Ron Perelman’s Rent-a-Minyan
It’s everywhere you want to be
Perelman in 2008.
Brad Barket/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
Billionaire financier Ronald Perelman gives new meaning to the word “entourage”: reportedly, whenever he travels—usually to East Hampton or the French Riviera; Ibiza is so 2004, y’know?—he always packs nine Jewish men. Yes, they travel with him so that he is never without a minyan. (For some Jews, apparently including Perelman, Jewish women such as Perelman’s ex-wife, the actress Ellen Barkin, don’t count.)
Not only that: Perelman—who is thought to be a major Chabad funder—has built a tiny synagogue adjacent to his East 62nd Street townhouse. It is one-room and one-member; on Friday nights, he puts nine Hasidic men from Crown Heights up at a nearby hotel so that he can fulfill the Jewish law requiring that prayers be conducted with at least ten Jewish men. Good to see him get into the spirit of the thing.
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