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what am I? It’s all about washing cars. That’s how I started, and to this day I see people of that height. You go through humiliations from customers, you are bullied, you are a slave because you will rule, and then the landlord scolds you for not delivering 40 cars today. People think that making money is wisdom, knowledge, but a large part is luck and timing, being in the right place by chance, buying at a low point and then everything goes up. You tell yourself you were smart, but you didn’t really know it would happen.”
You didn’t know this would happen either? Will you get where you got to?
“I don’t come from some old money aristocracy, we were minus middle class. We lived modestly, buying half a portion of falafel and gezoz at Noah Square in Givatayim and going out for a walk, and we had fun. Until the last few years, my mother still lived in the 54 square meter apartment we grew up in.”
You are in a different place these years.
“Yes, in the last five-seven years I earned more than I did in 40 years.”
You once said that in Israel there are only tycoons de la shamata, and here you remain one of the last of them. It is an extinct species.
“We will not become extinct, it’s just that the new tycoons are less well known. They are still worth several hundred million dollars.”
And yet it seems that most of the capital holders are the newly rich, the high-tech people.
“I have a problem with the young rich people – the culture of donating to the community does not exist among them. Ask the big associations. They say ‘we donated in secret’ – regret it. They don’t donate and they don’t pay attention, which is upsetting. The Recanati family, for example, donates all the time, Dana Azrieli and the family donate In crazy volumes, and the new ones are not.”
How do you explain that?
“I don’t know how to explain it. They seem to think, ‘We were in the army, we contributed our share, we pay taxes to the state, that’s it.’ They tell you, ‘My wife is the one who decides.’ I saw the movie about ‘The New Rich,’ and I can understand that it’s difficult how you are looked at, but not to that extent.”
Miss the business days of old?
“I never miss business, today I’m in a much better place. Spiritually, too, I look at things differently than when I was 40-50. If I miss anything, it’s being a soccer player and scoring a goal. I played in Hapoel Ramat Gan’s senior team until War Day Kippur”.
Years later you tried to buy a part of Liverpool, without success. Is the dream of being the owner of a football team dashed?
“Liverpool is one of my favorite teams, also because of the fans’ connection to it. In 2009 I tried to buy 20% of it, I had it in hand and I didn’t do it for private reasons that I won’t go into details. It was a big mistake.”
Couldn’t console yourself with a local team?
“In Israel it is not a business, in the world it is. Those who have succeeded in doing it in Israel are not satisfied with the satisfaction of the audience, and the field is also run like a neighborhood. If I accidentally change my mind on the matter – I will encounter strong opposition from the family. But Liverpool is a wound. It was simply mine, and not I took it. Today it’s too much for me, I’m not old enough to do it.”
So you finally said goodbye to football?
“I still play, with the grandchildren, I am the ‘coach’, and I take them to watch games. On the courts I always feel that I have something to say to the coach, what he does is not good, and I swear, but less than my fellow professors who sit next to me.”