(Photos: Flash 90, Mendy Hechtman, Yonatan Rashline, Nitzan Hefner, Jeremy Langford)

With his first investment in Israel, French multi-millionaire Michel Ohayon, the new owner of the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem, says he’s just following the lead of the Reichmann family who put in millions to renovate the historic landmark. And with the blessing of his rav and an infallible track record he attributes strictly to siyata d’Shmaya, he’s sure the venture will succeed

When billionaire philanthropist Reb Paul (Moshe Yosef) Reichmann a”h envisioned the building of the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem, it was the realization of a dream that for many years had been elusive — a hotel offering world-class hospitality while still maintaining the highest level of kashrus and halachic standards.

And what better place to fulfill that vision than at the site of the old Palace Hotel, the famous building at the corner of Agron and King David Streets, built in 1929 by the Supreme Muslim Council and considered at the time to be the most luxurious hotel in the city. But just a few years later, the building was commandeered by the British Mandate authorities for their offices, and after the state was founded in 1948, it housed the Ministry of Industry and Trade, until it was bought in the 1990s by the Regency group, owner of the Hyatt Hotel in Jerusalem. Regency sold it to the Reichmann family of Canada for $21 million in 2005, and Paul Reichmann, the family patriarch and mega-supporter of Torah who passed away in 2013, invested some $150 million in turning the building — which has a preservation order on it — into the luxury hotel that was inaugurated a year after his passing.

Earlier this year, Reb Yosef Reichmann, nephew of Paul Reichmann and the man who spearheaded the project on behalf of the family, sat at the negotiating table opposite a newcomer to the Israeli real estate scene. Michel Ohayon, who bought the Waldorf from the Reichmann family for NIS 600 million, is the latest addition to the list of wealthy foreigners invested in Israel.

Until last year, Ohayon, an Orthodox multimillionaire who lives in Paris, wasn’t well-known in Israel, although he spends as much time as he can in the Holy City and says he feels fortunate to have made such an acquisition. “Everyone has a longing for Jerusalem,” Ohayon told Mishpacha. “There are cities like Tel Aviv all over the world, but no city touches the hearts of both Jews and non-Jews like Jerusalem.”

But it wasn’t only the opulent hotel he purchased. Ohayon says he feels like he also got an infusion of the Reichmann family’s spirit. “This hotel,” he says, “represents the family’s personality. Paul Reichmann was a modest man who spent every free minute learning Torah, who supported Torah institutions around the world, and who also had a vision of creating the ultimate hotel experience for affluent Orthodox clientele, with impeccable halachic standards and the special taam of Jerusalem. So not only did I purchase the hotel, I got a piece of his neshamah as well.”

And he also got a piece of Mrs. Esther Ruchi Reichmann’s vision. Esther Ruchi, wife of developer and manager Reb Yosef Reichmann, and is known as a veritable chesed machine in Jerusalem, supervised the design and decorating of the hotel while her husband dealt with the construction — a massive undertaking on both parts that took seven years. But, she told Mishpacha, “It was a labor of love.”

The results are evident. The hotel is elegant, sophisticated, and luxurious, yet not overstated in its design. It’s maintained its historic façade while servicing its guests of the modern era, and has come to world renown, having won the Conde Nast Traveler Award for Best Hotel in the Middle East.

Intertwined within the “neshamah” of the hotel, as Ohayon calls it, is the journey of Esther Ruchi herself, whose fingerprints are all over the building’s interior. Ohayon’s love for Eretz Yisrael would certainly find common ground with the Reichmanns’ own aliyah over four decades ago.

“It was overwhelming,” she admits today. Living in Eretz Yisrael in the 1970s was a culture shock, and eventually the couple moved back to America for eight years. “Although,” she says, “we always had in mind to come back.” They did move back, settling in the Shaarei Chesed neighborhood — back in the days before it became a bastion of Western opulence and was still home to people like Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rav Zundel Kroizer, Rav Yisroel Gustman, and other personalities of an older, simpler Jerusalem where the very cobblestones felt sanctified.

Juxtaposing the simplicity of Shaarei Chesed of the past with the sheer luxury of the Waldorf might seem counterintuitive, but for Esther Ruchi it’s just a part of life. “When we came to the neighborhood,” she says, “the poverty was huge. Instead of playing with toys, the kids would play games with acorns that fell from the trees and used small rocks for kugelach.”

It was here that she founded her famous “Reichmanns” gown gemach, which has been serving the Jerusalem public for years and is located in an apartment across the street from her home. “Years ago,” she remembers, “a friend of mine had ten children and they desperately needed gowns for a chasunah.” So she called a cousin in Toronto who sent her a suitcase filled with dresses — and eventually women around the country began to beat a path to her door. Today she receives a steady supply of gowns from private individuals and from gown rental stores.

Gowns are one thing, but decorating a multimillion-dollar hotel? “I wasn’t supposed to be involved at all,” she remembers. They had a decorating team from Turkey who was doing the designing, but when Esther Ruchi accompanied her husband overseas to view a mock-up room that the team was proposing, she knew something was missing.

Never one to forgo even the most daunting challenge, Esther Ruchi took a friend and fellow decorator, Chaya Shapiro, along on what was to become a seven-year journey. The two women traveled regularly, from Italy to Turkey to Germany to the Czech Republic to Luxembourg, acquiring furnishings, fabrics, tableware, lighting, and more. “Everything in the hotel had to be mehadrin l’halachah. That meant Shabbos-friendly guest rooms, mezuzahs on all doors, plenty of netilas yadayim sinks, a kosher spa, appropriate artwork, and no compromises.

“It’s the only hotel in the world with a zecher leChurban on the wall,” she said. “The hotel is close to the Kosel and we don’t want to forget we had a Beis Hamikdash and hope to have it again very soon.”

The Reichmann vision included a stunning atrium with a ceiling stretching up to the top floor of the hotel — which opens up, creating a massive succah. The artwork is all spiritual-themed, including pieces from Huvi, a 90-year-old artist from Meah Shearim, and Yoram Raanan. Mezuzahs were custom-made for the hotel with crystal the women had shipped back from the Czech Republic, tea sets were sent from Italy, dishes were from Luxembourg, and to keep the themes on track, each of the nine suites in the business center are named for a different shevet of the Twelve Tribes. The central theme that permeates the lobby is world peace in the time of Geulah, represented in much of the artwork as well as the massive clock with four faces etched in four languages.

When the Waldorf opened in 2014, the Reichmanns expected to recoup their initial investment over a period of six or seven years. But when the venture began to turn a profit much sooner than they expected, the Reichmanns, whose main business ventures don’t include running hotels, decided to make an exit.

Historic hotels are nothing new to the Waldorf’s latest owner. Ohayon owns an international real estate empire specializing in prestige hotels and commercial centers across Europe, and one of those he’s most proud of is the Trianon Palace in Versailles, which for the past decade has been part of the Waldorf Astoria chain. Like the old Palace Hotel in Jerusalem, this historic Paris property, built in 1909 beside the Palace of Versailles as a luxury hotel for Europe’s aristocracy, also saw its plans halted during World War I. The Trianon is probably a good indication of how Ohayon will run the Waldorf — focusing on  high-end clientele and giving them top-tiered service. In fact, in the past few years he unloaded a few hotels he owned that weren’t as prestigious and that served a lower-end clientele.

In the months since the deal was completed, Ohayon has signaled that he plans to take steps to upgrade the luxury hotel, his first real estate acquisition in Israel. He announced plans to include a separate upscale mehadrin restaurant, and to build a mikveh on the hotel’s roof, which he says will be the most magnificent such facility in the country.

“People who come to Jerusalem are looking for a different sort of experience,” he explains. “They aren’t seeking relaxation on the beach — they’re looking for something spiritual. The first thing I did before purchasing the hotel was to look at the rooftop. That’s the crown of the hotel, and I found two thousand square meters of space that is hardly being used.”

Since the sale, Ohayon has piqued the interest of the media, although he shies away from the attention, rarely grants interviews, and seldom appears at public events. He agreed to talk to Mishpacha, and with his heavy French accent, Ohayon, 58, described the siyata d’Shmaya that has permeated his business endeavors, and how grateful he is to be able to take over from where the Reichmanns left off.

“They set a very high standard with this establishment, and I want to pick up from that point,” he says. “The Waldorf Jerusalem is more than just a business — it’s a place of historical character, and where affluent Jews from around the world can feel at home in Jerusalem.”

One area where Ohayon won’t cut corners is in the culinary department. He has invited Gordon James Ramsay, a world-famous British chef whose restaurants currently hold three Michelin stars — the top rating in the international culinary industry — to the Waldorf to open the world’s first kosher restaurant under his culinary oversight.

“Ramsay is a childhood friend of mine,” Ohayon relates, “and there are very few hotels in the world that employ a chef of Ramsay’s caliber. With a chef like Ramsay, I’m confident that we’ll be able to create a world-class kitchen together with the highest standards of kashrus.”

Ohayon was born in Casablanca, and emigrated as a child with his parents to Bordeaux in southwestern France. His big business breakthrough came in the 1990s, when he took advantage of sinking real estate prices and bought a large building in Bordeaux’s city center. He then persuaded a major clothing chain to lease the building from him long-term. Eventually, leading clothing brands, such as GAP and Zara, became his tenants. Today his company — Financiere Immobiliere Bordelaise (FIB) — has properties all over France and in eight other countries. He’s been ranked as one of the wealthiest men in France, with personal worth estimated at some 650 million euro.

“Michel knows how to invest,” says Johannes Kadosh, a French Jew who lives in Raanana and is Ohayon’s business liaison in Israel. “He knows how to reinvent properties and to increase their commercial value exponentially. But you know, he’s a very quiet person and you’ll never get much out of him about himself.”

It’s said that Ohayon doesn’t make a move without consulting rabbanim, chief among them Rav Yekutiel Abuchatzeira of Ashdod. “Rav Yekutiel gave me his blessing to go through with the Waldorf deal,” Ohayon says.

In France, though, he considers himself a talmid of Rav Yitzchak Katz, the Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Paris (his son is a talmid in Rav Katz’s yeshivah). Rav Yitzchak Weill of Yeshivas Chochmei Tzarfas in Aix-les-Baines — the oldest yeshiva in France — has been his family’s rav for many years. Ohayon himself learned in Aix-les-Baines, under Rav Chaim Yitzchak Chaikin ztz”l, who was a talmid of the Chofetz Chaim. Rav Chaikin was invited to lead Chochmei Tzarfas in 1938 by Rav Elchanan Wasserman, whose son Rav Elazar Simcha who previously headed the yeshiva had immigrated to the United States. But that position lasted less than two years; World War II broke out and Rav Chaikin was drafted into the French Foreign Legion. At that time, the yeshivah closed its doors. After the war, though, Rav Chaikin reopened the yeshivah and held the position of rosh yeshivah for half a century.

Michel Ohayon is one of the wealthiest men in France, but he spends as much time in Eretz Yisrael as he can. And while he’s sitting on some of the most exclusive properties in Europe, he makes sure to stay spiritually focused.

“As Jews,” he says, “we know that it’s not about bridging a gap between two separate worlds. Rather, it’s all part of the same world. In recent years, we’re constantly being dazzled by new inventions and discoveries, but on a personal level, I know that the entire modern world is encapsulated in the Torah. So when people ask me how I integrate two different worlds, my answer is that I don’t. It’s all part of the same picture — a single world based on Torah.”

He’ll never forget his meeting with Rav Steinman ztz”l — he of an unfathomable level of wealth, Rav Steinman the picture of asceticism. “I visited his home in Bnei Brak, and I was shocked by both his humility and simplicity,” says Ohayon. “I’ll never forget the sight of his small table and aging seforim. Thousands of people — many of them men of great prestige — came to speak to him, while he sat on his bed and radiated the sense that this world is nothing but a vestibule, and that we are here only for a short time.”

He notes that from one lucrative property deal 25 years ago, his business mushroomed in a way he could never have imagined. “A person would have to be blind in order to fail to see the Divine Providence and the truth of emunah that is manifested at every moment and in every step he takes. I experience it in every stage of my business dealings,” he says. “For example, I know that keeping Shabbat at all costs is what’s helped me to succeed. In fact, as much as I would say I’m shomer Shabbat, I would say that Shabbat is shomer [protects] me.”

But then he adds, “I wish I were a truly spiritual person, yet I have not yet reached such a lofty plane. I am a simple Jew, trying to do Hashem’s will. I go to tzaddikim for their blessings, but after all is said and done, the guiding principle of my life is the concept of ‘gam zu l’tovah.’ When I’m about to close a deal, I tell myself, ‘If it succeeds — good. If not, that is also good.’ I remind myself that Hashem never does anything that isn’t good. I make my efforts, and Hashem does what is best in His eyes.

“When a business deal is not successful,” Ohayon continues, “I don’t ask myself where I went wrong. I only daven for it to work out better the next time. I know that even when I’m doing business, I am not really doing anything — just as Dovid Hamelech would go out to war but would ask Hashem to fight his battles for him.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 744)