While Reb Moshe Reichmann was one of the world’s wealthiest men, there was nothing more important to him than ensuring the dignity of others

Photos Family archives

The passing of great people often leaves us in a quandary, the dilemma of whether to provide readers with instant coverage — a full-scale tribute still during shivah — or to wait a bit and be able to create an article with more substance, but without the drama of presenting it while the loss is still fresh.

I recall the Friday at the end of October 2013 when Reb Moshe Reichmann was niftar and the deliberations that followed: Back then, we printed the magazine on Sunday, and the general consensus was that this wasn’t the time for a rush job. The subject of the article was about precision and meticulousness, integrity in product and reputation, and we too would do it right.

Reb Moshe Yosef (Paul) Reichmann was one of the eminent philanthropists and supporters of Torah in our generation. He was born in Vienna, Austria in 1930, fled with his family after the Nazi takeover to Tangier, Morocco, (where his father founded several Torah institutions), and then went to learn in England under Rav Moshe Schneider, who gave him a prophetic blessing that would one day reverberate around the Jewish world: Back then the yeshivah was in dire financial straits, and in order to feed the starving students, one bakery agreed to give the yeshivah the previous day’s leftovers if someone would come pick it up. Moshe Reichmann devotedly walked to the outskirts of London each day to pick up the bread — and received the Rosh Yeshivah’s brachah that he would one day become extremely wealthy and would spend his money supporting talmidei chachamim.

In 1956, after Moshe married Leah Feldman, his father called him back to Tangier to help with teaching Torah and strengthening the level of observance there. Eventually the couple followed Moshe’s brothers to Canada where they fell into property development, eventually expanding to New York City. By the mid-1980s, they were the largest developers in the world, and one of the world’s richest families.

Despite his massive financial success, Reb Moshe lived modestly (he drove an old Cadillac), while at the same time setting a precedent for others with his huge donations to the Torah world. He established Torah mosdos in his home city of Toronto and beyond, was active in establishing chareidi towns in Eretz Yisrael, and was known to give a substantial financial award to hundreds of kollel couples in order to buy apartments. And as much as he gave, much of his support was done quietly without fanfare — or public knowledge. (His levayah in Jerusalem, where he was buried, was tellingly held in a building of batei medrash and kollelim in Jerusalem’s Kiryat Sanz neighborhood, an edifice he had built anonymously and simply called Ahavas Torah — the true pride of a man who built Battery Park City and Canary Wharf, yet never put his name on any of the myriad shuls or yeshivos he sponsored.)

Before the shloshim, I spent time in Toronto with each of the children, and even before they told their stories, it was evident that this — his children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren — were the true legacy, the structure into which he had invested his heart and soul.

They shared many poignant memories, but the detail I remember most was this: In the weeks after his passing, the children reflected on which item was the iconic heirloom, the relic that most represented their father, which would mean the most to them.

Typically, it would be a siddur, or maybe a becher, a Tehillim or a menorah, perhaps.

Not here. The most tangible expression of their father, from their perspective, was the copy of the Chazon Ish’s Emunah Ubitachon that Reb Moshe Reichmann carried with him.

And carried in him as well, its lyrical song of faith and depth, its poetic homage to the Creator and the perfection of His plan playing in his heart and mind.

Some books take longer than others to write. Here we are, eight years after Reb Moshe Reichmann’s passing, a relatively long time in terms of writing a biography, and there’s a sense that this book could not be coming at a better time.

Many in the community have been blessed with great wealth in recent years, an unprecedented flow of shefa resting in their homes. The standard of living has spiked — homes, simchahs, personal spending habits — and articles are appearing (including in this magazine) begging for someone to take responsibility. Speakers address the one-percenters, charging them with righting the runaway train, and a new challenge has been exposed.

The spiritual giants — roshei yeshivah, rabbanim, and admorim — whose lives and deeds we looked to for inspiration were never confronted with this new nisayon: having to advise the super-wealthy businessman at the apex of professional accomplishment trying to find balance.

There is no handbook on how the gvir ought to behave, how he relates to talmidei chachamim and to those who have less, how he imparts authenticity and truth to his own children amidst the clatter of deceit, how he adds layers of humility even as his name is a daily feature of the business headlines.

This book about one who did so comes at perfect time, landing on a communal table covered with charcuterie boards and tequila.

But there was a surprise in it, even for me. I had originally thought it a story of one who had successfully navigated the nisayon of wealth alone, but the deeper I got in, the more I found myself pulled into stories that have nothing to do with money.

If Moshe Reichmann had never left the Morocco classroom in which he spent his first years of marriage teaching Torah, he would nonetheless have been marked with greatness: for his dignity, his compassion, his vision, and his burning sense of mission. The money only served to push him onto a stage where all those traits were suddenly revealed to the masses, but he never stopped working, never stopped toiling to find the messages within the pages of the well-used Chazon Ish.

His story is the story of that toil, how with emunah, with middos, with an unbreakable connection to the beis medrash, a Jew can soar so high, regardless of the path on which life takes him.