A Bensalem Jewish Outreach Center event (Courtesy of the Bensalem Jewish Outreach Center )
The Bensalem Jewish Outreach Center is hosting its annual Community Seder on April 1 and 2. This year, the leader of the seders will be Ira Perlmuter, “one of the top advisors to billionaire family offices worldwide,” according to a Bensalem Jewish Outreach Center Facebook post.
Perlmuter will read the Haggadah, take attendees around the seder plate and perhaps impart the wisdom of a Shomer Shabbos Jew who has completed several billion dollars worth of business transactions.
Ira Perlmuter (Courtesy of Ira Perlmuter)
The annual Community Seder is a public but intimate event. While the BJOC advertises it through email campaigns, Facebook posts, flyers at grocery stores and lawn signs, it usually only sells 20-40 tickets, according to Rabbi Daniel Miller, the synagogue’s director of outreach. They will pay between $25 (child, one seder) and $70 (adult, both seders) to go through a full seder with Orthodox laws.
Miller’s goal is to offer Jews from all backgrounds access to an authentic Jewish experience. But access to Perlmuter may also be an attraction.
“If anyone’s interested in high-stakes finance, wealth management, he’ll add that element,” Miller said. “Also, the idea of Jewish success, how you can be a successful businessman and a religious person.”
Perlmuter worked for Chase Manhattan Bank before opening his own financial-advisory firm, Advisory Services. Currently, he heads IJP Family Partners, a family-office advisory firm based in New Jersey. He has served as an advisor to the Ghermezian family (known for shopping and entertainment complexes like The Mall of America), the Jay Schottenstein family (known for brands like American Eagle and Value City) and other family offices. He has also worked with the U.S. Department of Commerce to develop an event to introduce minority and women-owned businesses to family offices and co-founded the Cleantech Family Office Syndicate, a group of 12 family offices that do clean-tech investing.
The investor specializes in buyouts and restructurings. He describes this work as informed by the Jewish value of tikkun olam.
“I buy companies in bankruptcy, and I rescue jobs; I rescue companies,” he said. “It’s the value of tikkun olam, fixing the world, and giving people another chance to be successful financially after they have lost their way.”
Perlmuter is not a media figure. You won’t find a bunch of articles, profiles and interviews if you Google him. But he is a public figure, as he speaks at organizations and conferences around the country.
Though he often speaks about business and finance, Perlmuter also tries to spread Jewish values and practices. Rabbi Miller actually met him at a conference in Atlanta for an Orthodox Jewish outreach organization.
“I met a guy named Ira. I didn’t know much about his background, that he’s a business professional in the world of high finance. He is very passionate about teaching,” the rabbi said.
That was last summer. Months later, at another Jewish conference, Miller was talking to an acquaintance about how he needed someone to lead his annual seder this year. The man recommended Perlmuter.
“Right away, he’s like, ‘I got the perfect guy for you. His name is Ira,’” Miller recalled. “Fast forward a couple of weeks, and we’ve confirmed. I’ve spoken to him on the phone.”
Perlmuter had never led a community seder before, but he decided to say yes.
“I think it’s a key value in the Torah, to share our tradition with Jews and other people,” he said.
Rabbi Miller expects “a spectrum of people” to attend the event. There will likely be unaffiliated Jews, religious Jews and Jews somewhere in between.
The rabbi wants them to “walk away with inspiration, feeling accomplished, feeling like you’ve gone through a seder session reliving the Exodus and the birth of the Jewish nation, and all of the lessons that those stories bake in, the idea that Hashem takes care of us, which is very important in this day and age,” he said.
“Every year, we get people for whom it’s their first time walking into a synagogue, their first time attending a seder, their first time doing an activity with the Jewish community,” the rabbi added. “They should walk away saying, ‘I enjoyed that; I gained from that.’”
Perlmuter can achieve this goal, which is why the rabbi is giving him “latitude” in how he’ll lead the event.
Tickets can still be ordered at bensalemoutreach.org. Rabbi Miller is also happy to answer questions at [email protected].