• His Rabbi’s reaction
• What he has done for Jewish causes
• From accounts clerk to ‘cash for honours’
• The family man from Mill Hill
09/03/2007
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet
Several days before Rosh Hashanah, last year, I approached Lord Levy and asked whether he would be willing to help with the fundraising for the new Mill Hill Synagogue redevelopment. In what was hardly a few seconds consideration, he readily agreed. That’s the Michael I came to know over the years; a man who is committed to help wherever he can. He sought my permission to speak to people during the services over Rosh Hashanah and raised in excess of one and half million pounds. It is precisely his level of conviction that touches a cord in others and evokes within them the corresponding will to respond.
In our flippant world of half-baked commitments, Lord Levy stands out as a rare example of someone who gives 100 per cent to what he believes in. The Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, once described him to me as “the most dynamic Jew in Anglo-Jewry”. His involvement extends far beyond his ability to raise funds but is expressed in the hands on approach as well. Whether transforming Jewish Care to be the premier care organisation of its kind, serving as a governor of the JFS, and then as its president, spearheading the Community Services Volunteers, it all reflects the desire to make a difference. Hence his involvement with the Labour party over the many years, and in particular his role as envoy to the Middle East. He has been directly involved in warding off crises facing the Jewish community, such as the ban on shechita or more recently the faith school saga.
I have observed on many occasions the mean spiritedness so prevalent in this country. The pressure at the moment is immense, and the hordes of photographers camped outside his house many mornings, takes its invariable toll on his family. The blatant nastiness in some of the tabloids and the recent seeming trial by media beggars belief.
The Anglo-Jewish community takes great pride in such beacons as Lord Levy and continues to stand behind him with full support. I have every confidence in his integrity and believe wholeheartedly that he will prevail.
Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet
Rachel Fletcher
Lord Levy has “helped raise tens of millions of pounds” for Jewish Care, according to the charity’s chief executive Simon Morris.
Lord Levy, who took up the presidency of Anglo-Jewry’s foremost welfare organisation in 1998 after serving as chairman from 1992, “has always worked tirelessly and passionately for Jewish Care”, he said.
“Michael is enormously proud of the way Jewish Care has developed into one of the largest and most highly respected providers of health and social care services in Europe and fully endorses our vision to be the best. He is also very supportive of our staff and volunteers who help us meet the community’s needs.
“Michael is driven by a genuine desire to improve the lives of the most frail and vulnerable members of the community. You only have to look at the warmth on his face when he visits our services and meets our clients to see just how much it means to him.”
His charitable leadership began with UJIA, where he was national campaign chair and honorary vice-president and is now honorary president.
Chief executive Doug Krikler, said: “We are hugely appreciative of the contribution he has made over many years both to our community here and in Israel”.
One of the peer’s newest roles is as president of the Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade, which is holding a reception in London on March 20 to mark his inauguration. Chairman Norman Terret, said: “He has done wonderful work in the world of charity, both Jewish and non-Jewish and we are not involved in these political matters that are raising their head.
“A lot of our kids go to JFS and are involved in Community Service Volunteers, both of which Lord Levy is president. He is an extremely nice man and is a person who cares about other people.”
Since 2000, Lord Levy has also been patron of the Save a Child’s Heart charity which carries out free heart surgery on sick children around the world, including Israel, the Occupied Territories and China.
As president of JFS School, he was instrumental in helping the school fund its move from its former Camden site to its new building in Kenton.
His Jewish charitable endeavours also include membership of the executive committee of Chai Lifeline and vice-chairmanship of the Central Council for Jewish Social Services. He is patron of the Friends of Israel Educational Trust, of Simon Marks Jewish Primary School Trust, and a trustee of the Holocaust Educational Trust.
Bernard Josephs
A DINNER in Wimbledon, South-West London, in 1993 was the place where one of the most significant relationships in Labour Party history began.
It was hosted by QC Eldred Tabachnik, soon to be Board of Deputies president and a Labour supporter who had shared chambers with Tony Blair.
Using this connection, he had invited Mr Blair, then Shadow Home Secretary, to meet some potential Labour donors. Among them was Michael Levy, who had made his name in the music industry and was becoming an influential figure within the Jewish community.
Speaking about the dinner for the first time, Mr Tabachnik told the JC [Jewish Chronicle]: “Blair wanted to raise funds for the party so I used him as the carrot to attract the donors. I think this was the initial meeting between Blair and Levy. I knew they would get on well.
“Blair has a likeable personality and it was clear even at that early stage that [he and] Levy would develop a warm and open relationship. Blair saw him as one who would contribute a lot to the party. Michael is an able and effective communicator.”
Another early meeting was in 1994, at a London dinner party hosted by Israel envoy Gideon Meir.
As the Blair-Levy friendship developed, the two became tennis partners and Levy turned his talents to boosting the Labour coffers in advance of its landslide 1997 election victory.
His star rose further when he was ennobled as Baron Levy of Mill Hill and, while continuing his fundraising for the party, was appointed Tony Blair’s personal envoy to the Middle East.
But it was not a painless procession to the corridors of power from East London, where his immigrant parents lived modestly, close to Hackney’s Walford Road Synagogue where his father Samuel was shammas.
Michael Levy’s first job was as an articled clerk in the City offices of chartered accountants, Lubbock Fine. Smartly dressed and eager to please, the 16-year-old was “absolutely brilliant and immediately on the ball”, recalled retired partner David Levy (no relation). “He had a very keen mind, he was competitive and he always had his eye on the end result. He became a very able chartered accountant and we have kept in contact ever since.”
Despite his humble background, the young employee always wore sharp clothes and, having bought his first car, maintained it “immaculately”.
He set up M Levy and Co in 1966, and in 1973 launched Magnet Records, enjoying a string of hits with artists including Chris Rea and Alvin Stardust. The label was bought for around £10 million by Warner Brothers Records in 1988.
His high-profile political activities have been met with suspicion, jealousy and more than a hint of antisemitism. Nicknamed “Lord Cashpoint” for using his fabled gladhanding abilities to prise money from the wealthy, it was his largely self-financed globe-trotting on behalf of the Prime Minister that attracted the most vitriol.
Asked in a JC interview whether it was his perceived role as one of “Tony’s cronies” or his Jewish involvements that sparked the sneers, he replied: “I don’t know. My roots have always been Labour and being a leader of our community is a badge I wear with immense pride.”
A particularly stinging remark was made in 2002 by Sir Christopher Meyer, Britain’s Ambassador to the United States, who said that the Saudi and Jordanian royal families had told him the peer was “not terribly welcome in their countries and that he was received only out of friendship for Tony Blair”. Lord Levy termed the comment a “betrayal.”
Other critics highlighted his support of Israel, his home in exclusive Herzliya and his close ties with the Israeli Labour Party. How, they asked, could he be seen as an impartial broker representing the Prime Minister in the Middle East? In fact, he fell out with Ariel Sharon, walking out of a meeting with the then Israeli Prime Minister.
Yet despite difficulties with Whitehall officials and reportedly frosty relations with Robin Cook and Jack Straw, there were undoubted successes. High on the list were talks with Syria’s President Assad in Damascus and the brokering of discussions between Yasir Arafat and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
“I always travel with officials of the Foreign Office and I always work closely with ambassadors of the countries I’m visiting,” Lord Levy once told the JC. “Many ambassadors have been very grateful to me for opening doors.”
Even Mr Cook responded to a 2002 attack on Lord Levy by praising his “great skill and diplomatic charm”. And as the peer contemplates stepping down as envoy when Tony Blair leaves Downing Street, other Labour MPs have acknowledged his contribution.
Liverpool MP Louise Ellman, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, expressed “tremendous respect” and regretted that he had attracted “a lot of jealousy”. In the wider world, he is described as “an inspirational president” of Community Service Volunteers. Said a CSV spokesman: “He is passionate about volunteers and can invariably find a link with any volunteer or trainee he meets through his family, work or other passions.”
As one impressed onlooker recounted: “When he is raising funds and someone makes him an offer, he smiles and says: ‘You can do better than that.’ He keeps going until he gets the figure he wants and expects.”
Mill Hill minister Rabbi Yitzchak Schochet confided that whereas “the world sees the pubic persona of a very successful fundraiser, mediator, and philanthropist, in my weekly shiur with Lord Levy, I also get to see a man with deep religious and moral convictions, whose Jewish identity forms the hallmark of his life. He would probably have made a great rabbi”.
As well as well-publicised charitable work, the rabbi spoke of numerous instances where he has stepped in to help in a totally unassuming manner.
He said: “He asked for my permission that he spend some time during the services on Rosh Hashanah to raise money for the new Mill Hill Synagogue building project. He raised over a million in pledges before we hit musaf!”
Jan Shure
When Gilda Altbach married Michael Levy in 1967, she probably did not expect the newly qualified chartered accountant to rejoice in the title of Baron Levy of Mill Hill by the time they were due to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary.
The couple, who now live in a £10 million mansion off the exclusive Highwood Hill in Totteridge, began their married life in The Ridgway, Stanmore, a fairly typical North-West London suburban street of three and four-bedroom houses.
Their current home is a 1930s property, surrounded by Green Belt land, with its own indoor pool and the tennis court where Tony Blair played regularly.
According to a local estate agent, the eight-bedroom property was “ripped to bits in the 1960s or ’70s” and then extensively rebuilt to be turned into “a contemporary home” by its current occupants.
In 2003, the peer and his wife were attacked there and handcuffed by raiders who escaped with jewellery.
The Levys have owned a second home in the prosperous residential area of Herzliya Pituach for almost 30 years. Their current property is conveniently close to the resort’s tennis courts.
Their first child, Daniel Edward, born on June 17, 1968, at St Bart’s Hospital in London, was campaigns organiser for the Union of Jewish Students in the early 1990s. After emigrating to Israel with a masters degree from Cambridge, he served as senior policy adviser to former Israeli Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin and served Prime Minister Ehud Barak as a special adviser and head of the Jerusalem Affairs unit.
Currently senior fellow and director of the Middle East Policy initiative at the New America Foundation, he was also a member of the Israeli delegation to the Taba talks in 2001 and was involved with Beilin’s abortive Geneva Accords peace bid.
Invitations went out this week to his wedding this summer to his South American fiancée.
Their second child, Juliet, two years younger than Daniel, is a former member of the Jewish Lads’ and Girls’ Brigade – a connection which may have encouraged her father to take on the presidency of the youth organisation.
Lady Levy and her daughter were, controversially, among some 250 British Jews who signed advertisements in 2002 strongly critical of the policies of Israel’s then Premier Ariel Sharon and calling for the evacuation of West Bank and Gaza settlements.
Lord Levy paid for the 1990 refurbishment of the community hall at Mill Hill Synagogue, rededicating it in memory of his late parents, Annie and Samuel Levy at a ceremony before the then Chief Rabbi Lord Jakobovits.