1 View gallery <\/p>\n
![\"\u05de\u05d5\u05e8\u05d9\u05e1](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/SyYJIdC01l_0_0_3000_2000_0_x-large.jpg\" "\\"Morris")
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Morris Kahn. <\/p>\n
(Photo: Orel Cohen)<\/p>\n
The interview took place in the courtyard of his villa in Beit Yanai shortly after he turned 95. \u201cI came from a poor family,\u201d he said, \u201cbut today in the garage I have a Mercedes, a Porsche, and a Jaguar; in the port I have a yacht; at the airport I have a plane; and in front of the house there are horses they\u2019re trying to arrange so I can ride them with my oxygen cylinder.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t want to add years to my life, but life to my years,\u201d Kahn said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s a price for that. I do things to enjoy myself even if they shorten my life.\u201d He recalled being warned against diving because of the condition of his lungs. \u201cThey explained to me in detail all the ways diving could kill me. I said, \u2018Okay, but this is what I want to do, and this is what I will do.\u2019 And so I did.\u201d He added that he continued smoking until two years ago. \u201cI remember the pleasures to the end. I forget the regrets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI live like a prince, but I earned it honestly, and I also help people,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Kahn acknowledged the physical decline that came with age but emphasized the importance of mental clarity. \u201cI no longer have the strength and drive I once had. But that\u2019s okay, as long as I don\u2019t lose my intelligence, because that\u2019s who I am. My body betrays me in a way, but I can still continue with what I have,\u201d he said, speaking through a speaker connected to a hearing aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe secret is love,\u201d he added. \u201cIt\u2019s an important spice in life. I like to be with people who inspire me. I\u2019m lucky that I\u2019ve always been able to do what I wanted. A beach in Thailand is nothing compared to what I have here in my bedroom.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kahn was among the first generation of Israeli high-tech billionaires. He founded Yellow Pages in the late 1960s and was one of the founders of the software giant Amdocs. In the 1970s, he also founded Coral World, which established the Underwater Observatory in Eilat. The company, now run by his son Benji Kahn, went on to develop underwater centers around the world, including in Australia, Hawaii, and Spain.<\/p>\n
In the final years of his life, Kahn devoted himself primarily to philanthropy, investing an estimated $200 million. He was particularly committed to biomedical research, channeling roughly $50 million into the field. Among his investments was the establishment of a manufacturing laboratory for Precise Bio, a company developing technology to print corneas, and eventually retinas, for eye transplants.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmdocs is the past,\u201d Kahn said. \u201cIt gave me satisfaction and financial security, which allowed me to do what I do now. Is there anything more important than saving a person\u2019s life? That\u2019s the only thing that gives satisfaction. Otherwise, what is life? You are born, you live, and you die. I don\u2019t want to be the richest person in the cemetery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, I\u2019m no longer a billionaire, but a millionaire,\u201d he added. \u201cWhere did the money go? Philanthropy. I also intend to leave my children only a reasonable amount, not everything. The rest will go to philanthropy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most prominent public project Kahn financed was Beresheet, which in 2019 carried the first Israeli spacecraft to the moon. The probe ultimately crashed on the lunar surface due to human error. \u201cI\u2019m proud of this project,\u201d Kahn said. \u201cWe were the first non-governmental organization to reach the moon with relatively limited resources. We did it in a very innovative way, by hitchhiking on a rocket that orbited the Earth.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe landing failed. it was a hard landing,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the main thing is that we reached the moon. It had enormous educational value. It made children dress up as astronauts on Purim.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kahn was born in South Africa but struggled to find his place under the apartheid regime. At the age of 25, he immigrated to Israel and purchased a farm in Moshav Beit Yanai. His early business ventures in Israel largely failed. The turning point came in 1967, when he won a Ministry of Communications tender to market telephone directories through a company he founded, Dapey Zahav.<\/p>\n
In 1982, he partnered with Avi Naor and Boaz Dotan to establish Orek Information, a company focused on computerizing telephone directories. The firm sold services in the U.S. through an American entity called Amdocs, which later evolved into a developer of billing and customer-management software for telecommunications companies. Three years later, the business was sold to Southwestern Bell.<\/p>\n
In 1998, Amdocs was listed on the U.S. stock exchange at a valuation of $2.75 billion, and Kahn sold shares worth approximately $1 billion in the offering. In 2004, he also sold his holdings in Yellow Pages to the Markstone fund, netting an additional half a billion shekels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Morris Kahn, an Israeli billionaire entrepreneur and businessman and a co-founder of Amdocs, passed away at the age…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[61,60,82,247],"class_list":{"0":"post-221693","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}