Adam Milstein
Adam Milstein is an Israeli-American investor and philanthropist. He is a managing partner at Hager Pacific Properties.
He founded and funded organizations supporting Jewish causes, and organizations advocating support for Israel, including countering initiatives advocating support for Palestinians such as Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions. He and his wife, Gila, founded the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation in 2000. He is a co-founder of the Israeli-American Council and served as chairman from 2015 to 2019.
Early life and education
Milstein was born in Haifa, Israel, the eldest child of Eva, a homemaker, and Hillel Milstein, a real estate developer. The family later lived in Kiryat Yam and Kiryat Motzkin.He was conscripted into the Israel Defense Forces in 1971, and served during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. After being discharged, he enrolled in the Technion and graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering. While in college, he worked with his father to expand the family's real estate construction and development business.
He married Gila Elgrably in Haifa in 1974. They moved to Los Angeles with their two daughters in 1981. He received an MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business in 1983 and started working in commercial real estate as a sales agent.
Investment career
Milstein is a managing partner of Hager Pacific Properties, overseeing the firm's financing, disposition and accounting. The firm specializes in acquiring, rehabilitating and repositioning industrial, retail, office, and multi-family properties.Philanthropy and political donations
Milstein and his wife Gila founded the Adam and Gila Milstein Family Foundation in 2000. The organization sponsors education of students and young professionals to identify with their Jewish roots and gain knowledge to advocate for the State of Israel and the Jewish people.Milstein co-founded the Israeli American Council in 2007 and was named chairman of the group in 2015. He sits on the boards of StandWithUs and Hasbara Fellowships. He previously served on the boards of Israel on Campus Coalition, Jewish Funders Network, and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee National Council. He joined Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban in June 2015 to organize the inaugural Campus Maccabees summit, which opposes Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions groups and activities on college campuses in the United States. He strongly opposes the BDS movement, and has had several opinion pieces published on the subject.
Milstein donated $1,000 to UCLA Hillel in 2014. According to the Daily Cal, Milstein requested other community members should send donations to Hillel earmarked for "UCLA Student Government Leaders." The UCLA campus election code does not require the disclosure of campaign funding sources. According to Milstein, neither he nor his foundation gave money to Avi Ovid or Bruins United.
In 2011, he and his wife launched Sifriyat Pijama B'America, which provided free monthly books in Hebrew to Israeli-Jewish American families in the United States, in partnership with IAC. They started The Impact Forum in 2016, an initiative which "fights antisemitism, strengthens the state of Israel, and protects American democracy".
Personal life
Milstein pled guilty to tax evasion involving his donations to the Spinka Hasidic sect in 2009 and served three months in prison, was required to do 600 hours of community service, and paid a $30,000 fine.The Jerusalem Post selected him for its list of the 50 most influential Jews in the world in 2016. Algemeiner Journal named him to its list, "The Top 100 People Positively Influencing Jewish Life" in 2015 and 2016. In Gil Troy's book, The Zionist Ideas: Visions for the Jewish Homeland—Then, Now, Tomorrow, he identified Milstein as a contemporary leader of cultural Zionism for his vision to "invigorate Zionism and Jewish identity" worldwide.
He withdrew from speaking at the 2019 AIPAC conference after he posted tweets connecting Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to the Muslim Brotherhood. Milstein said his views as expressed on Twitter had been "mischaracterized."
He lives in Encino, California with his wife. They have three daughters and three grandchildren.