A 100-Year-Old Rabbi Who Was an Early Investor of Buffett: Obituary

choi

Douglas Martin, Rabbi Myer Kripke, 100, Early Buffett Friend and Investor; Thanksgivings with kosher tuna salad, and a fruitful decision. New York Times, May 4, 2014.
www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/us/ra ... -investor-dies.html

Quote:

“When they were younger men, Rabbi Myer Kripke and Warren E Buffett belonged to the same Rotary Club and lived a few blocks from each other in * * * Omaha. * * * By the mid-1960s, Rabbi Kripke and his wife * * * had inherited some money and saved a little of their own. The total came to about $67,000. The young Mr. Buffett was building a local reputation as a shrewd money manager, and Dorothy Kripke offered her husband what now seems glaringly obvious advice: ‘Myer, invest the money with your friend Warren.’ But Rabbi Kripke * * * knew that Mr Buffett was accepting investments only in chunks of $150,000 to $200,000. * * * But Mrs Kripke persisted. * * * The coaxing went on for two or three years. Finally, Rabbi Kripke relented. Approaching Mr. Buffett, Rabbi Kripke shyly asked if he would oversee his modest nest egg.
Without hesitation, Mr Buffett * * * said yes.

“By the mid-1990s * * * the Kripkes’ investment had grown to more than $25 million. ‘It mushroomed like an atomic bomb,’ Rabbi Kripke told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997. The money did not change the Kripkes, however. * * * He [rabbi] never bought any real estate.

“The Kripkes’ largest philanthropy was deeply personal. Rabbi Kripke had met Dorothy Karp in class at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in Manhattan, and in 1937 they married in a courtyard beneath the campus’s majestic tower, at Broadway and 122nd Street. The chancellor, Louis Finkelstein, waived the fee for the newlyweds, who were short of cash. If they could ever reimburse the seminary, he said, it would be appreciated. * * * Thirty years later, the Kripkes gave the seminary $7 million * * * They also pledged $8 million more to the school, to be bestowed after their deaths. Mrs. Kripke died in 2000.

Note: In good old days “Ms Buffett invited the Kripkes to Thanksgiving dinner. The Kripkes said that they would be delighted to come but that they would have to pass on the turkey, assuming it would be forbidden under Jewish dietary rules. They would feast on rolls and coffee, they said. That troubled Ms Buffett, so she hired a gourmet cook to make a kosher tuna salad.”

Is Turkey Kosher?  NPR, Nov 28, 2013.
www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=247700567