Raphael Recanati

Raphael Recanati was born in Salonika, Greece,[2][3] the son of Leon Yehuda Recanati.[4] He immigrated to Mandatory Palestine with his family in 1935, where he was educated.[2] Meanwhile, his father founded the Israel Discount Bank in 1935.[2] Recanati served in the Palmach, when he helped bring Egyptian Jews into Palestine (modern-day Israel).[2][5]

Recanati married to Dina Hettena in 1946.[2] They had two sons.[2] They resided in Manhattan , New York, East Hampton, New York and in Herzliya Pituach in Israel.[2] Recanati died of a heart failure in 1999.[2][6] He was seventy-five years old.[3][7]

Recanati founded the Israel-America Shipping Line, later known as the Overseas Shipholding Group, in 1948.[2] He served as its founding chairman.[2] He subsequently served as the "chairman of its finance and development committee".[2] In 1949 Recanati founded a subsidiary of his family bank in New York City known as the Israel Discount Bank of New York.[3]

Recanati served as the managing director of his family bank, the Israeli Discount Bank, in 1965.[8] By then, the bank had an office in New York City.[8] By 1970, he founded its investment banking subsidiary.[2] He subsequently co-founded two more subsidiaries, the Discount Investment Corporation and the PEC Israel Economic Corporation New York.[2] He served as the chairman of the Israel Discount Bank from 1982 to 1986.[3]

In 1986, Recanati was suspended for three months by the Bank of Israel over a dispute in his role in the 1983 Israel bank stock crisis.[9] He was convicted and sentenced to an eight-month sentence[10] in Jerusalem over allegations of fraud.[3] One of five charges was quashed on appeal resulting in a suspended sentence.[10]

Recanati made large charitable contributions to the Beth Israel Medical Center, a hospital based in New York City where the Recanati Cardiology Research Fund and the Recanati/Horowitz Cardiology Diagnostic Research Fund was named in his honor.[2] He also endowed the Recanati/Miller Transplantation Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital.[11] Further donations went to the UJA-Federation of New York.[2]

Recanati endowed the Recanati Israel Student Exchange Fellowships at Yeshiva University, where he was a guardian.[2] He also endowed the Recanati course at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.[2] Additionally, he endowed the Dina and Raphael Recanati Professorship in Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, which is held by Dr. Jerome Groopman.[12]

In Israel, Recanati served on the boards of trustees of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the American Friends of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, and the American Friends of Tel Aviv University, where he endowed the Recanati School of Business.[2] He also endowed the Raphael Recanati Genetic Institute at the Beilinson Hospital, in the Petah Tikva-based Rabin Medical Center.[13] The Raphael Recanati International School at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya was named in his honor.[14]