New York – In an exclusive 8 page interview with Mishpacha magazine, Michael Bloomberg, the incumbent mayor of New York, reflects upon his tenure as one of the city’s most popular chief executives.
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A billionaire who’s taken on New York City as a philanthropic gesture, Bloomberg shares a confident prognosis for the city’s economy. In a nostalgic look at the past, he discusses his upbringing as a Jewish boy in an Irish and Italian neighborhood and lovingly reminisces about his biggest fan — his still-agile 100-year-old mother. Most poignantly of all, he discusses what it means to be a Jewish mayor of the world’s largest Jewish city.
Below is some excerpts of the interview.
Bloomberg who hails from a modest, but more religious, upbringing. “My father was a bookkeeper for a dairy company from Chelsea, Massachusetts. His
father was a rabbi, who I’m sure made most of his money from tutoring kids for their bar mitzvah. He came over here at age six, maybe from Lithuania, said Bloomberg.
In the interview Bloomgerg said “I’m still trying to learn the Yiddish language. My parents would speak Yiddish when they didn’t want my sister and me to
know what they were talking about. They were fluent enough in the language to keep us guessing what they were saying.”
The mayor also revealed that his mother and sister still keep a kosher kitchen.
The mayor talks about his family’s personal experience of anti-semitism here in the U.S.
In the early 1950s there was a business convention in Miami Beach, Florida, and my father was invited to attend. So my mother goes to the library and gets books on what you do, how you dress, what you say at conventions, what happens at conventions. My father gets to the desk in Miami Beach to check in, and the clerk behind the desk says, ‘Bloomberg, Bloomberg, is that Jewish?’ My father said: ‘Yes.’ The clerk said: ‘We don’t take Jews.’ Somebody made a fuss, and he got in. But when he got back, we discussed discrimination around the table.
Bloomberg also discuss his steadfast support for the state of Israel.
The entire interview can be read in this weeks Mishpacha Magazine available at you local newsstand
Mischpacha is the most prominent news magazine in BP…it is valuable to have BLoomberg tell his jewish stories to us…thank you VIN
mi kiam cha yisroel! four more years!
blombergs kids must be proud of him!
Really, now? Then what has he to say about his attack on bris milah?
lets vote for bloomie created the 311 which is a great system
Mayor Bloomberg attended Rosh Hashanah services at a Reform synagogue this year.
look i agree that bloomberg is the better choice than thompson
but c’mon whats with politicians pandering to religious groups. do you think bloomberg gives a hoot about judaism? he’s just buying votes and promising earmarks to those large frum groups and chassiduses and institutions that endorse him.
hey not that anything is wrong with earmarks- as long as it goes to groups that only you care about.
I see his love for Judaism
Tickets 24/7
Increase in real estate taxes
Bike lanes on every street in Willi. He promised it will be taken off the day after elections………………………………………………………………
Voucher program till one day after election………………………………………
I’m sickened. He’s a slick glib flatterer who knows exactly how to play the game. He’s so shrewd and knows just what to say to each group he sits down with so that they think he’s for them and they mindlessly give him their support and their votes. Its a shame that more people don’t see through him. He’s only for HIMSELF.
isnt he pro toaiva and SS
“The mayor also revealed that his mother and sister still keep a kosher kitchen.”
that tells us that he’s not a Tinuk Shenishbo, rather he’s simply an opikoros.
Mayor Bloomberg had frum Parents and he is a mechalul shabbos? Now why should I vote for a person that is left his religion behind? He also seems to forget throughout his term how his brothers struggle and does nothing to help. Shame on him. Vote Thompson!
Bloomberg has done less for us than any other mayer, much less than Giuliani. Why people are stupid to vote for a mayor that has cost our yeshivas and all of us so much, is beyond my mind. People who support this mechalel shabbos and are selling us out will give din vcheshbon. Mechalelehu Mos Yimos, and while as of today we have no Bes Din that could implement this pasuk in the Torah, Hashem still keeps his Torah and as we say Yitamu Chataim Min Haarets. Let we see it n our days before he starts a third term.
Mishpacha always manages to take it to the next level. Classy and compelling.
Please! The Mayors daughter married a non jew.
The Mayor in the past 8 years has given over $750million in charity. All his charitable donations are public knowledge. Except for the MDA ambulance donation once in Eretz Yisroel, The Mayor has given “Nothing” to any jewish and especially any orthodox causes. It is nice to reminice about his jewish past. But, Mamish zero?? He is not required to give, Its his money. But don’t come with shaina maasahlech about yiddiskeit.
Mr. Mayor, there are so many worthy charitable causes by the Frum jews, that you are now courting. Our causes are still as good as the Apollo Theatre, African Dancing Troupes, Black cultural causes, etc. Don’t get me wrong. They too should be fully supported.
Honorable Mayor! if you are so proud to be a Yid –Substantial Contributions to a Bonei Olam, RCC (Cancer), Shuvu, Mekimi, Areivim, etc. etc. (all unaffiliated)would go a long way to prove your proudness..
Do we look that stupid and gullible to him? I hope not!
Money is an indicator of where a persons heart rests. It doesn’t say everything but it is a guide to a persons love and interest.
As one said, “Money cannot buy happiness, But its good for a down payment”.
I think he would make a better president then mayor
Yes, Bloomberg might have had a grandfather a rabbi, )not a pulpit rabbi but a rabbi who prepares a boy for his Bar Mitzvah); but he himself Mike Bloomberg knows nothing of Yiddishkeit; he didn’t even know not to say on his visit to Boro Park that I he was coming form a church in Manhattan. It reminds me when Mayor Ed Koch was running the first time and his father came with him to Williamsburg. His father not knowing anything about Hashkofeh’s in Klal Yisroel, announced in Yiddish that “Mein Velvel Hut Leeb Medinas Yisroel”; everyone smiled but didn’t say a word. Yes Mike’s Yiddishkeit is much less then Ed Koch’s Yiddishkeit. Their father’s, maybe the same, their grandfathers and great grandfather’s surely the same.
Bloomberg’s Jewishness is at best irrelevant and shouldn’t be a factor in our helping to decide the outcome of this election. Apart from the fact that promoting his identity with whatever ethnic group whose favor he is trying to curry is the stock-in-trade of every politician, Bloomberg has not demonstrated anything particularly favorable to our communities. In fact, he promotes measures that make our lives harder. In my opinion he is an autocrat who, if he could manage it, is perfectly comfortable with forcing people to eat what he thinks we should eat, smoke when and where and if at all, etc. In other words, he is a fascist just as is Obama, Kennedy, Pelosi, ad nauseam, who are liberal in name only. But what other choice do we have in this current election; none. Our only protection derives from the constraints placed upon the mayor’s free exercise of power within the belly of this behemoth called New York City.
Maybe you can explain something to a dummy like me, why everyone is fawning and salivating and giving kudos to both Mishpacha and to the Mayor for meeting?
Honorable Mayor, you were Mayor 8 years, how many times did you meet with Mishpacha (or for that matter the Hamodia).
Dear Mishpacha, if not that his Honor is running now, would he be meeting with you. For 8 years there was a shidduch crisis. The Mayor and the Mishpacha didn’t meet or go out. Suddenly, liebshaft, a liking, developed and they met and are best smiling friends.
I am not voting for him he raised my real estate taxes. I tell, emai, text, all my friends and family NOT to vote for him.
hopefully he will loose, let him take more money from the holywood people who come here and close down our streets and bridges to shoot movies. let him go after the diplomates to pay their parking tickets.
The holy Skulener Rebbe shouldn’t have met with him. He’s an apikorus by his own admission. His lack of judaism is no surprise. Hashem distances himself from haughty and arrogant people. He’s the most self obsessed politician and they all are known for being all about themselves. True he’s wealthy and on his way to being the richest man in the usa so why can’t he share that wealth with his fellow brothers. I bet if they asked him that he’d get mad as he always does when challenged by a valid claim. You know that face he makes. I’m just sick of his smug face. Enough with his filth let him rule and dictate to some other state.
It looks to me that he remembers of been Jewish only before election, but I still vote for him, because Thompson is not much better
It is a shame that Mishpacha whom I happen to love as a magasine, did not bother to ask Mayor Bloomberg, when he was last at his father’s grave? He was about 18 years old at the time. It is in the new biographry called MAYOR by George Purnick! I guess he has time to go from country to country, but no time for his father!!
Sure Bloomberg raised RE taxes, and parking tickets. But I’m sure Thompson would lower all these costs because he is a real fiscal conservative. All u Bloomberg haters; if u think Thompson would be better u r a bunch of fools.
Bloomberg is opening a Moslem cultural public school funded with public money, a Jewish thing?
Lolly pop heads, vote Bloomberg, but when you come out of your office and find that your car has been towed for some petty violation, close your eyes and say “where was my brains”?
Bloomberg is so in touch with his jewish roots? and you people are buying this nonsense? do none of you remember the previous VIN article that reported how Gloomberg merrily fresses on treif and shell fish etc? But to get the Jewish voting block he will brown nose israel (which doesnt help me since i live in, and worry about what he does for Brooklyn not Tel Aviv) and now he declares he wants to wants to learn yiddish?
FEH on Gloomberg גיין צוריק צו באָסטאָן
VOTE THOMPSON!!! We can’t afford Bloomberg!!!
Don’t you get it guys; its all politics i.e. saying the right things to the right crowd, period!