Chapter 25 Chapter 25 I am a Hungarian Jew

Soros, who saw himself as God, ironically dismissed his religious letters as largely irrelevant. Section 1 Jewish Saints Soros saw himself as God, but ironically, he dismissed his religious beliefs as largely irrelevant. Neither his parents nor his own experience brought George Soros closer to Judaism.Even if the Holocaust of the Jews in Hitler's Germany could not prevent Soros from being strongly aware of his religious background, it did not have any lasting impact on his religious thinking.Soros's hiding from the Nazis in 1944 led him to a great adventure and taught him a set of survival techniques, but it didn't make him any more Judean.

If Soros has learned anything from the Holocaust, it is that minorities like European Jews must protect themselves in the future, and the best way to do that is to build a pluralistic society where minorities are empowered. "I went to England in 1947 and then to America in 1956," Soros wrote, "but I never became an American to any great degree. I left Hungary behind, and Nor does my Judah make sense of me personally in a sense of ethnic allegiance that would lead me to support Israel. Rather, being a member of a minority, someone who perceives a problem I am proud to be an outsider. Being a Hungarian Jew made me feel painfully at risk and humiliated, but the ability to think critically and build a house more than made up for it."

Jewish identity was a burden for Soros.It did him no good, other than the "danger and humiliation" of being born a Hungarian Jew.Thus, in the post-war years, Soros has downplayed his religious affiliation, and little of his wisdom has Jewish origins. His longtime friend and business partner, Barron Wayne, commented: "George never tried to say he wasn't Jewish, he never tried to hide who he was, but at the same time I think he didn't want to make that a part of his identity. Center." "It was central to his identity as he grew up. The fact that he was a Jew meant he had to run away, he had to hide, he had to hide. When he came to America, Jewish identity did put a frame on him, and George wanted to be free from all frames. He wanted to make himself accepted for his own career, intelligence, and achievements. He did not tie himself to the Judas cause, but On the one hand he doesn't shy away from being a Jew. He assumes that everyone knows he's Jewish, but he doesn't wear a sign that says I'm Jewish.

Section 2 Unforgettable Tonight In early October 1992, Soros invited an Israeli entrepreneur named Benny Landa to join him for dinner at his New York apartment.The night was one of the most memorable for both of them. In 1977, Landa established a high-tech company named "Indigo" in a small Israeli city called Rehwaut not far from Tel Aviv.It quickly developed into a global leader in high-quality digital color printing products. In June 1977, Landa asked First Boston, an American investment and banking company, to do some strategic planning for Indigo. First Boston suggested doing some private publicity for the business before taking it to the general public a few years later.As First Boston neared the completion of a memo to be sent to potential investors, Soros heard of Indigo's plans.After asking some questions, he asked Indigo to cancel the planned memorandum offering and said that if he was interested in the company, he would take on the $50 million investment.

"It's been a pleasant surprise, because we originally expected to raise $50 million, and we've had half a dozen investors so far," Landa said in August 1994, sitting in his four-lane office in Rehwater. Yue recalled the scene of the year in this way.At that time, after the two parties finalized the terms, Soros told Landa that he had a personal interest in the deal and planned to meet him before everything was settled.So he invited Randa to a dinner in New York. Soros and Landa meet.There was another person present: Soros' colleague P. C Chatter and Robert Konraz, CEO of First Boston.What makes this evening meaningful is the nature of the conversation.An outsider might think that this time the businessmen get together for a working dinner and that what they'll be talking about will be mostly their work.But neither Chatyo nor Konraz actually said anything all evening.Afterwards, Landa said he believed the two were too dumbfounded to say anything after hearing Soros and him talk about non-commercial topics all evening.

When describing that night two years later, Landa recalled many details.It seemed that he had dinner with Soros only yesterday.The dinner started at 7:30pm.It lasted 4 hours.After taking his seat, Soros asked Landa to talk about himself and his company.This took about 20-30 minutes.Landa then asked if it was Soros' turn to ask some questions about the investor himself. "Of course," Soros replied, guessing he might be asked questions about his investing history. "Well," Landa opened his mouth and said, "I am very interested in what I know about your economic and political philosophy." At this time, he did not pay attention to whether Soros frowned when he heard this, "What I am interested in is "—Landa reminds himself not to be too abrupt—"What do you think about being Jewish? Does doing business with a company based in Israel make any sense?".

Landa knew something about Soros' indifference to Judah's affairs, and he knew that the investor was a Jew, a survivor of the Holocaust.For Landa, it was somewhat difficult to reconcile Soros' misfortune with his Chinese advocacy on the Jewish question.So, he asked the above question. Soros looked surprised by the question, though not uncomfortable.He replied: "That doesn't mean much to me, anyway. We're not interested because you're an Israeli company, but it looks like a great opportunity to work with you." For the next three-and-a-half hours, Soros talked about his Jewishness, when he was there, and in particular his hiding from the Nazis in World War II. "It was the most exciting thing in my life," he told Landa. "That hiding was like playing cops and thieves. It was exciting." They also talked about Jewish nationalism.At times, the dinner looked like a debate, but the atmosphere was always friendly, even though they always revolved around issues that, in Landa's words, were "personal and sensitive."

While talking to Soros, Landa wondered what made the investor refuse to hold Judas-hate.Landa found a possible explanation when she heard about Soros' wartime experiences.He discovered that while Soros had been portraying his experience in World War II as a silly game, he had actually had to relish the unimaginable horrors again and again, simply because he was Jewish.He then concluded that for Soros, being a Jew must have been a burden, never a joy.In the middle of the dinner, Soros also revealed that it was only in the early 1980s that he happily admitted publicly that he was Jewish, and that until then he had only wanted to avoid the subject. "Maybe business success finally gave me enough confidence to admit my Jewishness," Soros confessed.

When talking about nationalism, Landa said that nationalism has some constructive and positive functions, and the Zionist movement in particular is a very positive force and a meaningful cause. "I hope to bring you closer to it," he told Soros. But Soros suffered so much from the Nazis that he could not think highly of nationalism. "It brings only evil, destruction, chauvinism and war," he replied. "I am against any form of nationalism. If it were possible for nationalism to retain its constructive aspects without its negative character, If it doesn't cause political and social disruption, then you're right. But, it's impossible."

While they were talking, Soros was under attack from Eastern European nationalism. "It's ridiculous," he said. "They're associating me with some worldwide Zionist conspiracy and old Zionists. It's horribly ridiculous." It's "ridiculous" because Soros rarely Identify yourself as a Jew. By the time the clock ticked toward 11 o'clock, Soros and Landa felt a little mentally weary from the past history. Landa looked at Soros and said with a kind of firm hatred: "I feel that it is my mission to finally bring you and Israel into emotional agreement. To return you to the Jewish world."

"That's interesting," Soros replied ambiguously. After dinner, in the elevator, Chatyo said to Landa, "I'm so surprised, I've never seen anything like this in my life."I never knew that about George. "Landa was surprised, too. There wasn't much work involved in the evening for him and Soros. A few months later, in January 1993, Landa and Soros shook hands again at the latter's New York office and signed the agreement.Soros must be thinking about that dinner in October at this point, and he probably felt that last time he came across as reluctant to do business with an Israeli company, because it somewhat exposed his Jewish identity too much.Soros tried to dissuade Landa from this notion, so when he shook Landa's hand, he said, "You know, I'm glad the company is in Israel." After all, there is a sense of a personal nature.He took the opportunity to invite Soros to Israel, and Soros agreed. Section 3 Visit to Israel The encounter with Benny Landa reflected a profound change in George Soros.In the early 1990s, his friends and colleagues began to notice a change in his attitude towards his religious beliefs and a new interest in his past.Soros started asking acquaintances—Daniel Doren among them—to find him books. The Talmud is also among them. "He became interested in Jewish civilization," says Doran, "and all of a sudden he realized he didn't come from a vacuum." The change in Soros manifested itself in other ways, too.At the official unveiling of the Soros Foundation in Bucharest, Soros stood in front of the crowd and declared: "I am George Soros. I am a Hungarian Jew." Sandra Pralon, who was there, remembers people They were all amazed.Romanians are not used to hearing someone openly declare that he is proud to be Jewish. It's an incredible change, especially for a man in his fifties who still doesn't want to think of himself as a Jew and sees Jewishness as a burden.Now, in the early 1900s, all that seems to be changing. What awakened George Soros' racial consciousness?The first and most important reason lies in the attacks on him and his Jewish identity by right-wing nationalists in Eastern Europe.Another reason is that it increasingly feels less awkward about his Jewish heritage.He had already achieved great success in business, which made him somewhat resilient to attack, and he no longer needed to worry that being Jewish would make him suffer. Finally, the hardships Soros had witnessed first-hand in Eastern Europe, especially during the Bosnian War in the early 1990s, reminded him of how much his Jewish origins had brought him through in the first half of this century.After he financed the rebuilding of Sarajevo's water supply and gas pipelines, a reporter asked him: Why would a Jew like you sympathize with a Muslim country?Soros replied: "If you've been through one kind of massacre and now you're witnessing another, there's a particular resonance. I have a particular concern about the massacres in the former Yugoslavia." But the most striking sign of Soros's newfound tenderness for the Jewish race will be his first public visit to Israel in January 1994.For years his Jewish colleagues had tried to get him to pay more attention to the Jewish state, but to no avail.They resented his indifference to Judah's cause, and his seeming ashamed of being a Jew.But they understood that, whatever their own persuasion, Soros himself had to undergo certain changes before he could make the visit. Soros has always claimed that he would not set foot in Israel because of its treatment of Arabs.Another reason for this is that he believes Israel's heavily socialist economic model is too rigid and unattractive for investors.While Soros' aides are focused on opening up the closed societies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, there is little reason for him to seek a foothold in democratic Israel.He doesn't think Israel needs to be "open" either. But that hasn't stopped others from trying to persuade Soros and lure him to Israel. In the autumn of 1993, Israel announced that it had entered into secret negotiations with the PLO aimed at reaching an agreement on the Palestinians.At this time, Gul Ofer, an economics professor in Israel, felt that the time had come, and it was time to ask Soros to reconsider his trip to Israel. "Do you remember, we talked about asking you to come to Israel and you said no?" Ofir wrote. "Well now, Israel has been undergoing serious economic reforms over the past few years. And we will get Peace. It's time to rethink your relationship with Israel".But Ofel never got the national voice, until Soros announced that he would visit Israel in January 1994, and he got an indirect oral answer. Soros decided to go to Israel, perhaps not because of his newfound interest in the Jewish state, but because he wanted to show the world that the attacks on him by right-wing nationalists in Eastern Europe had done him no harm.After being accused of working for Israeli intelligence.Soros presumably wanted to tell people that such an attack was unlikely to cause him to recoil. While Israelis were eager to see someone as important as Soros visit their country, some welcomed the news only cautiously.This caution has more to do with an international financier named Robert Maxwell than with Soros.The Israelites rolled out the red carpet for Maxwell a few years earlier, and he, like Soros, only rediscovered his Jewish roots later in life.However, after Maxwell left, the Israelis were very annoyed to find that Maxwell was a person with a bad reputation if he said it lightly, but a bad reputation if he said it more seriously.So some Israelis worry that Sloth, with his billions of dollars and elusive financial practices, is another Maxwell. While most Israelis have never heard of George Soros, dignitaries in the Israeli government know that they decided to give Soros a four-star reception.For them, it was important for Soros to have a positive impression of Israel as he headed home, because a good word from him in the international financial community might boost Israel's appeal to foreign investors.In fact, the mere fact that Soros is visiting Israel for business purposes can be used by the Israeli public relations department to prove that the country's economy is heading in the right direction. As a result, most of Israel's leading political and economic officials met with Soros, from Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to Bank of Israel Governor Jacob Frankel, who had worked with Soros in the past.Rabin told Soros that Israel was stepping up efforts to privatize some state-owned companies and welcomed his participation.Soros has two small investments in Israel, which he visited.One is called "Geotech", which is a company operating professional mobile wireless communication equipment; the other is Indigo Corporation.Soros owns 17 percent of the latter, which was worth $70 million in 1993 and doubled the following year. One evening during the visit, there was a banquet arranged for Soros at the Arcadia Hotel in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, on the Mediterranean Sea.Some 250 leading figures in Israel's financial world were in attendance, and it was only natural that Soros should speak to them.Earlier in the evening, Soros asked Benny Landa what he should talk about.Landa said that the audience not only loves to hear about your business career, but also is interested in what you think as a Jew in Israel, tell them what you said to me the night we ate together . "Soros agreed. Soros spoke for 20 minutes.Normally, he's a good public speaker, but this impromptu speech was a struggle for him.Landa recalls that Soros "became very embarrassed, and he stuttered and babbled." This may be because this was the first time Soros spoke about his Judas status in a private way in public.Had he been a proud Jew all his life, he might have spoken fluently.However, in trying to reveal his long-term concealment of Jewish origin, Soros could not help feeling that everyone in the audience was proud to be Jewish, and that those who lost friends and relatives in the Holocaust Not in the minority.He must have understood that it was no easy task to make his account of self-hatred and self-denial of Judah's identity sound convincing and contagious. In those 20 minutes, Soros recounted much of what he had said to Benny Landa about a year and a half earlier.He talks about how, as a child, he was excited when his friends called him a "non-Jew"; Well, keep your mouth shut.He also spoke of how elated he was to make the visit now that Israel now appears to be abandoning its chauvinism and making moves for peace with its Arab neighbors.He also talked about his philosophy of helping the world, saying that Israel has always been a country that stretches out its hands to ask others, and he personally believes that it should no longer do this. Israel should be a place that attracts investors rather than philanthropists.He doesn't plan to push his philanthropy to Israel at all, but he already has two investments there and he's considering more. Israeli reactions to Soros' visit have not been all positive.Many people had no idea what he was like; when they heard him speak at the Arcadia Hotel, they wept. "It was an astonishing night for those in the audience," Benny said.Landa recalled, "People were very disappointed that he was not loyal to the Judah cause. Many Israelis were very upset to hear him because, although everyone knew that he was frank and private, and knew that he was not a good man for George. It's hard to say so openly, but some people still wonder, why should people be alarmed? They say we too were in concentration camps and lost our loved ones, but we didn't become anti-Semitic. We abandoned Israel? Have we abandoned Judaism? Why should we understand his way of separating himself from Israel? Indeed, Soros will need to overcome the high expectations placed on him.Some Israelis expected, or at least hoped, that Soros would surprise everyone and announce his plans to invest $1 billion in the Judean state.However, at least Soros has convinced Israeli investors that he is an honest and serious investor.Even if they found Soros's lack of enthusiasm for the Jewish movement distasteful, they did not hesitate to assume that Soros was a modest, unaffected man, less of the boastful and dubious Maxwell. After this, Soros felt that he was more or less an expert on the issue of Israel, the country of Judah.Shortly after the interview, he appeared on a CNN (American Cable Network) television show on January 11, 1994.Former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Jenny Kirkpatrick, who was also a guest on the show, expressed doubts about whether Israel and Syria will soon reach peace.Soros disagreed, saying he had just returned from Israel."I was really impressed because there was a real change in people's thinking. And I think people were really working for peace and felt that peace would come," Jing emphasized.