Wall Street Toasts Blankfein and Judaism at UJA-Federation Dinner

Goldman Sachs emerged from the financial crisis as the whipping boy of Wall Street. But on Monday evening, the firm’s chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, was feted like a king.

Or perhaps like a rabbi.

“Lloyd, I’d like to welcome you to your second bar mitzvah,” David K. Wassong, the co-head of private equity at Soros Fund Management, said at the annual Wall Street Dinner sponsored by the UJA-Federation of New York, a charitable organization focused on Jewish philanthropy.

“The only difference is that tonight the money goes to UJA.”

More than $26 million flowed into the organization’s coffers as titans of finance lined the stage, seated in two rows on a long dais, for the UJA-Federation’s awards event. A crowd of 1,700 filled the grand ballroom at the New York Hilton Midtown, sipping wine and munching on mini pitas and baba ganoush.

Mr. Blankfein was singled out for his professional track record and philanthropy, receiving an award named for Gustave L. Levy, a onetime leader of Goldman. Mr. Wassong was also honored, accepting the “young leadership” award.

The keynote speaker, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, was presented with a shofar, the ritual ram’s horn used on Rosh Hashana.

“I have been known to actually blow this and make noise come out of it,” Mr. Kelly said. “But I’m not going to try it here; this is a tough audience.”

Mr. Blankfein saw an opening.

“I was hoping for the shofar,” Mr. Blankfein said when it was his turn to stand behind the lectern. “Can you please tell the commissioner his chauffeur is waiting?”

The audience roared at the wordplay.

It was a night for Wall Street to toast its leaders â€" and celebrate Judaism. After following along as a cantor sang a Hanukkah prayer, Mr. Blankfein recalled his upbringing in Brooklyn.

“The only person I knew who put on a suit every day was our rabbi,” he said.

“I thought every Jewish father either drove a cab or worked in a post office,” said Mr. Blankfein, whose own father was a postal worker.

“I learned to swim and later earned spending money lifeguarding at the local Y,” he said. “That is, the local YM-YWHA. I’d never heard of the YMCA. I thought the Y was the YMHA,” the Young Men’s Hebrew Association.

Mr. Wassong said he was “not exactly out of central casting for the UJA.”

“My idea of Shabbas dinner is a Friday night reservation at Shun Lee,” he said, referring to the popular Chinese restaurant in Manhattan.

“To my Isreali-raised father’s never-ending shock, my two best friends growing up were Muslim,” Mr. Wassong continued. “In fact, my best friend since the age of 4 is here tonight. Malik, I promise you’re safe.”

For Mr. Blankfein and Gary D. Cohn, the No. 2 at Goldman, the evening reflected the firm’s prominent position on Wall Street and the public relations recovery it has undertaken since the crisis.

One financial analyst, Michael Mayo, approached Mr. Cohn after the event and jokingly suggested that the folks at Goldman should send a Hanukkah present to Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, a bank that has recently fallen from favor in Washington after a number of run-ins with regulators.

Mr. Cohn smiled at the suggestion. “I have a joke about that,” he said. But with a reporter present, he declined to tell it.

The hedge fund manager Daniel S. Och, speaking from the lectern, introduced Alan C. Greenberg, a former leader of Bear Stearns, as a “legend in our midst.”

But Mr. Greenberg was nowhere to be seen. The audience gave him a standing ovation anyway.

Later, after Mr. Greenberg had returned to his seat, a UJA official explained that Mr. Greenberg, a fan of magic tricks, had “made himself disappear.”

Another of the evening’s distinguished speakers, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, invoked his own religion to remind the audience why they had assembled that night.

“We Catholics would call this a two-collection crowd,” he said.