Since he first visited Israel in 1959, Skadden Arps power lawyer Kenneth Bialkin has been passionate about Jewish issues. “I saw people who were just like me who were forced to come to Israel during World War II because there was no other place to go,” he says. “I saw them poor and alone in the world. I identified with them. They were in every sense fighting my fight.” Bialkin, 72, who for decades has been counsel to Citigroup chairman Sandy Weill, stepped down from the bank board in April because he had reached its mandatory retirement age. Now Citigroup has donated $250,000 to create the Kenneth J. Bialkin/Citigroup Endowed Lecture Program at the American Jewish Historical Society. These days no issue looms larger for the securities lawyer than the troubles in the Middle East. “Everything revolves around the terror issue in Jewish life right now,” says Bialkin. He and his like-minded colleagues on Wall Street “talk about these things all the time.”
