Embattled Tycoon Comes to Pray

By COLlive reporter

Embattled Israeli tycoon Nochi Dankner came to the Lubavitcher Rebbe‘s resting place and synagogue before Rosh Hashana 5774 to pray for a more lucrative year.

He was accompanied by Lubavitch businessman Yossi Schneerson, the representative of Ukrainian Jewish businessman Alexander Granovsky who is bailing out Dankner’s debt-ridden IDB Group, one of Israel’s biggest conglomerates.

Despite current attempts by bondholders to seize his company, Dankner was all smiles as he toured Lubavitch Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.

He arrived holding his own tallis and tefillin bag and was honored with an aliya to the Torah in the Rebbe’s room which is used today for occasional prayers. He was then shown around the WLCC room that aired the Rebbe’s talks by its director R’ Chaim Boruch Halberstam.

Dankner, once described as the prince of Israel’s financial industry, also traveled to the Old Montefiore cemetery in Cambria Heights, Queens, to pray at the Ohel gravesite of the Rebbe.

If the Granovsky deal actualizes –IDB must first settle its obligations to its creditors and win court approval– Dankner will have the Rebbe to thank for saving his financial standing.

The mostly unknown Granovsky is planning the takeover of IDB through a company he controls through Chabad 770 BV, an investment firm whose chairman is Odessa’s Chief Rabbi Avrohom Wolf, a Chabad Shliach.

Granovsky decided to begin investing in Israel’s economy after visiting the Kfar Chabad village in 2007 with Wolf and watching a video of the Rebbe. “I saw that he had said that the best investment was in Israel, and that is what I am doing. I always dreamed about this,” he told Globes.

With all other efforts so far having failed, an intervention from the Rebbe might indeed be Dankner’s last hope.