MELVILLE, New York — The Revlon Company, founded in 1933 by brothers Charles and Joseph Revson, and a chemist, Charles Lachman (the source of the “L” in the company name), declared bankruptcy last week, overwhelmed by debt, supply chain problems, and more. The Revson brothers were raised in Manchester, New Hampshire by Eastern European Jewish immigrants. They and Lachman started the company by creating a new kind of nail enamel, and by the end of World War II had built the enterprise into a multimillion dollar company. Revlon continued to expand with new products and acquisitions, including Charlie and Jean Nate perfumes, Mitchum deodorants, Ty-D-Bol, Evan Picone and Elizabeth Arden. The company went public in 1996, and was eventually acquired by a subsidiary of Ronald Perelman’s MacAndrews & Forbes. Perelman, the grandson of Litvak immigrants, was raised in a Conservative household, but became an Orthodox Jew in adulthood. He is a major financial supporter of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, and he is Sabbath observant and keeps kosher. In what unusual way has Perelman maintained his Jewish practices?
A. Perelman employs a private chef to cook all his meals, and he paid for the chef, who is not Jewish, to live in Israel and France for a year studying with kosher chefs and learning all the rules of kashrut.
B. Perelman had a private synagogue built in the garden space between his two back-to-back Upper East Side townhouses.
C. Some makeup, in particular lipstick, is not kosher for Passover as there are some ingredients which are chametz, and might be ingested. Perelman paid to have a small lab set up in one of Revlon’s manufacturing facilities specifically to make lipstick for his wife with products that are all certified kosher for Passover.
D. Perelman paid to have a Torah scroll written by a scribe in Jerusalem, which he dedicated to his parents, Ruth and Raymond Perelman. The scroll, which is guarded and maintained by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation (official overseers of the Wall) is only brought out two or three times a year when Perelman comes to say Shabbat prayers at the Western Wall.
E. Sometimes when Perelman travels to his home in the Hamptons, or to Miami or other destinations, he’ll take a group of at least nine Lubavitch rabbinical students with him to be sure he has a minyan for services.