Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion
Make a matched gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW

Rabbi Pinto and the Sheens

What do Charlie Sheen’s children, an Israeli gangster, and Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto have in common? They were all at one Los Angeles wedding.

Pinto, who conducted the ceremony, is the kabbalist who was under house arrest in Israel this fall after allegedly bribing a police officer.

The bride was C.C. Fontana, reportedly a former Ford model. Sheen’s kids were apparently members of the wedding party.

And the groom? That would be the Israeli gangster, Hai Waknine, who pled guilty to extortion in U.S. federal court in 2006. The prosecutor in the case called him “a shakedown collections guy.”

The report that puts all three in the same place comes from Posta.co.il, an Israeli news site. According to the site, Pinto wasn’t actually at the wedding, but rather officiated remotely. The language is unclear, and it’s uncertain how that would work. The arrangement could have something to do with Pinto’s legal situation.

The story does not indicate whether Sheen himself showed, or perhaps stayed home sipping tiger blood.

It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!

This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions. 

We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.

As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday! 

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.