Three days before the presidential election, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump visited the Queens gravesite of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson and, according to The Times of Israel, they prayed for Donald Trump’s victory.
Schneerson, who died in 1994, is an interesting character. Although he never claimed it himself, some of his followers consider him the Messiah and others believe he is still alive.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known to many as the Rebbe, was a Russian Empire-born American Orthodox Jewish rabbi, and the last Lubavitcher Rebbe. He is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century.
As leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, he took an insular Hasidic group that almost came to an end with the Holocaust and transformed it into one of the most influential movements in world Jewry, with an international network of over 3,000 educational and social centers. The institutions he established include kindergartens, schools, drug-rehabilitation centers, care-homes for the disabled and synagogues.
The Kushner family is Modern Orthodox and of course Ivanka converted to Judaism prior to her marriage to Jared. Still, according to Ben Schreckinger of Politico Magazine, Kushner was affiliated with the Chabad house at Harvard when he was a student there. Since settling in DC, the couple has reportedly been attending services at a Chabad synagogue.
What Jared and Ivanka want to do in their spiritual lives is their business, and I have no intention of casting any aspersions on the Chabad-Lubavitch movement or Rabbi Schneerson. I do however want to explore some things that may circle back to this pre-election pilgrimage to Schneerson’s grave.
Let’s begin here:
Starting in 1999, [Vladimir] Putin enlisted two of his closest confidants, the oligarchs Lev Leviev and Roman Abramovich, who would go on to become Chabad’s biggest patrons worldwide, to create the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as “Putin’s rabbi.”
There’s a good chance that if you know of Roman Abramovich, you know him as the owner of the Chelsea football club of the English Premier League. You may not know that he was a victor (along with Paul Manafort’s patron Oleg Deripaska) in the bloody aluminum wars of the 1990’s or that he was reportedly the person who convinced Boris Yeltsin that Putin would be a proper successor. You probably are not aware that Ivanka Trump is very close friends with Abramovich’s wife Dasha Zhukova, with whom she recently attended the U.S. Open tennis tournament in Queens. Zhukova reportedly attended the inauguration as Ivanka’s personal guest.
It takes a little more doing to understand the Trump family’s connections to Lev Leviev. To begin with, we need to go back to Bayrock, the company that Donald Trump teamed up with to build his Trump Soho project. There were three main actors in that enterprise. One was convicted mob associate and murky FBI informant Felix Sater. Another was Tevfik Arif, a shady man with likely Russian intelligence connections who was once was arrested by the Turks on Mustafa Kamal Ataturk’s yacht and “charged with running an international underage prostitution ring.” The third was the late Tamir Sapir, another man with ties to Russian intelligence. If you’re interested in this aspect of the story, I refer you to my Trump’s Soho Project, the Mob, and Russian Intelligence article and also Mike Lofgren’s piece: Mobbed Up, both written in late February.
Interestingly, all these men have connections to the Chabad movement. Felix Sater was honored as Man of the Year in 2014 by the Port Washington Chabad house. The same Chabad house’s website lists Tevfik Arif, who is not Jewish, “among its top 13 benefactors.”
But it’s Tamir Sapir who links Trump back directly to Lev Leviev.
Pay close attention to this:
…the late billionaire Tamir Sapir, was born in the Soviet state of Georgia and arrived in 1976 in New York, where he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron district that, according to the New York Times, catered largely to KGB agents.
Trump has called Sapir “a great friend.” In December 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter, Zina, at Mar-a-Lago. The event featured performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls. The groom, Rotem Rosen, was the CEO of the American branch of Africa Israel, the Putin oligarch Leviev’s holding company.
Five months later, in early June 2008, Zina Sapir and Rosen held a bris for their newborn son. Invitations to the bris described Rosen as Leviev’s “right-hand man.” By then, Leviev had become the single largest funder of Chabad worldwide, and he personally arranged for the bris to take place at Schneerson’s grave, Chabad’s most holy site.
The man I want to focus on is Rotem Rosen. He is described here as the CEO of Leviev’s American holding company and his “right hand man.” Now, remember that Leviev was described at the top as one of two oligarch’s who Putin tapped to establish the “Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia under the leadership of Chabad rabbi Berel Lazar, who would come to be known as ‘Putin’s rabbi.’”
Now, let’s flash ahead to Trump’s trip to Moscow to host the Miss Universe pageant in 2013.
After the contest, Trump attended a vodka-infused 1 a.m. afterparty at which ticket holders were promised a meeting with the New Yorker, along with the pageant contestants.
He also met with the Agalarovs to talk business…
…Joining Trump’s November 2013 meeting with the Agalarovs were Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen, a pair of New York-based Russian developers who helped to develop the Trump Soho hotel and condominium project in Manhattan.
You should know the Agalarovs because they initiated the undisclosed June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Kushner, Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. and a brood of Kremlin-connected conspirators offering dirt on Hillary Clinton in return for sanctions relief.
Alex Sapir is the son of Tamir Sapir, brother of Zina, and brother-in-law of Rotem Rosen.
Just so we’re clear, Trump hosted the wedding of Lev Leviev’s right-hand man at Mar-a-Lago. Lev Leviev is so close to Putin that he was one of two oligarchs tapped to help him gain control of the leadership of the Russian Jewish community back when he assumed power.
Two decades ago, as the Russian president set about consolidating power on one side of the world, he embarked on a project to supplant his country’s existing Jewish civil society and replace it with a parallel structure loyal to him…
…In 1999, soon after he became prime minister, Putin enlisted Abramovich and Leviev to create the Federation of Russian Jewish Communities. Its purpose was to undermine the existing umbrella for Russia’s Jewish civil society, the Russian Jewish Congress, led by oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, a potential threat to Putin and President Boris Yeltsin. A year later, Gusinsky was arrested by Putin’s government and forced into exile.
At the time, Russia already had a chief rabbi as recognized by the Russian Jewish Congress, Adolf Shayevich. But Abramovich and Leviev installed Chabad rabbi Lazar at the head of their rival organization. The Kremlin removed Shayevich from its religious affairs council, and ever since it has instead recognized Lazar as Russia’s chief rabbi, leaving the country with two rival claimants to the title.
These are extraordinarily close ties between Putin and Trump and that also connect Trump’s business discussions in 2013 about Moscow real estate projects with the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower that has become one of the strongest pieces of evidence of collusion in the election.
Seen in this light, Jared and Ivanka’s pre-election pilgrimage to Rabbi Schneerson’s grave takes on a different tone.
And then there’s this:
In May 2015, a month before Trump officially entered the Republican presidential primary, Kushner bought a majority stake in the old New York Times building on West 43rd Street from Leviev for $295 million.
I’m not sure if it was actually a majority stake or just a really expensive condo, but Mueller is looking into it and it may tie into the firing of Preet Bharara:
As special prosecutor Robert Mueller and Congress both continue to search for ties between the Trumps, Kushner and Russia, Kushner’s acquisition of a commercial condo in the New York Times building has become one of many targets. In 2015, Kushner and his family business, Kushner Cos., bought a portion of the building from Russian real estate billionaire Lev Leviev for $295M, The Guardian reports. The transaction first came up due to the $285M Kushner borrowed from Deutsche Bank to complete the transaction. Deutsche Bank and two companies tied to Leviev, Africa Israel Investments and Prevezon, have all recently been the subject of money laundering investigations. A laundering case against Prevezon led by then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara abruptly ended in May, two months after Trump fired Bharara, with a $6M settlement that raised eyebrows.
But, remember, Trump told us he has absolutely nothing to do with Russia and no business interests there.
I hope they preserve Mueller’s murder boards in the Smithsonian.
At this point I think we need to see the birth certificates of all the Trump family and Kushner.
If nothing else that would be a troll fitting of a Presidential Twitter outburst.
I once attended a Chabad service where the rabbi quoted Biblical sources to explain why Jews don’t consider abortion murder: then he said something about how of course he’d never broadcast that belief for political reason.
So fuck them. But holy shit is this shaping up into a bad time for Jews, on a number of fronts.
What’s the link to the ‘Let’s begin here’ blockquote?
here.
Thanks.
Don’t forget that the money laundered in the New York Prevezon case was part of the $230 million stolen from the tax payments to the Russian government of Bill Browder’s Hermitage Capital firm, in a massive tax fraud scheme uncovered by Browder’s lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky. And that the Russian government charged Browder and Magnitsky with stealing the money themselves, which is how Magnitsky ended up in the jail where he mysteriously died. And that the Prevezon firm’s Russian lawyer was Natalya Veselnitskaya, the crusader against the American Magnitsky Act sanctioning Russians involved in Magnitsky’s death, who brought her act to Trump Tower in the famous meeting of June 9, 2016.
the challenge of blog form writing is really coming into focus here. I feel like I need to invent a new genre.
I damn well don’t want anyone to channel Glenn Beck, but I sure could use something visual to try and wrap my mind around all the interconnected pieces to this massive and complex puzzle. My head is spinning. One really needs to spend some chunks of time absorbing all of this.
I was thinking of Glenn Beck the whole time. That’s certainly the most psychotic-sounding paragraph I’ve ever written. It’s getting way too strange.
After Martin’s last few posts concerning the Russian saga, with all its many tentacles, I have given up, for the moment, trying to understand much of it. It’s one of those things where you need to print out everything that has been written and take it with you on a long overseas flight, where you can spend uninterrupted hours working through all the intricacies. The first thing I need to do to better understand this is to define the roles of the people involved. So many layers. No wonder Mueller needs dozens of legal and historical geniuses working under him. And I certainly would never entertain trying to explain any of this to a Trumpista who is in denial about all of the “fake news” on Russia. I think the indictments and prosecutions will have to speak for themselves.
You are tying back to the Magnitsky piece you did in the spring very well. It might have to be a complex genre that includes timelines, charts of connections, or other alternatives to prose text. Do what you can. You are on a roll.
Oh, and maps. I had to search to find that Port Washington is on Long Island. There are other Long Island connections that might tie back geographically as long as one thinks beyond immediate place names.
Two things I notice about how this unfolds. I looks like Trump is trying to get into this network instead of this network seeking out Trump. I don’t doubt that the political alliances go along with some supply chain relationships among the businesses that provide reasons to network in which the politics is the BS on the side until it becomes of practical use to the business network.
The facts you are dealing out become very much a kaleidoscope of overlaid colors/connections/topics.
One experiment is throw open a post to feeding back on a particular difficult thing to puzzle out. One test should tell whether that would work as a method. Also see how Marcy Wheeler uses her blog forms. That seems to work for her; some might be useful for you.
The reasons why things have turned out this way are very complicated. But there’s one part of this story you left out. First of all, the Chabad movement comes from Russia. And during the whole history of the Soviet Union, especially after the early 1930s when things got really bad for religious Jews — and after 1947 when they got bad for all Jews in the USSR – Chabad led an underground Jewish movement with unbelievable courage and dedication. Many were executed, even more were sent to Siberia, and even “normal” life for them was extremely difficult. Yet they kept Judaism going the whole time.
Who knows what kind of relationships they developed, with the need for safe houses, transportation, communication, and the need to make some kind of livelihood, and protection to the extent possible? I’m sure most of this story has never been told.
And then as soon as the pressure began to lift, in 1989, and because Chabad in the West had remained strong (since Rabbi Shneerson had emigrated with some of his followers to Brooklyn in 1940) and maintained its clandestine ties to the Russian Jewish underground, Chabad immediately came to the fore in the revival of Judaism in Russia, so that today 80% of the rabbis in the former Soviet Union are Chabad, though that is certainly not true of Russian Jews themselves, including the ones who are orthodox, because they came from many different traditions, even from different Hasidic traditions if that was their background.
My own feelings about this are also complex. Chabad is only one thread in the variegated strand of East European Judaism. They happen to be welcoming and non-judgmental, but when it comes to how you do things, as far as they’re concerned it’s “my way or the highway.” Through their strength and single-mindedness they survived and prospered, and in consequence they have a lot of influence today, especially as many Jews have lost their traditions.
Bottom line: I really don’t like Chabad’s politics, but I understand where they’re coming from. What an unholy mess.
Interesting point. My first association was to the housing units that Fred Trump owned.
Thanks for this informative background.
They are extremely welcoming and generous. A Chabad rabbi comes to my office every week. We strap on tefillin and pray together. He knows I’m a Sufi and, thus, in some sense a convert to Islam. He’s also aware of my opinion that Judism and Islam are essentially the same religion. Despite whatever differences we may have, he invites my wife, my son and me to every event. He never asks for money though I’ve made a few donations. This poor little rabbi who drives an old junker of a car came out to my house several times to help put a mezuzzah on the door. It’s a 45 minutes drive and he never once asked for a contribution toward gas or anything.
For these reasons, I don’t consider them “my way or the highway” at all. They believe what they believe but they’re very accepting of those who do not share those beliefs. In fact, they have been friendly to a female transgendered rabbi at a hippie synagogue here in town. I was shocked that these super orthodox rabbis even referred to her a fellow rabbi. The response was that every Jew is a Jew.
Perhaps the Russian connection explains how manage to support their extensive network of synagogues and offer endless outreach without ever really asking for money. Chabad supports two Rabbis and their families in this small city of 85,000. They are obviously sincere in their religious convictions. Though far more politically conservative than most people I know, I’ve nothing but respect for these humble and sincere people who seek only to serve as they believe God calls upon them to serve.
After I wrote that “my way or the highway,” I realized it didn’t convey what I meant to say — which was simply that, as accepting as they are of those who do not share their beliefs, ultimately Chabad, as you say, “believe what they believe”, i.e. have their particular interpretation of Judaism. Even in Hasidism there are many different traditions. That’s what I meant by “my way”. But you’re right, it’s never “the highway”. And they do emphasize Ahavas Yisroel — every Jew is a Jew. That’s the reason for the outreach.
Basically, they don’t care what you believe, if it’s different. A Jew is a Jew, and a Jew should do mitzvahs (fulfill religious commandments). By putting on tefillin and praying, you’re doing that, and that’s why he’s happy to drive out 45 minutes to see you.
Problems develop when you take that outlook into the world of people like Jared Kushner, Felix Sater et al. Just sayin’.
By the way, I have the greatest respect for Sufism.
Real gangsters have no true religious affiliation…they use religion as just another good front. It helps that in the U.S…I don’t really know about any other countries…religions are basically tax-free.
i have been saying all along here that Trump was not going to go down until some unassailable research absolutely tied him to powerful criminal elements.
It looks like we are finally reaching that point.
AG
P.S. If it acts like a gangster, is more than normally wealthy and/or powerful, it probably is a gangster.
Read the following, from 2001 in Counterpunch. St. Clair and Cockburn…unless they are and/or were secret CIA disinfo specialists, which I quite doubt…have no reason to lie and neither do their sources :
Like dat.
I hope there is a “pee tape.” Or worse. But we need real proof.
Many people on this blog have the idea that I am somehow a Putin apologist. I am not. I have been to Russia twice, and got a good smell each time…in Moscow and in St. Petersburg…of what has been going down there societally over the past 20 years or so.
It ain’t pretty.
It reminds me more than anything of a gigantic version of what was going down in the badder streets in NYC’s Little Italy when it was still owned and controlled by the Mob. I was there, too, and in Brooklyn’s then-Italian Red Hook, Carroll Gardens and Bay Ridge as well during the bad old days. I worked for these guys, as a musician. Too often. And…I lived in Red Hook when it was controlled by the Gallo gang. I know my gangsters.
But…we must await the proof. Everything else is conjecture and political maneuvering.
Everything.
It’s hard to believe they gave security clearances to Ivanka do Jared without lie detector tests. The family is thick as thieves with the Russians through religious affiliation and real estate. Talk about emouluments.