Making Yourself Look Marketable for a Boss

As I write this piece, I think back on how my mistake about how I should live, dress and conduct myself, almost cost me my life back in the '70s and'80s. It is a long story.

In my youth, as a victim of the Ben Yishai apocalyptic Hebrew Christian cult run by Jack "Abba Yaakov Abensur" Hickman, I was deceived into believing that God wanted me to become a Chasidic Jew and dress in a black hat and frock coat. I thought I broke out of that mentality but it boomeranged on me several times.

Lou Ramos and his brother Phil, who were leaders in Ben Yishai, talked with me several times and they were astounded to find out that as far back as the mid to late '70s, I labored under the suspicion that God wanted me to dress that way. Even they didn't go that far. It was a long held belief that I overcame several times but it rebounded on me again after I finished my college studies in Israel in '86.

Let's fast forward to '86 and '87. I had just finished my studies in business at the Boston University/Ben Gurion University of the Negev Be'er Sheba, Israel Joint Master of Science in Management Program. It is now many years ago.

I couldn't find work and I went to a Chabad Lubavitch shaliach ("emissary") in my hometown of K'far Saba, Israel to find work. I thought he could help me. At first he said he would help and then he told me that I had to go to Chabad's yeshiva ("seminary") for "late starters in Judaism." I am not Orthodox and tried to retailer myself to become such.

I went to the yeshiva at K'far Chabad, which is near Ben Gurion Airport in Lod. It was a really dismal place. I hated it.

So, anyway, someone picked a wrestling match with me and I agreed since it was not a fistfight. Hews the nephew of a Chabad Rabbi I knew from Crown Heights for several years. Also, I was on the wrestling team for 2 years when I was in West Hollow Jr. High School many years ago in Melville, LI. I used to wrestle with my friends while I was growing up and spar with some of my pals in karate matches too, all in good fun with no harm done.

I pinned my opponent after a brief and intense struggle. All of a sudden some lunatic popped up out of the woodwork brandishing a knife and screamed at me, "So, you think your're a tough guy huh?" Well, I didn't pick the match but as usual I was the one who had to put up with all the craziness. I really had hard time at this yeshiva and couldn't figure out why.

The Rosh Yeshiva ("Head of the Seminary") wanted me to move in with someone else, and I balked. They threw me out of the yeshiva. So, I went back to my family for a brief while.

My father was incensed that I got a yeshivisher style haircut. He called it "A monkey haircut." And he kept telling me to shave and make myself look marketable for a boss, but I thought that God really wanted me to be an Orthodox Jew and that my dad was on the wrong path in general.

I also went back to my friend, Rabbi Yeshua Witt, who was a leader in the Carlebach movement. I hadn't had a haircut in a while and it looked like I was growing payos ("curly side locks"). It wasn't intentional. But Yeshua thought it was and he told me, "Reuven (my Hebrew name), I am so proud of you!" But no one else was least of all a job counselor and my father. I really couldn't figure out where I went wrong.

Dressed in a good suit, with a beard, a skull cap and tzitzit (garments with the strings attached) I went looking for a job in a job agency in Tel Aviv run by Israel's secular government. I was attacked by the caseworker.

He screamed at me, "What kind of degree is this?" and when I told him that it is a degree in management he yelled back "Can you manage?" When I told him that I was looking for work he yelled back, "Convince me!"

I didn't know of the hatred that the secular Jews (chilonim) have for the religious Jews (dati'im). I was really manhandled there and it left a bad taste on my lips for many years.

I came back to the USA in April of '87 and got married. My ex-wife is from Maine and I got an interview with a marketing company. They asked me "how do you do marketing?" That seemed to be a really bizarre question. Anyway, they were reacting to my overly religious style of dress.

At the same time, I went back to Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood, LI and saw my old philosophy professor. He saw my get up and told me, "The disguise didn't work!" Yeesh!!!

As a side note, I was brought up in the Conservative Jewish movement and that movement along with the Reform movemnt constitutes the bulk of the Jewish community in the USA. The orthodoxy is relatively small outside of Israel.

Years ago, when I was in Ben Yishai, I was having a conversation with one of my girlfriends. She said something about Christian Dior and I replied "Hebrew Christian Dior" She giggled but it was tailoring that worked in the USA. Although my beard was somewhat of a problem but I didn't wear a frock coat or the garments with the strings. Really, how many Chasidic Grand Rabbis are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies?

My sister worked for some of the big placement agencies in NYC. She always told me how she gave people advice to "dress corporate." If you want to make money, you have to look like money, as the saying goes.