Why are Orthodox tycoons battling to take over El Al?

Drive along Israel’s Route 1 past Ben Gurion Airport today, and you’ll see the aviation equivalent of a cup that’s half full and half empty.

Gleaming there in the hot sun, behind the concrete and wire barriers that ring the runway, are serried ranks of neatly-parked planes with crisp blue-and-white livery. Like freshly-minted air cadets standing at attention, it looks like the entire El Al fleet is there, grounded due to coronavirus and the financial storm into which the company has been thrown.

It’s a sight that must give Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu heartburn, as he whisks past in his motorcade on the way to the nearby Defense Ministry, aware that Israel’s flagship carrier is on life-support and will expire without a $400 million cash transfusion.

But whereas the masses of Israelis making the daily Jerusalem-Tel Aviv commute see the silent airliners as a catastrophe, in more than one boardroom in the New York area, those same planes are generating excitement as the next big business horizon.

Over the last few weeks, a fascinating race has opened up, as first one, then another, Orthodox tycoon has thrown his hat into the ring to bid for El Al, the Israeli icon that’s fallen on hard times.

First was Monsey-based Kenny Rozenberg, long-time Hatzolah volunteer and boss of Centers Health Care, a nationwide chain of nursing homes. Then came Israeli-born Meir Gurvitz, who went to England as a teenager to learn in Gateshead Yeshiva, and then made a fortune in London’s real-estate market. And now there are reports in the Israeli business community of a third group of religious investors from the New York area.

“Why would a businessman make an offer for such a problematic company as is, without real proper knowledge of the company? It’s weird,” says a secular Israeli journalist, speaking off-the-record and representing a wider public both intrigued and suspicious of a Sabra symbol being sold to a man whose son learns in yeshivah in Jerusalem. “There are famous Israeli businessmen who were pilots themselves and have a sentimental connection to the company, but even they haven’t touched it.”

So what indeed is bringing these businesspeople to an ailing company, which has held its own distinguished place in Israel’s culture and Shabbos wars?

“Kenny needs challenges, he thrives on that sort of thing,” says a friend of Rozenberg, “and it was either buying and rebuilding a sports team or doing this, helping Eretz Yisrael and its economy. I hope he gets it. Im yirtzeh Hashem, it will be good.”

But according to Ori Keidar, an Israeli lawyer who uses his extensive knowledge of Israel’s business scene to represents high-net-worth individuals and NGO’s in the New York Orthodox community, there’s more to the latest round of bidding than a simple financial challenge.

“With the opening of the Gulf, there are investors who now feel that there is a big opportunity to turn Israel into a regional transport hub and expand the business significantly,” he says.

If Ben Gurion Airport’s runways, which currently face west across the Mediterranean to freedom and away from the constriction of the Arab boycotts, find themselves processing traffic to the Gulf, the future owners of El Al could be sitting on a goldmine.

But as the race for El Al heats up, the questions about Orthodox ownership of a company this significant are many. How can they operate profitably without flying on Shabbos? Will BDS cripple an international expansion? And can Israel stomach a national icon going to visibly religious investors?