Miriam Adelson (née Farbstein; born October 10, 1945) is an Israeli-American physician, businesswoman, philanthropist, and conservative political donor. She was married to Sheldon Adelson until his death in 2021. As of October 2025, estimates placed her wealth at $34.6 billion, making her the 48th richest person in the world. Notable holdings include the Las Vegas Sands and the Dallas Mavericks. She is the current publisher of Israel Hayom and, with her family, owns the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Since the 2010s, Adelson has been one of the Republican Party's largest individual donors, and since 2016 she has been one of the most prominent financial supporters of Donald Trump. She and her husband provided the largest donation to his 2016 campaign, his presidential inauguration, his defense fund against the Mueller investigation into Russian interference, and the 2020 campaign. She was the third largest donor to Trump's 2024 election bid, donating $106 million. Adelson has consistently advocated for the US government to adopt pro-Israel policies, including supporting Israel's annexation of the West Bank. President Trump awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
Biography Adelson was born Miriam Farbstein in Tel Aviv, then in Mandatory Palestine (present-day Israel), in 1945 to parents who fled Poland before the Holocaust. Her father was a prominent member of Mapam, a left-wing political party in Israel. In the 1950s, her family settled in Haifa, where Adelson's father owned and operated several movie theaters. She attended the Hebrew Reali School for 12 years. Prior to her marriage to Sheldon, Miriam was married to Ariel Ochshorn, also a physician, and had daughters Sivan Ochshorn and Yasmin Lukatz. The couple were divorced by 1986.
Medical career After earning a Bachelor of Science in microbiology and genetics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, she earned a medical degree, graduating magna cum laude from Tel Aviv University Faculty of Medicine. She served mandatory army service as a medical officer at Ness Ziona. She eventually became the chief internist in an emergency room at Tel Aviv's Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital. She went to Rockefeller University in 1986 as an associate physician specializing in drug addiction. There, she was mentored by, and subsequently collaborated for two decades with, Mary Jeanne Kreek, who was known for the development of methadone therapy for heroin addiction. She has published numerous scientific papers on the topic of drug addiction during her career and has been a guest investigator at Rockefeller University.
Marriage to Sheldon Adelson and later career She met businessman Sheldon Adelson on a blind date in 1989; they married in 1991. Together, they had two sons, Adam Adelson and Matan Adelson. In 1993, the couple opened the first branch of the Adelson Clinic, a substance abuse clinic, in Israel. They opened a second location in Las Vegas in 2000. The clinics specialize in the use of medically assisted detox techniques, such as methodone. In 2018, Adelson was named the publisher of Israel Hayom, the most widely read newspaper in Israel, a position she still holds. That year, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Donald Trump. After Sheldon Adelson died in 2021, she became the owner of casino company Las Vegas Sands, which he had founded. She remains the majority owner of Las Vegas Sands, which she runs along with her family.
Philanthropy Adelson operates the Adelson Foundations. The foundation is divided into two branches: the Adelson Family Foundation, which was established in 2007, and the Adelson Medical Research Foundation. The former works to strengthen the State of Israel and the Jewish people, while the latter focuses on healthcare. The Adelson Foundation gives $200 million annually to Jewish and Israeli causes, the largest by far of any existing private foundation with that aim. She is a voting member on the board of trustees at the University of Southern California, and was a financial backer of Ariel University's medical school which opened in the West Bank in 2019.
Political activities in the United States In May 2024, New York magazine stated that the press often misreported Miriam's political donations as having been made by Sheldon. The magazine tabulated that during their marriage, Sheldon made 848 campaign donations and Miriam made 717. Sheldon had a lifetime total donation figure of $273 million, while as of the publishing of their profile, Miriam had a total of $284 million. Miriam Adelson has been described by major news outlets, including Reuters and Bloomberg, as a significant financial supporter of pro-Israel political causes in the United States, contributing substantial funding to Republican-aligned political initiatives and organizations supporting U.S.–Israel relations. She has also contributed tens of millions of dollars to Republican-aligned Super PACs in recent election cycles aimed at maintaining the party's influence in Congress, according to reporting by Bloomberg and federal campaign finance disclosures. Miriam Adelson made her first substantive political donations shortly after her marriage to Sheldon, in 1991. She soon switched her support from Democratic candidates to Republicans. The Adelsons were notably early donors to Benjamin Netanyahu in his 1996 campaign for Prime Minister of Israel and also gave some money to the second inauguration of George W. Bush in 2005. Following the 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, Adelson dramatically increased the size of her political donations. She was the top female donor in the 2012 United States elections, contributing as much as the next 15 female donors combined, a total of $46 million.
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