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After three weeks of space tales, here's something more down to earth for your Shabbat table.

We were saddened to learn this week of the death of Aaron Feuerstein at age 95.

Does the name ring a bell?

Imagine you're the 3rd-generation owner of a successful textile factory that employs 3,000 Americans.

One night, a boiler explodes, engulfing the factory in flames and burning it to the ground.

Is it time to move operations overseas where labor is much cheaper? Is it time to retire (let's imagine you're 70-years-old). 

This is the question for your table: What would you do?

If your name is Aaron Feuerstein, you would continue to pay your 3,000 employees after the factory burned down in 1995.

In December 1995, shortly after Malden Mills invested millions of dollars into new equipment and research into creating Polarfleece out of recycled materials. A fire destroyed the factory complex and left all of the employees out of work. At the age of 70, Aaron Feuerstein could have easily pocketing insurance money, closed up shop and retire. He also could have followed the trend of other large corporations and relocated overseas. Instead, Feuerstein decided to rebuild the factory right where it had stood and kept the jobless employees paid at full salary during the downtime (at a cost of $1.5 million per week). He also pledged to keep their family’s benefits for at least 3 months.

Feuerstein - the Mensch of Malden Mills - said that his moral compass came from studying the Talmud.

(By the way, when he reopened the factory a year later, he enjoyed 95% customer and employee retention and business increased 40%. However, the debt incurred by these events forced him eventually to sell the business.)

“I think it was a wise business decision, but that isn’t why I did it. I did it because it was the right thing to do." - Feuerstein

Question for your table: What's a moral compass?


Enjoy the podcast and Shabbat Shalom

PS - Here's a moving tribute to Feuerstein.

Podcast details: there are ten ways to hear it:
iTunes/iPhone … YidPod … Spotify … Google Podcasts … Pocketcasts … Stitcher … Podbean … Amazon Podcasts … RSS … or just on the web (if you use the latter, scroll down to see all the episodes).

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