter that he contributed $75 million to fund the new building of the Israel National Library. Already past his 90th birthday, he said that he hoped to live long enough to see it open in 2019 or 2020.
The Gottesman family has established more than 250 libraries in Israel and has provided more than half of the $100 million required to construct the Middle East’s largest aquarium, as part of the Biblical Zoo in Jerusalem.
Those contributions follow earlier donations of some of the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Shrine of the Book Museum, where they are housed.
A study of the Gottesman Foundation’s benefactions reveals aid to dozens of Jewish causes and organizations, including Birthright Israel and the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces. In total, the sums donated by the Gottesmans over the years run into the hundreds of millions.