Gabe Erem | UJA-FEDERATION
Gabe Erem Knows Everyone
But Does That Include Dershowitz? Story and Photos by TIM BOXER  EVER accept a dinner date with Lifestyles publisher Gabe Erem if you’re hungry. Last time attorney Mark Baker went to a restaurant with Gabe, it took 20 minutes to walk to their table. Abe had to stop and greet everyone he knew.
Many of those friends came out to honor Gabe at a UJA-Federation of New York dinner at the Pierre Hotel. The Entertainment, Media & Communications Division presented him with its inaugural Jerusalem Award. “Gabe seems know everyone in the world!” Larry King marveled. 
Fanya Heller, Peter Malkin, Larry King,
Dr. Ruth Westheimer | The CNN talk show host came up with a story about a man who was skeptical of Gabe’s connections. He once bet $1,000 that Gabe didn’t know Dwight Eisenhower. They knocked on Ike’s door. The door opened and the former general and president exclaimed, “Gabeleh, how nice to see you!” Still unconvinced, the skeptic wagered $10,000 that for sure Gabe didn’t know the pope. They go to the Vatican, where the man waits in the courtyard while Gabe saunters inside. There on the balcony is Abe with the pope. The skeptic asks a passerby, “Is that the pope?” The man is not sure and stops a nun. She looks up, squints, and says, “I can’t tell. But the man next to him is Gabe Erem.” 
Larry King | That amused the guests, including Dr. Ruth Westheimer (whom King called “a giant of sexual energy”), ace public relations executive Howard Rubenstein, Merrill Lynch vice chairman Stephen Hammerman, Kenneth Bialkin, Ronald Lauder, and Peter Malkin, the Mossad operative who captured Adolph Eichmann. King, who emceed the program, called on Alan Dershowitz to pay tribute to Gabe, but Dershowitz had not arrived yet. “I guess,” King quipped, “Gabe knows everyone in the world except Alan Dershowitz.” Dershowitz finally showed up and read a proclamation from Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Yeshiva University president Dr. Norman Lamm remarked, “Mark Baker is an appeals lawyer. Alan Dershowitz is an appellate lawyer. I too belong here – I too make appeals.” William McDonough, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted that he “doesn’t actually know Gabe that well.” But he came to the dinner anyway because “UJA-Federation is the best organization in the world for distributing money wisely and well.” 
Gabe Erem (right) with Larry King and CNN
publicist Erin Sermeus. | Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, warned that the economic outlook for the country is bleak. The current slowdown is turning into a recession. “Our future,” he said, “is not dependent on what the Federal Reserve does, but what we do to educate the next generation for the new economy of high tech.” While America’s school system is failing, he said that in 30 years China would have 800 million children with high school and college diplomas. “China will become a force in the world.” To stay ahead, he said that America must train its children for a knowledge-driven economy of high tech. “We must do it by improving and reforming the public school system.” | 
