Biography
When the Ottoman empire fell apart, Jacob Safra, the former partner in Safra Freres, set up a separate banking business under his own name in Beirut in the year 1920. With its base in the Lebanon, the Jacob E. Safra Bank became the bank of choice for many of Syria's and Lebanon's rich Sephardic Jewish families, who trusted the Safras to manage their business and personal financial interests with care and discretion. In 1952, he moved to Brazil with his three sons: Edmond Safra, Joseph Safra, and Moises Safra. They founded the first Brazilian financial institution in 1955.
Safra Square in Jerusalem is named in honor of him and his wife Esther.
Read more about this topic: Jacob Safra
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“In how few words, for instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard and Heloise, making but a sentence of our classical dictionary.... We moderns, on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography and history, “memoirs to serve for a history,” which is but materials to serve for a mythology.”
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