JTA — S. Daniel Abraham, an American billionaire who grew his fortune on his diet company Slim-Fast Foods and spent his life advocating for peace between Israel and its neighbors in the Middle East, died on June 29 at 100.
Abraham was born in New York in 1924 and went on to serve as an infantryman in the US Army in the 1940s before building his fortune on the Thompson Medical Company — which his father, a dentist, bought for $5,000 in 1947.
That company would later introduce Slim-Fast Foods, a weight-loss product popular in the 1980s that served as a supplement for breakfast and lunch by combining a powder with skim milk. By 2025, Abraham had built a net worth of $2.4 billion.
“What I wanted to bring to market was a meal replacement in liquid form, composed of protein, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals, and even a little healthy fat,” he wrote in “Everything Is Possible,” a 2010 memoir written with Joseph Telushkin, an American rabbi and bestselling author.
Beyond Abraham’s entrepreneurial success, he also spent much of his life advocating for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and was a major funder of Middle East peace initiatives.
Between 1988 and 2002, Abraham made over 60 trips to the Middle East alongside US representative Wayne Owens, a Utah Democrat, to meet with Israeli and Arab leaders, and in 1989 he founded the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, a nonprofit aimed at peacebuilding between Israelis and Palestinians.
Robert Wexler, President of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace and former Representative from Florida, addresses the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., on Tuesday, Sept. 4, 2012. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
“A brilliant, humble businessman who experienced the destruction of war as a combat soldier in World War II, Mr. Abraham exhibited a tireless and selfless dedication to achieving peace, security and prosperity for all peoples of the Middle East,” Robert Wexler, the president of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, wrote in a statement after Abraham’s death.
“When peace comes to the Middle East — and it will — we will have Dan Abraham to thank. Dan, though, never sought any thanks or recognition. Mr. Abraham was righteous and just — a tzadik,” Wexler wrote, using the Hebrew term for a righteous person.
Abraham also donated extensively to Israeli and American universities, endowing chairs at Harvard University Medical School and Princeton University. He also funded two programs bearing his name at Yeshiva University as well as a business school at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
“Mr. Abraham’s life was guided by purpose, generosity and a deep love for the Jewish people and the State of Israel, and his influence will be felt by current and future generations,” Yeshiva University’s president, Ari Berman, and its board chair, Ira Mitzner, wrote in an obituary.
Abraham also donated millions to American and Israeli political movements, giving $3 million to a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in 2016. He was a major donor to the movement to unseat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the 2015 elections in Israel.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., is greeted by S. Daniel Abraham, benefactor of a chair in Middle Eastern studies, at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey on January 18, 2006. (Jose F. Moreno/AP Photo, File)
Abraham’s death, in a hospital in Manhattan, was confirmed by a spokesman for his family, Rabbi Abe Unger, according to the New York Times.
“The obituaries will call him ‘billionaire founder of SlimFast.’ But we, first congregants of the Palm Beach Synagogue (1994) knew him as a funny, approachable man,” wrote Elaine Rosenberg Miller, a member of Abraham’s congregation in Florida, in The Times of Israel.
Abraham lived for eight years with his family in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya and has grandchildren and great-grandchildren living in Israel.
His marriage in 1963 to Estanne Weiner ended in divorce in 1993, and he married Ewa Sebzda in 1996.
Sebzda survives him, along with four daughters from his first marriage, two children from his second marriage, 27 grandchildren and 34 great-grandchildren, according to the New York Times.
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