NY Congressmen, real estate magnates attend talks by Israeli Kabbalist

Forward - Josh Nathan-Kazis "Charismatic Moroccan Kabbalist Draws Crowds And Questions"

......A crowd of about 200 packed the main hall of the mystically inclined rabbi’s Manhattan headquarters, a four-story building on a tony Upper East Side block just around the corner from Bloomingdale’s....

Pinto, an Israeli-born rabbi of Moroccan descent, is little known in the United States. But he was thrust into a sort of prominence following news reports linking him to a Hasidic real estate broker who died June 9 in what the medical examiner ruled to be a suicide. According to press reports, Solomon Obstfeld rented at least one apartment to the rabbi at a below-market rate in Jumeirah Essex House, an elegant Central Park South building. That business arrangement reportedly ended in harsh feelings between Obstfeld and the rabbi.

Obstfeld’s death is currently under scrutiny by a private investigator hired to examine whether foul play may have been involved........

.........Pinto is something between a guru and a Hasidic rebbe. A kabbalist interested in the esoteric elements of the Jewish tradition, he runs a number of yeshivas, religious schools, in Israel and the United States, and sponsors a social service organization that feeds needy families in Israel, mostly in Ashdod. He speaks Hebrew and no English, and his followers in the United States draw heavily from the expatriate Israeli community....

Once seated, he invited certain men to sit beside him, a position of honor. (Women in attendance sat in a balcony behind a curtain, watching over closed-circuit television.) Throughout the shiur, he was joined at the front of the room by Ronn Torossian, founder of public relations firm 5WPR, and Michael Grimm, a Republican candidate for Congress from Staten Island. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, was also in the building that evening.

Pinto is something of a rabbi to the rich and famous. Attendees at the shiur said that Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner had attended a shiur the previous week; Weiner’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Pinto is particularly connected in the New York real estate community. Prominent followers include Haim Revah, whose company, Metropolitan Real Estate Investors, owns New York’s Lipstick Building, and Ilan Bracha of Prudential Douglas Elliman.


According to press reports and people familiar with the rabbi, Pinto dispenses business advice to his followers.

“There’s a component of that where someone believes that the kabbalist can predict the profitability, or lack thereof, of a specific investment,” said Jonathan Nachmani, a real estate investor and a member of the Sephardic community who has met Pinto many times. Still, he maintained that Pinto would “never give a guarantee one way or the other” regarding the prospects of a deal.

Pinto, who was born in Israel, is the scion of two highly revered Moroccan rabbinic dynasties. His maternal grandfather was the Baba Sali, a Moroccan kabbalist thought by some to have had the ability to work miracles. The Baba Sali moved to Israel from Morocco in 1970 amid a wave of Moroccan Jewish immigration, and died there in 1984.

On his father’s side, Pinto comes from a line of rabbis that arrived in Morocco from Damascus in the 16th century. That line includes Rabbi Haim Pinto, a 19th-century rabbi whose grave is now the site of an annual pilgrimage by some Moroccan Jews. Pinto’s father, also named Rabbi Haim Pinto, is a prominent rabbi in Ashdod.

Pinto’s organization, called Shuva Israel, purchased its East 58th Street building for $28.5 million in March 2009, according to public records..... Full story

Contact Josh Nathan-Kazis at nathankazis@forward.com. Follow him on Twitter @joshnathankazis.