The Nakash Dynasty: Three Generations of Syrian-Jewish Capital

The Olam · Israel-Diaspora Investment Networks

From a Brooklyn appliance store to a $2 billion empire spanning Jordache, The Setai, Arkia, and the Versace Mansion. The Nakash family's third generation just stepped into public view at a Manhattan wedding. A profile.

The Nakash family wedding that took over Israeli social media this week did more than celebrate a couple. It introduced the third generation of one of the most consequential Syrian-Jewish business dynasties of the last half-century to the public.

This is the dynasty behind it.

$25 in 1962

Joseph Nakash was born in 1942 in Tel Aviv to Syrian-Jewish immigrant parents who had fled to British Mandate Palestine. In 1962 — at 20, having never finished high school — he boarded a plane to New York with $25 in his pocket.

He slept in subway stations and on park benches. He took a job wheeling racks of merchandise for a discount store at $40 a week. Within four years, he had saved enough to bring his brothers Raphael (Ralph) and Abraham (Avi) Nakash from Israel to join him.

In 1969, the brothers pooled their savings — roughly $20,000 — and bought a small appliance store in Brooklyn. They converted it into a retailer selling irregular designer jeans. The store became an instant hit. They opened three more.

The Jordache Empire

The turning point came in 1977. The brothers' largest store burned down during the New York City blackout. The insurance settlement — $120,000 — became the seed capital for a new venture: their own designer jeans label.

They called it Jordache — a contraction of Joseph, Ralph, Ralph's son David, and Avi. In 1978 the brand launched. The Nakash brothers reinvested a quarter of annual revenue plus a Bank Leumi loan into a TV ad campaign featuring a blonde woman riding a horse through the surf in Jordache jeans. The networks initially refused to air it. Independent New York stations took it. Within months it was running everywhere.

By the mid-1980s Jordache was a household name with revenues approaching half a billion dollars. The brothers moved into licensing — eyewear, footwear, bedding, intimate apparel — and later manufactured private-label denim for Tommy Hilfiger, American Eagle, and Levi's. Forbes has estimated the family fortune at roughly $2 billion.

From Denim to a Diversified Empire

Today, Jordache Enterprises and its sister arm Nakash Holdings span clothing, real estate, hospitality, aviation, agriculture, and maritime ventures. Major holdings have included:

• The Setai hotel chain — the family acquired the Setai Miami Beach for roughly $90 million in 2014, alongside Setai properties in Tel Aviv and the Galilee.
• The Versace Mansion in South Beach — purchased at auction for $41.5 million in 2013, now Casa Casuarina.
• Arkia Israel Airlines — one of Israel's three principal carriers.
• Orchid Hotels — a major Israeli hospitality brand.
• Herbert Samuel — a high-end Israeli restaurant group.
• Jerusalem Economy Ltd. — a roughly 40% stake in the Israeli industrial developer.
• Prinir Agriculture — the Israeli tomato-paste operation that supplies Heinz.
• Strip House, RVCA Clothing, the Port of Eilat management arm, and aviation interests including Downeast Air and MG Aviation.

The Next Generation

The second generation — Joseph's, Ralph's, and Avi's children — has been running the operating businesses for years. The May 2026 Nakash–Weber wedding in Manhattan became something larger than a family event — a visible marker of where the community's third generation now stands: globally networked, Israeli-connected, and commercially influential. Deni Avdija led the room in Anachnu Maaminim; Kyle Kuzma learned the words in real time.

Why It Matters

The Nakash family is one of a small handful of Jewish business dynasties whose footprint spans continents, sectors, and generations — deeply embedded in both the United States and Israel, investing in Israeli infrastructure, aviation, hospitality, and agriculture. They are private almost reflexively. They do not give interviews. They do not court press.

And yet a private family wedding in Manhattan became one of the most-shared Hebrew-language stories of the news cycle. That is the shape of the global Jewish business economy in 2026: quiet families, loud rooms, and a generational handoff that is now too large to keep entirely out of view.

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