by Mayer Zeiler
I am a businessman, and an industrialist. The story I have to tell here is how my family invested in a textile business in Israel, thinking it would be a losing proposition. Why did we do it even when we knew we shouldn't?
We did it because the Rebbe said to do it, and we were followers of the Rebbe. Despite all the predictions to the contrary, the business succeeded. Not just modestly, but hugely — not just in Israeli terms, but in American terms, in global terms, thank G-d.
The only explanation why it succeeded, where logically it should have failed, is that the Land of Israel is especially blessed by G-d (something which the Rebbe understood better than any businessman), and that this particular venture was directed and blessed by the Rebbe himself.
The story begins with the passing of my mother in 1951, when I was four years old. My widowed father, a Holocaust survivor, a Bobover chasid — who was then coping with three small children, while living in the Bushwick section of Williamsburg — went to get a blessing from the Lubavitcher Rebbe. That blessing has followed our family to this day.
I married into a Chabad family. My father-in-law, Reb Dovid Deitsch, was especially close to the Rebbe, and had a plastics business which I joined.
After the devastating Yom Kippur War of 1973, my father-in-law asked the Rebbe what he should do to help Israel. He was sure that the Rebbe would tell him to write a check to an organization doing good works in the Holy Land, but the Rebbe's answer proved starkly different. "Open up a business in Israel," he said. "The new immigrants need jobs. Build a factory there. You will be very successful and it will benefit many families."
My father-in-law didn't think such a venture made business sense, and he didn't do anything about it. But the Rebbe persisted. Each time we went for a blessing, the Rebbe would ask, "Reb Dovid, what's happening with the business in Israel?"
No one in our family was interested in this project. Our advisors told us it would be a total loss. So the explanation that my father-in-law gave the Rebbe was that we were trying but that we were having problems with the Israeli bureaucracy.
To start a business in Israel, we faced one stumbling block after another. It was a very hard project, I had been put in charge of it, and I was weary of it. So, I tried to convince my father-in-law to convince the Rebbe that we should walk away from it.
In fact, I discussed these issues with the Rebbe during an audience in the summer of 1976. But instead of accepting my argument that we should give up, the Rebbe said, "How do you expect to run a business if you're not there?"
That was not the response I was anticipating. But the Rebbe pointed out that this was the ideal time to move to Israel, as the kids could begin school in September.
This was a tough thing for me to accept. But following the Rebbe's recommendation, we made the move into an apartment in Nachlat Har Chabad which was a quarter of the size of our home in Crown Heights.
After a year there, I told the Rebbe that I couldn't take it because of all the frustrations I constantly faced, and I tried to convince him that we should return home. In response, the Rebbe said to me, "The hard times are behind you; from now on, it will be easier."
And it was.
Suddenly, doors which were shut before started opening up with the ministry officials, customs officials, and the banks. I was making many new friends. At one point, I was introduced to Prime Minister Menachem Begin who amazed me by saying, "When I last visited the Rebbe, he spoke to me about you. I hope you won't have any more problems from now on."
And that's how our factory, Flocktex Industries in Nachlat Har Chabad, started running in the late 1970s.
We were the first manufacturers in the world making a velvet-type fabric for curtains which became very much in demand in England and the world over.
At first, our customers wanted a certificate from an English laboratory, which failed us repeatedly. I asked the Rebbe for his blessing three times before the English laboratory finally approved our product. When I asked him for the third blessing and saw how puzzled he was by the request, I realized that the English test was not being done properly. So I sent our head chemist over there to stand and watch, and then we passed.
As the global demand grew, we built a second and then a third plant. Today, although we are not the largest company in Israel, we are one of the country's most successful textile producers.
Would any of this have happened without the Rebbe's insistence?
For sure not.
Our financial advisors told us this venture would not work. They said, "Go back to your Rebbe and explain to him that he doesn't understand industry and he doesn't understand financing. You can't have a successful industry in Israel."
I thank G-d that despite everything, we followed the Rebbe's advice. We are here today running a business that provides a livelihood for over one-hundred families. And for this the Rebbe gets all the credit.
Reprinted from the JEM's My Encounter with the Rebbe oral history project