Thursday, October 06, 2022
Satmar businessman Joel Klein: ‘Hasidim are living the American dream’
After The New York Times published an investigative piece on the poor academic performance of Orthodox Jewish yeshiva students, much of the Jewish press responded with nuanced outrage. One finely reasoned analysis came from Eli Spitzer, a British Hasidic educator, who conceded in Tikvah, a weekly podcast, that the Times' article was true "in terms of what the investigation found," but who took the reporters to task for not explaining why they wrote that the yeshivos were "failing by design." Spitzer asked, "What is that design?" The Times, he said, didn't answer this "most important question."
Except for story interviews I've done with individual Hasidim over the years, I've had virtually no personal contact with them. I wanted to hear how at least one member of this community responded to Eli Spitzer's question. I asked Joel Klein, a Satmar Hasidic business coach and serial entrepreneur based in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to contemplate the role his yeshiva studies played in his educational, intellectual and business life. He speaks here in his own voice.
I'm not a statistics man and I can't comment on the investigation by The New York Times that attempts to quantify my community's educational system. Frankly, I don't count on the "paper of record" to properly reflect the world I have lived in for 43 years. The focus in Kiryas Joel, Orange County, where I grew up, is on Torah, talmudical studies and halacha. I readily concede we have a specific value system that is often at odds with the values of the secular world.
The fact is, I always had a passion to help people. Despite excelling in Torah and halachic studies, and despite receiving smicha (rabbinic certification), I hoped one day to get involved with askunes, or volunteer work.
After the birth of my second child, and even while I continued my studies in the koylel (institute for advanced study of Talmud and rabbinic literature), I began volunteering for an organization to support cancer survivors. A close family friend, who had established the organization, asked my wife and me to help develop a marketing strategy. Back then, my writing skills were primarily in Yiddish or loshn koydesh (a mixture of Hebrew and Aramaic used in prayer books and holy texts). They were ideal for the organization's target audience. The sensitivity I felt for my community's needs was also an asset. My wife and I helped bring the organization's message across to potential donors. We were thrilled when we raised thousands of dollars, all of which went to the families of cancer patients.
The time came to parlay my marketing and writing skills into a parnuse, a way of earning a living. It was the beginning of the dot-com economy and I thought of establishing an online store. E-commerce was a novel concept at the time. I said to myself, "My family friend also has a payroll company. He could be a great customer." I met with him and asked if he would buy my laser-printed checks. He shlepped me off to the side and said, "Yoeli (my Yiddish name), you're not opening a laser check-printing business. You're opening a marketing company." He explained very few people had the insight into marketing the way I did.
So I opened a marketing office. One day a heimishe guy, a fellow Hasid, a very successful business owner, walked in. He needed help with a marketing project for a trade show. We sat for an hour and I said, "Okay, I'll come up with a strategy and send you a proposal."
"Joel, how much do I owe you for today's meeting?" he asked me.
I had never considered charging for an initial consultation. I wondered, "Is my time so valuable that people should pay me $500 an hour?" But since he asked me, I took the audacity and I told him, "It's $500 an hour." He wrote a check right away for $1,500. He said, "That's for this meeting, one with my marketing team, and one with my sales team. I'll pay more as we move forward."
I work with this man to this very day. He still doesn't know he was my first paying consulting client.
People began coming to me. I no longer hesitated about charging a consultation fee. And I started writing a series of business articles for the Satmar Yiddish weekly Der Blatt. For a couple of years I also had a column called, "Ikh Vil Matsliakh Zahn, Ober Vi Azoy?" ("I Want to Be Successful, But How?") My motto was, "Empowering Jewish entrepreneurs," and I got invited to do a monthly business podcast for "Kol Mevaser," a Yiddish news hotline for the Hasidic community.
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