Gabe Erem
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UJA-FEDERATION
Gabe Erem Knows Everyone
But Does That Include Dershowitz?
Story and Photos by TIM BOXER
 EVER
accept a dinner date with Lifestyles publisher Gabe Erem
if you’re hungry. Last time attorney Mark Baker went to a
restaurant with Gabe, it took 20 minutes to walk to their table. Abe
had to stop and greet everyone he knew.
Many of those friends came out to honor Gabe at
a UJA-Federation of New York dinner at the Pierre Hotel. The
Entertainment, Media & Communications Division presented him
with its inaugural Jerusalem Award.
“Gabe seems know everyone in the world!” Larry
King marveled.
Fanya Heller, Peter Malkin, Larry King,
Dr. Ruth Westheimer |
The CNN talk show host came up with a story
about a man who was skeptical of Gabe’s connections. He once bet
$1,000 that Gabe didn’t know Dwight Eisenhower.
They knocked on Ike’s door. The door opened
and the former general and president exclaimed, “Gabeleh, how nice
to see you!”
Still unconvinced, the skeptic wagered $10,000
that for sure Gabe didn’t know the pope. They go to the Vatican,
where the man waits in the courtyard while Gabe saunters inside.
There on the balcony is Abe with the pope. The
skeptic asks a passerby, “Is that the pope?” The man is not sure
and stops a nun. She looks up, squints, and says, “I can’t tell.
But the man next to him is Gabe Erem.”
Larry King |
That amused the guests, including Dr. Ruth
Westheimer (whom King called “a giant of sexual energy”),
ace public relations executive Howard Rubenstein, Merrill
Lynch vice chairman Stephen Hammerman, Kenneth Bialkin,
Ronald Lauder, and Peter Malkin, the Mossad
operative who captured Adolph Eichmann.
King, who emceed the program, called on Alan
Dershowitz to pay tribute to Gabe, but Dershowitz had not
arrived yet.
“I guess,” King quipped, “Gabe knows
everyone in the world except Alan Dershowitz.”
Dershowitz finally showed up and read a
proclamation from Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Yeshiva University president Dr. Norman Lamm
remarked, “Mark Baker
is an appeals lawyer. Alan Dershowitz is an appellate lawyer. I too
belong here – I too make appeals.”
William McDonough, president of the
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted that he “doesn’t
actually know Gabe that well.”
But he came to the dinner anyway because
“UJA-Federation is the best organization in the world for
distributing money wisely and well.”
Gabe Erem (right) with Larry King and CNN
publicist Erin Sermeus. |
Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman
Sachs International, warned that the economic outlook for the
country is bleak. The current slowdown is turning into a recession.
“Our future,” he said, “is not dependent
on what the Federal Reserve does, but what we do to educate the next
generation for the new economy of high tech.”
While America’s school system is failing, he
said that in 30 years China would have 800 million children with
high school and college diplomas.
“China will become a force in the world.”
To stay ahead, he said that America must train
its children for a knowledge-driven economy of high tech. “We must
do it by improving and reforming the public school system.”
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