Blankfein Wins Laughs With WASP Joke at UJA Wall Street Dinner

(Bloomberg) -- The job of entertaining 2,000 guests at Monday’s Wall Street Dinner benefitting UJA-Federation fell to former Goldman Sachs CEO, serial tweeter and Elizabeth Warren target Lloyd Blankfein.

The moment required levity. Remarks had been serious, emphasizing UJA’s support of initiatives in New York, Israel and dozens of other countries that foster Jewish identity and provide for the poor. The organization also is helping synagogues secure funding for security measures in a world where anti-Semitism and attacks driven by religious hatred are on the rise.

UJA Chairman David Moore, a private equity investor, emphasized that some charities are better examples of tzedakah -- or righteous giving -- than others.

“When you’re allocating your own philanthropy, make sure that an organization like UJA-Federation gets at least equal footing with the charities, that in one way or another, dovetail back to helping ourselves and our own families,” like a children’s school, he said, before calling Blankfein to the lectern.

“I was just re-upping my pledge,“ Blankfein opened, before delivering a joke about Dan Och that got the biggest laugh of the night.

Seated next to each other on the dais at the New York Hilton Midtown, the two had apparently spent time catching up on their career moves -- Blankfein departing Goldman Sachs and Och leaving his hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management to focus on his family office, Willoughby Capital.

“I used to think of him by a firm with a different name, but now it’s Willoughby Capital,” Blankfein said. “So I think yet another Jew has changed his name trying to pass in a WASP-y world.”

The event raised $31 million and honored BlackRock co-founder Barbara Novick -- the first woman to receive the Gustave L. Levy Award -- and Angelo Gordon co-Chief Investment Officer Adam Schwartz, who received the Alan C. Greenberg Young Leadership Award. The videos about them leaned heavily on testimonials from the Jewish women in their lives. Aileen Novick called her daughter-in-law “a whiz in the kitchen.” Schwartz’s mother Ellen Levy said, “He is what you see, which is damn good.”

Guests on the dais included Blackstone’s David Blitzer, Glenview Capital’s Larry Robbins, Saba Capital’s Boaz Weinstein, John Paulson, Abby Joseph Cohen, Alexandra Lebenthal and former Goldman Sachs partner Stacy Bash-Polley, who closed the program with a Wall Street woman’s perspective on Novick.

“Women who want to succeed at the highest level and still find time with their families are often told they need to pick one. Barbara didn’t do that,” Bash-Polley said.

Rather, the honoree is an example of how to live a well-rounded life, Bash-Polley said, “as an executive, a mother, a mentor -- and for 16 years, a coach of the Westchester Youth Soccer League.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Amanda Gordon in New York at agordon01@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Pierre Paulden at ppaulden@bloomberg.net, Steven Crabill, Peter Eichenbaum

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