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NY TImes, March 21, 2019
Michael Steinhardt, a Leader in Jewish Philanthropy, Is Accused of a
Pattern of Sexual Harassment
By Sharon Otterman and Hannah Dreyfus
Sheila Katz was a young executive at Hillel International, the Jewish
college outreach organization, when she was sent to visit the
philanthropist Michael H. Steinhardt, a New York billionaire. He had
once been a major donor, and her goal was to persuade him to increase
his support. But in their first encounter, he asked her repeatedly if
she wanted to have sex with him, she said.
Deborah Mohile Goldberg worked for Birthright Israel, a nonprofit
co-founded by Mr. Steinhardt, when he asked her if she and a female
colleague would like to join him in a threesome, she said.
Natalie Goldfein, who was an officer at a small nonprofit that Mr.
Steinhardt had helped establish, said he suggested in a meeting that
they have babies together.
Mr. Steinhardt, 78, a retired hedge fund founder, is among an elite
cadre of donors who bankroll some of the country’s most prestigious
Jewish nonprofits. His foundations have given at least $127 million to
charitable causes since 2003, public filings show.
But for more than two decades, that generosity has come at a price. Six
women said in interviews with The New York Times and ProPublica, and one
said in a lawsuit, that Mr. Steinhardt asked them to have sex with him,
or made sexual requests of them, while they were relying on or seeking
his support. He also regularly made comments to women about their bodies
and their fertility, according to the seven women and 16 other people
who said they were present when Mr. Steinhardt made such comments.
“Institutions in the Jewish world have long known about his behavior,
and they have looked the other way,” said Ms. Katz, 35, a vice president
at Hillel International. “No one was surprised when I shared that this
happened.”
Mr. Steinhardt declined to be interviewed for this article. In a
statement, he said he regretted that he had made comments in
professional settings through the years “that were boorish,
disrespectful, and just plain dumb.” Those comments, he said, were
always meant humorously.
“In my nearly 80 years on earth, I have never tried to touch any woman
or man inappropriately,” Mr. Steinhardt said in his statement.
Provocative comments, he said, “were part of my schtick since before I
had a penny to my name, and I unequivocally meant them in jest. I fully
understand why they were inappropriate. I am sorry.”
But through a spokesman, Mr. Steinhardt denied many of the specific
actions or words attributed to him by the seven women.
A lifelong New Yorker, Mr. Steinhardt has given millions to city
institutions. N.Y.U. Steinhardt is New York University’s largest
graduate school, with programs in education, communication and health.
There is a Steinhardt conservatory at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and a
Steinhardt gallery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But he wields his widest influence in the tight-knit world of Jewish
philanthropy.
Along with Charles Bronfman, a billionaire heir to the Seagram liquor
fortune, Mr. Steinhardt founded Birthright Israel, which has sent more
than 600,000 young Jews on free trips to Israel. He spearheaded the
creation of a network of Hebrew charter schools. A new natural history
museum in Tel Aviv bears his name.
While Mr. Steinhardt has been celebrated for his largess, interviews
with dozens of people depict a man whose behavior went largely unchecked
for years because of his status and wealth.
None of the women interviewed by The Times and ProPublica said Mr.
Steinhardt touched them inappropriately, but they said they felt
pressured to endure demeaning sexual comments and requests out of fear
that complaining could damage their organizations or derail their
careers. Witnesses to the behavior said nothing or laughed along, women
said.
“He set a horrifying standard of what women who work in the Jewish
community were expected to endure,” said Rabbi Rachel Sabath
Beit-Halachmi, a Jewish scholar. She said Mr. Steinhardt suggested that
she become his concubine while he was funding her first rabbinical
position in the mid-1990s.
The spokesman, Davidson Goldin, said Mr. Steinhardt had never
“seriously, credibly” asked anyone for sex.
Rabbi Irving Greenberg, who was the president of the Steinhardt
Foundation for Jewish Life for a decade, said he repeatedly rebuked Mr.
Steinhardt for using belittling language toward both men and women. That
tension was a factor in his deciding to leave the job in 2007.
Mr. Steinhardt could be harsh with men, but his comments to women
focused on their appearance and fertility, Rabbi Greenberg said. When
Mr. Steinhardt talked to women, the rabbi said, “the implication was
that they were not on par with men.”
He said that the comments were made in a bantering, not threatening,
tone and that he never saw Mr. Steinhardt directly proposition anyone.
Still, he said, “I understand that the women felt more shaken or
threatened than I recognized at the time.”
Ms. Katz said she was hoping Mr. Steinhardt would become a funder of her
work at Hillel when she met with him in his Fifth Avenue office in 2015
to interview him for a video Hillel had commissioned about Jewish
entrepreneurs. But she said that as the filming got underway, he
repeatedly asked if she would have sex with the “king of Israel,” which
he had told her was his preferred title for the video. He then directly
asked her to have sex with him, she said.
When she turned him down, he brought in two male employees and offered a
million dollars if she were to marry one of them, she said. After the
filming ended, Mr. Steinhardt told her it was an “abomination” that a
woman who looked like her was not married and said he would not fund her
projects until she returned with a husband and child, said Ms. Katz, who
has not previously spoken publicly about the incident.
Through his spokesman, Mr. Goldin, Mr. Steinhardt denied most of the
details of Ms. Katz’s story and said he did not “proposition” anyone.
Mr. Goldin said Mr. Steinhardt was not aware that Ms. Katz was courting
him as a donor when they met.
Ms. Katz said she was shaken and reported the comments the next day to
Eric D. Fingerhut, the chief executive of Hillel. He apologized and
promised that she would not have to meet with Mr. Steinhardt again, she
said. Hillel confirmed generally that Ms. Katz reported the incident but
would not comment on specifics.
Hillel continued to accept donations from Mr. Steinhardt until last
year, when it hired a law firm to conduct an investigation, according to
a person familiar with the matter.
The investigation, which ended in January, concluded that Mr. Steinhardt
had sexually harassed Ms. Katz and another employee in a separate
incident. The findings, which were communicated to Hillel staff in an
internal memo that did not name Ms. Katz or Mr. Steinhardt, were first
reported in The New York Jewish Week, a community newspaper that has
reported on some allegations against Mr. Steinhardt.
Hillel declined to comment beyond the memo, which it provided to The
Times and ProPublica.
A brash boss, a big benefactor
Mr. Steinhardt, who grew up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was known for his
intelligence and a combative management style when he ran his hedge
fund, Steinhardt Partners, which he closed in 1995. In interviews, Mr.
Steinhardt’s supporters acknowledged he could sometimes be brash and
crude, especially when talking about a signature interest: the survival
of the Jewish people.
Some of Mr. Steinhardt’s most prominent philanthropic efforts are
centered on encouraging Jews to marry other Jews and strengthen their
ties to the community. He has said his efforts have been driven by the
losses of the Holocaust as well as by more contemporary concerns about
the effects of intermarriage and secularization.
Mr. Steinhardt, who is married with three adult children, is known to
goad single Jews into kissing, dating or marrying, and to insist that
Jewish women have children, sometimes offering money or the use of a
Caribbean home as an incentive, dozens of people said.
“Michael is very passionate, and he is passionate in everything,”
Abraham H. Foxman, a longtime friend of Mr. Steinhardt’s and the former
head of the Anti-Defamation League, said of Mr. Steinhardt’s
matchmaking. “Call it a passion, call it an obsession, call it a
perversion. Some may. I don’t — I understand it. It’s just the way it
comes out, which may disturb people.” He said he had never witnessed Mr.
Steinhardt asking women to have sex and would not expect it of him.
But the behavior described by the women in interviews went well beyond
matchmaking.
Ms. Goldberg, the director of communications for Birthright from 2001 to
2010, said she was used to Mr. Steinhardt being “inappropriate.” Still,
she was shocked when Mr. Steinhardt suggested that she and a co-worker
at a donor reception in Jerusalem join him in an intimate encounter.
Ms. Goldberg recalled Mr. Steinhardt asking for a threesome; her former
colleague, who asked not to be identified, recalled Mr. Steinhardt
inviting her and Ms. Goldberg to leave with him, but did not recall his
referring to a threesome.
“We were working Joes, pretty vulnerable, and here he is with all his
authority, coming over and propositioning us,” Ms. Goldberg, who is now
48, said.
Mr. Steinhardt’s spokesman called the account “simply not true.”
Two women who worked at a small Jewish nonprofit recalled Mr. Steinhardt
using similar language in 2008. They both said that during a meeting at
his office to make a pitch for funding, Mr. Steinhardt suggested that
they all take a bath together, in what he called a “ménage à trois.” One
of the women, the executive director of the organization, asked that her
identity be withheld because she feared that people on her board would
pull their donations if she spoke publicly.
Her former colleague asked that her identity be withheld to protect the
executive director.
Mr. Steinhardt did not recall this meeting, his spokesman said.
Ms. Goldberg said she believed her encounter took place in 2005. She
said that soon after, she shared the story with Shimshon Shoshani, who
was then Birthright’s chief executive. Mr. Shoshani, who later became
the director-general of Israel’s Education Ministry and is now retired,
said in an interview that he did not recall Ms. Goldberg’s allegations.
He said he had heard “rumors” that Mr. Steinhardt had made inappropriate
comments, but said he never heard Mr. Steinhardt make such comments.
He praised Mr. Steinhardt for his commitment to Birthright. “I
appreciate him very, very much. Even if there were some comments, about
sex, about women, I wouldn’t take it seriously,” Mr. Shoshani said,
“because he made important decisions in other areas concerning Birthright.”
‘Out of bounds’ behavior
While Hillel and Birthright are among the nation’s most well-known
Jewish nonprofits, Mr. Steinhardt also has given millions of dollars to
smaller organizations. Some women who worked at these places described
being particularly dependent on his favor.
Ms. Goldfein, now 58 and a Chicago-based consultant to nonprofits, said
Mr. Steinhardt repeatedly made inappropriate comments to her between
2000 and 2002, when she worked as the national program director of
Synagogue Transformation and Renewal, a nonprofit he co-founded in 1999
and to which he was giving about $250,000 a year, public filings showed.
Still, she was surprised when, during one meeting at his office to brief
him about the organization, he suggested that he could set her up in a
Park Avenue apartment and that they could have redheaded babies
together, Ms. Goldfein said.
She said she felt demeaned by his treatment but tried to make light of
the comments because Mr. Steinhardt was a director of her organization.
“I always felt that it was like a game to him and that I had to put up
with it and play along. But it wasn’t an equal playing field,” Ms.
Goldfein said. She said his behavior left her disillusioned with the job.
Mr. Steinhardt disputed her account. He denied “ever saying anything
that was intended to ask anyone to have sex with him,” Mr. Goldin said.
After requesting an interview with Mr. Steinhardt, The Times received
unsolicited praise for his warmth and generosity from former and current
employees and some prominent friends, including Mr. Bronfman; Martin
Peretz, the former owner of The New Republic; and Betsy Gotbaum, the
former New York City public advocate.
Some acknowledged his tendency to make bawdy or inappropriate comments,
but said Mr. Steinhardt was always speaking in jest.
“Michael has his unique sense of humour,” Mr. Bronfman wrote. “He loves
to tease males and females, and certainly his very good friends. I can
attest to that! Always has. But to conjure up intentions that he never
had or has is more than a disservice. It’s downright outrageous!”
Shifra Bronznick, a consultant to nonprofits, said she was criticized by
her colleagues in 2004 after publicly admonishing Mr. Steinhardt for
commenting on a woman’s fertility at a conference. She said she believed
that his comments were hurting women and their careers in a way that his
supporters may not have realized.
“When people say bad things about Jews, our community leaders are on red
alert about the dangers of anti-Semitism,” she said. “But when people
harass women verbally instead of physically, we are asked to accept that
this is the price we have to pay for the philanthropic resources to
support our work.”
Mr. Steinhardt’s behavior stretches back to at least the mid-1990s, said
Rabbi Sabath, who recalled visiting him in his office during the 1995-96
academic year as one of the first Steinhardt Fellows at a rabbinical
leadership institute.
She was 27 years old, and it was the first time she had met Mr.
Steinhardt. He harangued her about being unmarried and said she should
put her vagina and womb “to work,” Rabbi Sabath said. He then suggested
she become a “pilegesh,” an ancient Hebrew word for concubine, she said.
Taken aback, Rabbi Sabath said she tried to engage Mr. Steinhardt in a
discussion about the centuries-old practice of concubinage, which he
said should be reinstituted. When an associate of Mr. Steinhardt’s
walked into the office, Mr. Steinhardt told Rabbi Sabath she should
consider having sex with him, she said. Then Mr. Steinhardt proposed
that she should become his own concubine.
“I have never uttered the word pilegesh, and don’t even know how to
pronounce it,” Mr. Steinhardt said, through his spokesman. He also
denied saying that Rabbi Sabath should put her vagina and womb “to work.”
Another woman who was a fellow at the institute at the time, Rabbi
Dianne Cohler-Esses, said she did not witness that conversation. But she
said Mr. Steinhardt had separately suggested, in a meeting at his office
that year, that she should date a married rabbi at the institute. She
said she and Rabbi Sabath complained to Rabbi Greenberg about Mr.
Steinhardt’s comments.
Rabbi Greenberg, who at the time was president of the institute,
recalled the conversation. He said he told Mr. Steinhardt that his
behavior was “out of bounds.”
“It doesn’t excuse it and it doesn’t justify it, but I don’t believe
that he seriously was recruiting Rachel to be his concubine,” Rabbi
Greenberg said. “It’s typical outlandishness.”
Rabbi Sabath, who is now 50, went on to become a professor of Jewish
thought and director of admissions at the nation’s largest Reform Jewish
seminary, Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. But the
experience lingered. For more than two decades, she said, she avoided
being in the same room with Mr. Steinhardt and could not bring herself
to teach about the Torah’s concept of concubines.
She said she did not come forward earlier because she feared for her
career and because Mr. Steinhardt was a “great benefactor” who supported
values in which she believed.
“But his being a megafunder can’t allow for, or excuse, this behavior,
and it has,” Rabbi Sabath said.
External scrutiny
None of the six women interviewed by The Times and ProPublica had ever
spoken publicly about their experiences. But in recent years, Mr.
Steinhardt’s behavior has faced some external scrutiny.
Though he was not named as a defendant, he appeared in two sexual
harassment lawsuits filed in state court in Manhattan, in 2012 and 2013,
against an Upper East Side art gallery.
Two women who worked at the gallery alleged that Mr. Steinhardt often
made sexually loaded comments to them, which they were expected to
endure because he was an important client. Mr. Steinhardt is a prominent
collector of antiquities.
Karen Simons, an employee, said in her 2013 lawsuit that in one
instance, Mr. Steinhardt asked over the phone whether her husband
satisfied her and asked her to have sex with him, the suit alleged.
In a deposition taken in Ms. Simons’s case, Mr. Steinhardt said he did
not remember making sexual remarks to the two women.
Court documents indicated that Ms. Simons’s lawsuit was discontinued in
November 2017; the other was settled in 2014. Both suits “were resolved
amicably with confidentiality agreements,” said the women’s lawyer,
Jeffrey D. Pollack. A lawyer for the gallery, Electrum, which is also
known as Phoenix Ancient Art, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Goldin, the spokesman for Mr. Steinhardt, did not directly address
the allegations in the lawsuits, but pointed out that a judge had
sanctioned Ms. Simons for destroying evidence during the course of her
suit. He added that Mr. Steinhardt had played no role in the resolution
of either case.
Last year, as Hillel International conducted an investigation into Mr.
Steinhardt’s behavior, the organization did not pursue a $50,000
donation he had pledged and removed his name from its international
board of governors, an advisory board for major donors, according to the
person with knowledge of the investigation.
On Jan. 15, lawyers from Cozen O’Connor, the firm conducting the
investigation, met with Ms. Katz to tell her they had found her
complaint against Mr. Steinhardt justified, said Deborah Katz, Ms.
Katz’s lawyer, who attended the meeting. She is not related to her client.
The investigators also said a second Hillel employee had come forward
during the investigation with a complaint that Mr. Steinhardt made an
inappropriate comment to her, Deborah Katz said.
Mr. Steinhardt apologized “promptly” in 2011 when he found out he had
offended this woman, his spokesman said. Mr. Steinhardt said in a
statement that if he had been told at the time about Ms. Katz’s
complaint, he would have apologized immediately.
“It pains us greatly that anyone in the Hillel movement could be
subjected to any form of harassment,” said the organization’s Jan. 11
memo to employees, signed by Mr. Fingerhut and Tina Price, the
chairwoman of the board of directors.
Ms. Katz, who still works for Hillel, said she decided to speak publicly
in part because her role in the Hillel investigation had become known
and she feared possible fallout. Her lawyer complained to Hillel in
January that people using Ms. Katz’s name had called members of its
board, upset about the investigation. Hillel declined to comment.
“I want to let other women who went through similar things to know that
they are not alone,” Ms. Katz said. “And I want organizations, and in
particular Jewish organizations who take his money, to consider the
impact that’s had on people like me.”
---
Follow Sharon Otterman on Twitter: @SharonNYT
Alain Delaqueriere, Kitty Bennett, Jack Begg and Doris Burke contributed
research.
This article was published in collaboration with ProPublica, the
nonprofit journalism organization.
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