Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

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.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

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

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

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 credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link 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.