David Friedman (ambassador)

Origins and early life

David Melech Friedman was born on 8 August 1958 and grew up in North Woodmere, New York, the son of Addi Friedman, an English teacher, and of Rabbi Morris Friedman of Temple Hillel, a Conservative synagogue, who also headed the New York Board of Rabbis. His middle name, Melech, means king in Hebrew; he attended the Hebrew Academy of Nassau County, then took degrees at Columbia University in 1978 and at the New York University School of Law in 1981.

Work and career

A bankruptcy lawyer, he became a name partner of Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman in 1995 and represented Donald Trump in the bankruptcies of his Atlantic City casinos. Nominated ambassador to Israel in December 2016, he was confirmed by the Senate on 23 March 2017 by 52 votes to 46 and presented his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin on 16 May 2017. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency described him then as an Orthodox Jew who owned an apartment in Jerusalem, and on landing he went straight to the Western Wall, where he said he had prayed for his family and for the president.

He presided over the ceremony that opened the United States embassy in Jerusalem on 14 May 2018, and the Jerusalem Post credits him with a central role in the American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, proclaimed on 25 March 2019.

Recognition

He was nominated in 2021 for the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in negotiating the Abraham Accords, the normalisation agreements announced between August and December 2020 by Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. His term ended on 20 January 2021, and that October he opened the Friedman Center for Peace through Strength at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem. His memoir, Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, appeared in February 2022, and the Jerusalem Post listed him among its fifty most influential Jews in 2019 and 2023.