As Jewish as a Ham Sandwich
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Two years after his passing, my father's wisdom still guides how I work, lead, and live.
My father was a Torah scholar and an entrepreneur who fused Torah with business. Jewish values and wisdom shaped his life.
Here are five of the business lessons he taught me.
Just before entering the most important job interview of my life, I called my father and told him I was nervous. He put me at ease telling me to remember, "He gives bread to all flesh, for His kindness endures forever" (Psalms 136:25). Your income comes from God, not from your employer.
I walked into that interview calm. My fate was in the hands of God, not my interviewer. Thank God, I landed the position and it launched my career on Wall Street.
Eighteen years later, sitting on the other side of the desk as the CEO of a small company, my father reminded me to treat the position with reverence. "Remember, after God, you are the most powerful force in an employee's life."
When I sit in a room with employees, and especially with job candidates, his voice echoes in my ears and shapes the way I treat them.
Business, like life, has wins and losses. Losses hurt far more than gains feel good.
The traditional Jewish response is “Gam zu letovah -- this too is for the best." My father compressed it into a single word: "Humbug." It is okay to be frustrated. It is not okay for the frustration to stay with you. Say humbug and move on.
He had an especially poignant version for people who had lived through tragedy. He would remind them of the command God gave Lot and his family as they fled Sodom: "Do not look back." There are times in life when looking back turns you into a pillar of salt. It paralyzes you. The way through life's greatest hardships is to move forward and don’t look back.
The Torah teaches that God freed the Jewish people so that they could serve Him, and it looks with disappointment on the Hebrew servant who chooses to remain in servitude. The Sages put it sharply: "They are My servants, and not servants of servants." Our job is to serve God, not to be beholden to anyone else.
This principle guided how my father led his business. More important to him than financial success was personal and economic freedom. When large companies approached him with sales opportunities that would have eclipsed his existing business, he turned them down. Selling to them would make him beholden to them, and over time it would cost him his independence.
My father also understood that freedom requires discipline with credit, in both directions. He minimized debt and borrowed only when necessary. King Solomon said it plainly: "The borrower is a servant to the lender" (Proverbs 22:7).
Paradies in the Garden of Eden didn’t mean a beach chair and rest. God placed Adam in Eden "to work it and to guard it" (Genesis 2:15). Work was man's mission from the beginning.
Eating from the forbidden fruit changed the terms, not the mission: "By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread." The curse was not the need to work. It was the need to rely on work for sustenance, and that nature itself would now resist us with thorns and thistles, so that success would require overcoming nature rather than working with it.
My father often quoted the Torah's closing words about Creation: asher bara Elokim la'asot -- which God created to do" (Genesis 2:3). The world was created for doing, for building, for creating. A manufacturer his entire professional life, he saw in his work a Godly mission: to take part in creation and move the world forward.
The most remarkable thing I observed in my father was how he grew through life's challenges. The Mishnah teaches that Abraham was tested with ten trials. Each test transformed him and prepared him for the next, another step on a staircase of growth.
My father climbed the same staircase, including two bouts of cancer. The first, thank God, he survived. The second took him. He always loved life but after the first cancer he described every day as a gift, and he never let the gift become mundane. His love of life grew every day. His positivity was contagious. He made sure others knew that in spite of life's challenges, we are all having an amazing day because we are alive.
My father taught us to accept life as it comes and never bemoan our fate. We each get our lot. Our mission is to be partners with God in creation, to be productive, to leave the world a better place, and to grow through life’s challenges.
Le'iluy nishmas Harav Yaakov Elchanan ben Moshe Yehuda, in loving memory of my father.
The author was surely blessed by Hashem to have the father and mother he did.
Clear and beautiful!
I especially loved reading say humbug and move on.
Well stated and so very true and simple to understand. May his memory be for a blessing
Made me cry a little. My father z"l and my mother z"l were both instrumental in my life. My father, in particular, was the most loving, kindest and most generous man. He died in hospital after a long stay. The charge nurse on his unit was on vacation upstate when she heard of his passing. She ended the vacation and drove miles to get to his funeral. She wasn't even Jewish, but he made such an impression on her that she felt compelled to honor him. The number of cars leading to the cemetery was so long, someone asked when we stopped for a light, if a celebrity had died. My mother was the core of the sisterhood of her shule. Donations made in her name even reached out of state.
What a wonderful life your father led. Such a blessing to leave behind
Beautiful tribute, Itamar. What struck me most wasn't just the lessons your father taught you, but how clearly they've shaped the way you lead and live. That's a beautiful legacy. May your father's memory continue to be a blessing.