(Steven Alan Weinberg)
January 27, 1942 —

Steve Wynn’s birth name is “Weinberg.” Instead of changing his Jew name, Steve’s father should have changed their goblin-esque facial features. Changing your name won’t do you any good, Brogkaal. Wynn, the CEO of Wynn Resorts, was accused of sexual misconduct by several employees in a Wall Street Journal story published last month. Wynn, who is Jewish, resigned as CEO of his Las Vegas casino empire in February 2018, following multiple reports that he sexually harassed employees and led a sexually exploitative workplace culture. He is the man that many feel led to the revitalization of the Las Vegas strip in the 1990s. Wynn’s birth name was Steven Alan Weinberg. However, when Baby Steven was just six months old, his father changed his name to Wynn, apparently “to avoid anti-Jewish discrimination.”.

In the 1950s and early 60s, there were certain assumptions you could make about your New York Jews: They lived in Brooklyn (or, believe it or not, Newark), ate at kosher Jewish delis, and spent their winter vacations in the Catskills.

The so-called Borscht Belt, the Catskills were a collection of Jewish-owned resorts in the mountainous region located in the tuchus of New York State. These skiing shtetls catered specifically to the Jewish patron with kosher meals, kosher comedians, even kosher mountains featuring gentle, modest slopes that would be reserved for the young or infirm in a more high-end ski mecca like Vermont or Colorado. Perfect for your Tanta Ida or your Uncle Chaim.

Nowadays, Brooklyn still has some Jews, but there are towns in Poland that have more evidence of their formerly Jewish roots than Newark does. The New York Jewish deli is a dying breed — most surviving on as tourist traps with almost none of them conforming to kashrut. And, at this point, visiting the Catskills is like visiting good old Tanta Ida at the nursing home, strained carrots and all.

So where's a young, Jewish, hotelier like Steve Wynn to go to make his fortune these days?

Vegas, baby, Vegas! Sure the gambling, glitz and glamor is about as far removed from the Catskills as Jackie Mason is from Cirque de Soleil, but you take what you can get in this assimilated society and Steve Wynn certainly has got while the getting was good.

Has it cost us some cultural identity? Sure. But you want to turn down all-you-can-eat shrimp for a bowl of borscht? What are you, meshuggenah?

Verdict: Jew.

August 1, 2009

A break-in occurred at the office of Senator Dean Heller, a Republican representing Nevada, on Saturday, July 15. Heller is a crucial swing vote in the current and chaotic effort to pass the Senate health care repeal bill. Apparently, a threatening note was left in his office as well.

This Watergate-esque news comes as little surprise — Heller has been targeted ever since he first expressed his opposition to the GOP-backed healthcare legislation. Major players in the constant and escalating smear campaign against him have unfortunately, included two internationally prominent Jewish figures, Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn.

Two weeks ago, I was saddened and frankly, embarrassed to read that Adelson and Wynn bullied Heller, who had honorably stood his ground against the extremely unpopular rewrite (according to a June 28 NPR/PBS NewsHour poll, just 17 percent of Americans support the legislation).

Of the original five GOP detractors, Heller was the only one who stated that his opposition was based on concern for the vulnerable. For the other four, the bill was not conservative enough.

As the New York Times reported on June 30, following a vicious advertising campaign launched against Heller, both Adelson and Wynn (the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee) eagerly did President Donald Trump’s bidding and contacted Heller in what sounds like nothing less than very personal, very aggressive harassment.

“Both billionaire donors are close to Mr. Trump, a fellow tycoon,” states the Times article. “Mr. Adelson played a pivotal role in Mr. Trump’s election, showering Republican groups last year with tens of millions of dollars. Mr. Wynn…oversaw a fund-raiser on Wednesday at the president’s Washington hotel that Mr. Trump said had raised about $7 million for the party committee and his re-election campaign.”

Obviously, their staunch support of a philanderer who bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, dodged the draft three times, was thrice married with admitted adultery, withholds his taxes, pulled out of the global climate accord, serially breaks promises, grossly offends world leaders and sinks to the lowest level of online behavior is disturbing enough.

But especially given that they both grew up in poverty, it is simply unconscionable for them to turn their backs on the 22 million Americans who would be kicked off health care.

I was reminded of Bob Kraft’s recent comments at the Cannes Film Fest where, in what the Boston Globe called “words of wisdom,” he said that Trump’s economic plan “will be excellent for America and the Western world.” That wasn’t enough.

“One of my big concerns is that people like ourselves have done well, but working-class people have not,” Kraft continued in his defense of the president. “It behooves us to get government working together to take care of them and get them the proper health care.”

Let’s just say that the myriad of on-site comments were, pretty unanimously, none too flattering. Many were trolls for sure, but sometimes trolls’ unmitigated thoughts have a distinct ring of truth.

Huge (duly named and accredited on buildings) donations to Jewish causes from among these three men’s billions do not negate following, in words and actions, our Biblical precepts.

Proverbs 14:31 and 31:9 state: “He that oppresses the poor blasphemes his maker, but he that is gracious to the poor honors God,” and “Speak up, judge righteously, Champion the poor and needy.”

Often in these days, despite the fact that Trump lost the popular vote by 3 million, those of us who care deeply about the planet we live on and the poor and disenfranchised, who adhere to the belief that every human being was made in God’s image, and who try our best to follow the best of Judaic precepts feel that we are alone on a deserted island.

Yet with July 4 just behind us, Founding Father James Madison’s words that “In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority” seem apt, as does Samuel Adams’s quip that “It does not take a majority to prevail… but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.”

But Sholom Aleichem said it best: “Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.”

Is Steve Wynn Jewish

Adelson’s and Wynns’s actions are both the ultimate in greed and the ultimate abandonment of Jewish values. And with his sycophantic clinging to Trump’s apron strings, Kraft appears more clueless than these gambling moguls, but is nonetheless as dangerously mistaken.