Lev Leviev

Lev Leviev (born 30 July 1956 in Tashkent) is an Uzbek-born Israeli-British businessman.

Interview, Jewish Chronicle, 7 March 2008

 * We’re ashamed of what we are. That’s why we feel that we have to get rid of the values of our glorious history and run to learn from other, new nations. Don’t I look to you like a man of the world? Don’t I speak to the leading businessmen in the world? And it’s no problem that I’m a Jew, and a proud Jew who wears a skullcap everywhere. That’s my symbol and my identity.


 * I come to eat with very important people in the world, and I say ‘only kosher’, and always with a skullcap. I don’t recall that my business ever suffered from that.


 * I know that I have my own mission and I know that life, unfortunately, is short. I have a limited time, and we have to get as much done as possible, and that’s that. And we have to preserve our health.


 * It is written that ‘All Jews are responsible for one another,’ and a Jew who lives in Siberia or in Kamchatka is just as good as a Jew who had the good fortune to be born in Jerusalem.


 * There’s a big difference between education and knowledge. The moment that we don’t invest in educating Jewish children according to the roots that were the basis of our education for thousands of years, we are knowledge-givers rather than educators.


 * Just as a Muslim studies Islam, the Jew has to study Judaism. Everyone has to learn the heritage of his family and the history that dates back thousands of years.


 * The moment you ask a child in Israel what Yom Kippur means to him, and he answers the Yom Kippur War, or a fun day on a bicycle — then I don’t know if that is Zionism or whatever you call it, but it has certainly become bankrupt


 * I’m a very big believer in the idea that if a Jew lives like a Jew and, as it is written, sets aside tithes or a fifth of his income — then the Holy One, blessed be he, pays him back. I know that from my personal experience. The more I give every year, the more I have.