Art Cashin, ‘Shabbos goy’ of Wall Street, dies at 83

Art Cashin, director of floor operations for UBS at the New York Stock Exchange and a Wall Street veteran of some six decades, died at 83, Reuters reported.

CNBC, where Cashin was a regular for 25 years, reported that Cashin eschewed credit cards. The longtime Wall Street fixture “paid for everything, particularly his voluminous bar bills, with cash, saying he cherished his anonymity,” per CNBC.

“He never learned to use a computer—his notes were hand-written and then sent to his assistant,” CNBC added. “For years, he used an obsolete flip phone that he rarely answered.”

“His desk was piled high with papers he had accumulated over the decades. At times, it resembled a recycling facility,” it reported. “Cashin’s suits were usually rumpled and his ties were always obsolete.”

The former altar boy from Jersey City was also known as the “Shabbos goy” of Wall Street, Cashin wrote in his column “Cashin’s Comments” in 2012.

“About 50 years ago, as I was starting out in Wall Street, I was lucky enough to be hired by a small, bright, aggressive firm where I learned unique things from some wonderful people,” Cashin wrote at the time. “I thought they hired me because I was sharp, inquisitive and hard-working. Some of the older salesmen, instead, used to joke that I was the ‘Shabbes goy'—the only non-Jewish employee, who could then man the phones on religious holidays.”

“It was a joke (I think) but it gave an altar boy from Jersey City a chance to learn a little Yiddish and a touch of cultural traditions,” he added. “The way I learned it, you sell on Rosh Hashanah and buy back on Yom Kippur. The thesis, I was told, was that you wished to be free (as much as possible) of the distraction of worldly goods during a period of reflection and self-appraisal.”

Later, “I was struck that the oft-repeated September/October weakness (crop cycle/money float) often corresponded to the Rosh Hashanah tradition,” he wrote. “Is it cultural coincidence or cultural overlap? Who knows.”

Cashin added in the 2012 column that his late Irish mother “tended to see everything in a Celtic perspective—even Jewish New Years.”

“She would say, ‘You better get up to the deli fast ‘cause the Jewish people will be leaving early for ‘Rose of Shannon,’” he wrote.