Who's handling our money?
Shari Arison hears voices and Nochi Dankner consults rabbis. So why is it she's considered wacky while he's simply eccentric? And why do we allow them to wield such influence?
Different is as different does/ Gideon Eshet
Take three business people: Bank Hapolaim's Shari Arison, Nochi Dankner, chairman and CEO of IDB Holdings and fallen NASDAQ Chairman Bernard Madoff.
Madoff did not consult the heavens, but he did steal so many billions of dollars the US authorities have yet to come up with an exact figure. Arison hears voices from beyond and Dankner consults with the esteemed Rabbi Yaakov "the X-Ray" Ifargan. You have a dollar. Who would you invest it with?
Business and finance buffs – well, the rational ones anyway – would say Madoff; or at least they used to, before he was indicted for defrauding thousands of investors. Dankner's meeting with the X-Ray are considered no more than an anecdote, since none of us really believes he listens to him; and Arison probably doesn’t take the voices too seriously, since they forgot to tell her about her bank's ill investments in the US.
Africa Israel's Lev Leviev owns movie theaters. He has them close down on Shabbat. And so, Arison has visions and Leviev follows a book he once read. Are they really that different? Of course they are. Arison is a woman and as such she does not enjoy the same liberties.
Anyone following a book written by someone who had visions and heard voices 5,000 years ago, is considered a respectable member of the community; but a woman who publicly admitted that voices warned her about a tsunami should be committed. And if not committed, than we should at least revoke her license to own a bank.
But is there a difference? The truth is that all of them – those how follow rabbis, or the Halacha or the voices in their heads – are unfit to run an influential business. The problem is that the only skill the market looks for in people who run a business is that of making money.
Intelligence is not a prerequisite to managing a portfolio, controlling a bank or reigning over a slew of corporate holdings, and only students, would-be military officers and as of recently – judges, have to take aptitude tests. You don’t take one when you're a millionaire.
The (unavoidable) review/ Ariana Melamed
Shari Arison foresaw 1990's Gulf War and the rocket fire on Sderot; the tsunami that devastated Asia in 2004, the hurricane that decimated New Orleans in 2005 and no doubt, several other things we cannot get into.
She did nothing to prevent the events. Her book provides no explanation as to why. Then again, she doesn’t have to. She has $2.7 billion dollars. She owes no explanation.
One can get through Arison's "Birth" and its commodious 140 pages in about 90 minutes, all while feeling your brow lift higher and higher – perhaps towards a better future.
The problem is – we already have one. It is pristinely designed; it has its own rules, devoid of any rationale, and it is utterly delightful. It's called the Teletubbies. The delight, unfortunately, does not translate to the book.
"Birth" is an odd one. It demonstrates to a T the sociological theses of how the rich use capitalism to get ahead, through personal suffering. Arison – who deplores conventional psychology, but is captive by your classic Freudian narrative, tells the story of a little sensitive princess, who grows up misunderstood by the grownups around her, stepmother included.
On her way to enlightenment, she met many bad people who did nothing but get in the way, but she's fine, thank you for asking.
Arison equates herself to "a scientist who dedicates his life to finding cures for diseases or to discovering new constellations," and details her vision for everything from banks and new restaurants to philanthropic organizations and mankind. And she never wonders, not once, whether mankind cares what she thinks.
New Age aficionados are sure to delight in "Birth," since its few pages offer cliché the alternative discourse ever sprung.
Arison is a great philanthropist, but "giving" as she depicts it ranges somewhere between megalomania, a need to translate the meaning of life to laymen's terms and references to various mambo-jumbo preachers of her nearest and dearest.
But why wonder about it? Arison receives messages. And in a biblical language, no less – although God knows how she knows it’s a biblical language. Messages, unlike the documents of the rationale world, are not to be judged. The most we can do is ridicule them, but that's just tiresome.
