Miriam Adelson: The Physician Behind the Largest Israeli Fortune

Miriam Adelson is the wealthiest Israeli citizen in the world, and she earned her title before she earned the money. Forbes put her at $37.5 billion on its 2026 list — 56th globally. Bloomberg’s index had her at roughly $44.3 billion in January 2026, 43rd globally. As of 16 December 2025, SEC filings show she held approximately 340.9 million shares of Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS), the company she and her family control.

There is no figure like Miriam Adelson in the world.

In the Book of Esther, a Jewish woman rises to the highest position of influence in a foreign empire and uses that position to protect her people. It is the oldest story the Jewish people tell about power exercised with purpose. Twenty-five centuries later, Miriam Adelson is living it. A physician from Tel Aviv who became the wealthiest Israeli on earth, who sits at the intersection of an American gaming empire and the deepest private commitment to Israeli and Jewish causes in modern history — and who has never, for a single day, forgotten where she came from or who she is.

When President Trump addressed the Knesset in October 2025, he paused to single her out in the gallery. He asked her to stand. He called her a wonderful woman. He told the parliament that she loves Israel. The chamber gave her a standing ovation. It was not a ceremonial gesture. It was a recognition that no private citizen alive has done more, given more, or fought harder for the relationship between the United States and Israel than Miriam Adelson.

But the fortune is not where her story starts. It is not even the most remarkable thing about her. The most remarkable thing is that she was already somebody before the money arrived — and she has used the money to do more for the Jewish future than any private citizen of her generation.

Miriam Adelson at a glance

Name: Miriam Adelson, née Farbstein (Hebrew: מיריאם אדלסון)
Born: 10 October 1945, Tel Aviv, Mandatory Palestine. Raised in Haifa.
Profession: Physician — internal and emergency medicine, then chemical dependency and the biology of addiction
Education: B.Sc. microbiology and genetics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; M.D. magna cum laude, Tel Aviv University (then the Sackler Faculty of Medicine); honorary doctorate, Tel Aviv University, 2007
Service: Israel Defense Forces, before completing medical studies
Clinical career: Head physician in both internal and emergency medicine, Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital, Tel Aviv; guest investigator, Rockefeller University, New York
Clinics founded: Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Clinic for Drug Abuse Treatment and Research — Tel Aviv (1993, at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center) and Las Vegas (2000)
Business: Controlling owner, Las Vegas Sands Corp. (NYSE: LVS); majority owner, Dallas Mavericks (NBA); publisher, Israel Hayom; family owner, Las Vegas Review-Journal
Net worth: $37.5B per Forbes 2026 (56th globally); ~$44.3B per Bloomberg, January 2026 (43rd)
Honours: Presidential Medal of Freedom (November 2018); Nyswander/Dole Award
Late husband: Sheldon G. Adelson (1933–2021). Founder, chairman and CEO of Las Vegas Sands. Married 1991. Four children. Son-in-law Patrick Dumont is LVS president/COO and governor of the Dallas Mavericks.

A doctor from Tel Aviv

She was born Miriam Farbstein in Tel Aviv in 1945, three years before the state, and raised in Haifa. Her parents, Simcha Farbstein and Menucha Zamelson, had left Poland before the Shoah. Most of the family they left behind did not survive. Her mother lost almost everyone. The shadow of that loss — aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, an entire world erased — ran through her childhood and never left. It shaped everything she would later build, and everything she would later give.

She was not born into wealth or connections. She was born into Haifa, into a family that had escaped and a family that had not, and she made her own way. A bachelor’s degree in microbiology and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Service in the Israel Defense Forces. Then her medical degree at Tel Aviv University, graduating magna cum laude. She specialised in internal medicine and emergency medicine and rose to head physician in both departments at Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital in Tel Aviv — a serious appointment in a country that does not give them out lightly.

All of this happened before she met Sheldon Adelson. She was already a physician, already a department head, already a scientist with a career built on her own merit. When they found each other — both in their mid-forties, both bringing full lives to the table — she did not arrive empty-handed. She arrived as a doctor. The money was his. The medicine was hers. Both are extraordinary.

The 1986 turn: healing what no one else would touch

In 1986 she made a choice that defined the rest of her professional life. She moved into chemical dependency and the biology of addiction — a field that was, at the time, unglamorous, badly funded, and heavily stigmatised. In Israel it was virtually empty. The people she chose to treat were the people that polite society preferred not to see.

She went to Rockefeller University in New York, the institution where methadone maintenance was pioneered, and worked as a guest investigator, co-authoring research on opioid addiction. She later sat on Rockefeller’s board of trustees, and on the board of the University of Southern California.

In 1993 she opened the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Clinic for Drug Abuse Treatment and Research at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center — the first facility in Israel built to treat heroin and cocaine addiction through integrated medical care, counselling and social rehabilitation. In 2000 she opened a second clinic in Las Vegas on the same model. Between them they have treated thousands of patients — people in the grip of the hardest addictions, people other institutions had given up on. She has headed both clinics personally, for decades.

In June 2021 — twenty-eight years after the Tel Aviv clinic opened and five months after her husband died — an expanded facility was unveiled at Sourasky. More capacity, more substances, more beds. Sourasky’s director Professor Ronni Gamzu was present. Former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau affixed the mezuzah. This was not a memorial. It was more beds, in a real hospital, for people who have nowhere else to go — funded by a woman who could have stepped away from everything the day Sheldon died, and instead stepped forward.

The field’s recognition came from the field itself. She holds the Nyswander/Dole Award, named for Marie Nyswander and Vincent Dole, the two physicians who established methadone maintenance as a treatment. That award is not purchased. It is not given to donors. It is given to practitioners who have changed the way addiction is treated. She earned it.

Sheldon, Las Vegas Sands, and the fortune

She married Sheldon Adelson in 1991. He was the man who built Las Vegas Sands from nothing — the Venetian, the Palazzo, Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, the Macao properties that transformed an island into one of the great gaming capitals of the world. He was a first-generation entrepreneur, a child of immigrants, a man who made and lost and remade fortunes before he found the one that endured. Together they were one of the great partnerships in American business — his drive and her steadiness, his empire and her conscience, both of them anchored in an unshakeable love of Israel. He died in January 2021 at 87.

What she inherited was not a portfolio. It was an operating company — publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, globally exposed, employing tens of thousands of people across Asia — and, with her family, more than half of it. She did not sell. She did not retreat. She held the company, steadied it through the post-pandemic recovery in Asia, and then did something bold.

In 2022, under her family’s stewardship, Las Vegas Sands sold the assets that made its name — the Venetian Resort and the Sands Expo and Convention Center on the Las Vegas Strip — to Apollo Global Management and Vici Properties for $6.25 billion. The company that built the Strip’s most recognisable skyline pivoted entirely to Asia. It was a hard, correct, forward-looking capital decision. And it happened on her watch. For a broader map of the Israeli-built gaming infrastructure running through Gibraltar, Malta and Cyprus, see The Israeli Gambling-Tech Diaspora.

The Dallas Mavericks

In November 2023 the Adelson family sold roughly $2 billion of Las Vegas Sands stock, stating in the SEC filing that the proceeds would fund the purchase of a majority interest in a professional sports franchise. Weeks later the target was public: a controlling stake in the Dallas Mavericks, acquired from Mark Cuban at a reported franchise valuation of about $3.5 billion. The NBA Board of Governors approved it on 28 December 2023. Patrick Dumont — her son-in-law, and president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands — became the team’s governor.

Six months after the purchase the Mavericks reached the NBA Finals. The franchise’s valuation moved above $4 billion within a year. It was a beautifully timed bet — and it made the Adelson family one of the most prominent ownership groups in American professional sports.

Israel Hayom and a newspaper in two languages

She is the publisher of Israel Hayom, the free daily that became one of the most widely read newspapers in Israel, and the family holds the company that is its primary shareholder. In the United States the family owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevada’s paper of record. She is one of very few people alive who own significant newspapers in two countries and read both in their original language. That fact alone tells you where she lives in her heart: between Israel and America, fluent in both, anchored in the first.

Where the money goes: Israel, the Jewish future, and the people nobody sees

The Adelson giving is best understood by direction of travel. The money is earned in Macao and Singapore. It is held in Nevada. And it is spent — in extraordinary, transformative volume — in Israel and on the Jewish future. No private citizen of this generation has directed more personal wealth toward the State of Israel, toward Holocaust remembrance, and toward the continuity of the Jewish people.

Yad Vashem. The Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem was built with Adelson support, given in memory of her parents, Menucha Zamelson and Simcha Farbstein, and the members of their families who were murdered in the Shoah. This is not abstract philanthropy. This is a woman building a museum so the world will never forget the relatives she was never able to meet.
Birthright Israel. The Adelsons became the pre-eminent private funders of the programme that has sent hundreds of thousands of young Jews to Israel free of charge. Birthright may be the single most effective diaspora-engagement instrument the Jewish people have ever created. The Adelsons made the scale possible. That is a legacy that will outlive every casino and every stock ticker.
The Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. Funds neurology, immunology and oncology through a collaborative model that requires competing laboratories to share data and publish together — a structural innovation in how research money is deployed, and a reflection of a physician’s understanding that science advances faster when egos step aside.
The Adelson Clinics. Both the Tel Aviv and Las Vegas addiction clinics are financed by the family. They treat the people nobody else will treat. They have been doing it for more than thirty years.
The Israeli-American Council, Holocaust remembrance, and Jewish education across Israel and the diaspora.

When President Trump awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in November 2018 — the highest civilian honour in the United States — the White House citation led with the medicine. It called her a committed doctor, philanthropist, and humanitarian. The medal recognised the work, not the wealth. In September 2024, at an event in Las Vegas, she called Trump a true friend of the Jewish people. When he stood at the podium of the Knesset a year later and asked her to rise, the members of Israel’s parliament stood with her.

Zionist Jewish power at her core

Miriam Adelson is, with her late husband and on her own, among the most generous political donors in the United States, giving to Republican candidates, committees, and causes, and she has been a leading supporter of Donald Trump. She has advocated publicly and passionately for United States policy favourable to the State of Israel. She has never been quiet about it, never hedged, never apologised. She believes in the US–Israel relationship the way a doctor believes in a patient: with conviction, with urgency, and with her own resources on the line.

A profile that omitted this would not be complete, because her political commitment is of a piece with everything else she does. She gives openly, she gives at scale, and she gives to what she believes in. Whether one agrees with every position or not, the sincerity and the courage are beyond dispute.

Why Miriam Adelson matters

Every other name near the top of the Israeli wealth table built a company. Miriam Adelson built a clinic. She married a man who had built a company — a great man, a visionary, the architect of Las Vegas Sands. And when he died, she took the company, held it, grew it, diversified it into professional sports, and kept the clinic open. She funded Yad Vashem and Birthright and medical research and the newspaper that millions of Israelis read every morning. She did all of it at once. That combination does not exist at this level of wealth anywhere else in the world.

Her real significance is the direction the fortune faces. Israeli capital normally exits west — founders sell to American acquirers and the proceeds settle in New York, Miami and Palo Alto. Miriam Adelson runs the opposite trade. American casino cash, earned in Asia, held in Nevada, and poured into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem: a hospital clinic, a Holocaust museum, a newspaper, Birthright flights, research laboratories. The money flows east. At her scale, that has no precedent.

The Book of Esther is a story about a Jewish woman who used her position at the centre of an empire to protect and champion her people. Miriam Adelson is the closest thing this generation has to that story, lived in real time, at a scale the ancient authors could not have imagined.

She is 80 years old. She holds the largest Israeli fortune by any measure. She runs a global gaming company, owns an NBA franchise, publishes a newspaper in Hebrew, funds the institution that preserves the memory of the family she lost, and treats the patients nobody else will see.

And she still lists her occupation as physician.

Frequently asked questions about Miriam Adelson

Who is Miriam Adelson?
An Israeli-American physician, businesswoman and philanthropist, born in Tel Aviv in 1945. She specialises in the treatment of opioid addiction, founded addiction clinics in Tel Aviv (1993) and Las Vegas (2000), and is the controlling owner of Las Vegas Sands Corp. and majority owner of the Dallas Mavericks. She is the wealthiest Israeli citizen in the world. Her late husband, Sheldon Adelson, founded Las Vegas Sands.

Is Miriam Adelson a doctor?
Yes. She holds an M.D. magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University, was head physician in both internal and emergency medicine at Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital in Tel Aviv, worked as a guest investigator at Rockefeller University in New York, and has headed two addiction treatment and research clinics since 1993. She holds the Nyswander/Dole Award, the principal professional honour in opioid treatment.

How much is Miriam Adelson worth?
Forbes put her at $37.5 billion on its 2026 World’s Billionaires List, 56th globally. Bloomberg’s index put her at approximately $44.3 billion in January 2026, 43rd in the world.

How did Miriam Adelson get her wealth?
Through Las Vegas Sands, the casino and resort company founded by her late husband Sheldon Adelson (1933–2021). He built the company from nothing into one of the most valuable gaming empires in the world. She and her family inherited control of more than half the company after his death and have stewarded it since.

Does Miriam Adelson own the Dallas Mavericks?
Yes. The Adelson family acquired a controlling stake from Mark Cuban at a reported $3.5 billion valuation, approved by the NBA Board of Governors on 28 December 2023. Her son-in-law Patrick Dumont serves as team governor.

What did Miriam Adelson receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom for?
For her medical, philanthropic and humanitarian work. She was awarded it by President Donald Trump in November 2018. When Trump addressed the Knesset in October 2025, he asked her to stand and praised her as a wonderful woman who loves Israel. The chamber gave her a standing ovation.

What does Miriam Adelson fund in Israel?
The Adelson Clinic at Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center; the Museum of Holocaust Art at Yad Vashem, given in memory of her parents and the relatives murdered in the Shoah; Birthright Israel, of which the Adelsons became the pre-eminent private funder; Israel Hayom; the Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation; and Jewish educational and Holocaust-remembrance institutions across Israel and the diaspora.

Primary sources

Yad Vashem — Adelson Family Foundation donor record
Forbes — Miriam Adelson & family profile and 2026 World’s Billionaires List
Bloomberg Billionaires Index, January 2026
SEC Form 4 filings, Las Vegas Sands Corp. — holdings as of 16 December 2025
Las Vegas Sands Corp. — 2022 disposal of the Venetian Resort and Sands Expo; November 2023 secondary offering
NBA Board of Governors approval, Dallas Mavericks, 28 December 2023
The Times of Israel, November 2018 — Presidential Medal of Freedom citation
Reuters, October 2025 — Trump’s Knesset address, Adelson standing ovation
Israel Hayom, June 2021 — expanded Adelson Clinic at Sourasky
AATOD — professional biography and Nyswander/Dole Award

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Israeli Family Offices: The Ofer, Wertheimer & Azrieli Capital Map
The Israeli Gambling-Tech Diaspora: The Olam Map
Playtika and the Israeli Public Gaming Position
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Ronn Torossian is the founder and chairman of 5W AI Communications, the AI Communications Firm. He is the publisher of Everything-PR and the author of two best-selling editions of For Immediate Release.