Alan B. Slifka, a New York investment manager who used his fortune to promote harmony among Israeli Arabs and Jews and to give the Big Apple Circus its start, died Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 81 and also had a home in Manhattan.

The cause was cancer, his wife, Riva Ritvo-Slifka, said.

Slifka already had more than 30 years’ experience in the financial industry in 1981 when, with initial assets of $50 million, he started an investment management company bearing his name. Known today as Halcyon Asset Management, the company manages more than $10 billion.

Seven years after starting the company, Slifka visited friends in Israel and could not understand why so few of them were friendly with Arab-Israeli citizens.

“He toured Arab villages,” Ritvo-Slifka said, “and was troubled at the discrepancies in how they lived.”

With $500,000, Slifka started the Abraham Fund Initiatives, named for the biblical patriarch of both Arabs and Jews. Since its establishment, the fund has provided more than $10 million in grants for a range of educational programs to dispel stereotypes and to foster Jewish-Arab cooperation in health, social services and women’s rights. Among many projects, it has supported an Arab-Jewish theater workshop, touring chamber music quartets and a karate program for Jewish and Arab youngsters.

“We can be viewed as a coexistence mutual fund,” Slifka once said.

An urge to give something to his hometown, New York, spurred Slifka to become the founding chairman of the Big Apple Circus in 1977. It was another way to satisfy his philanthropic inclination.

The renowned one-ring circus is a nonprofit organization that supports community programs, health institutions and charities. Slifka gave more than $10 million to the organization over the years.