"במקום שאין אנשים, תהיה איש": הסיפור המופלא של אהרון פוירשטיין

It started around 8:00. loomed into the night spectacular general You can still see There's no way to quantify this. On December 11th, 1995 at 8:00 p.m., a boiler exploded in the largest textile factory in America at the time, the Malden Mills. It burned the entire factory to the ground. The fire was so big, it could be seen from miles away and it took an entire week to put out the fire completely. At the time, Mr. Aaron Feuerstein, the owner, the CEO of the company, was celebrating his 70th birthday. In the middle of the party, one of the executives ran over to him and said, "Mr. Feuerstein,

Mr. Feuerstein, there's a fire at the mill." By the time he got there, the factory that had been built by his grandfather in the early 1900s was mostly gone, which meant that overnight, 3,000 employees who worked at Malden Mills lost their job. As far as Mr. Feuerstein was concerned, he was about to collect close to a half a billion dollars from the insurance company. He was faced with the following decision: either close the company and pocket the money, or he can rebuild the company down south and hire cheaper labor over there and still make a lot of money. Either choice would have been

common practice amongst CEOs at the time. Everybody expected for Mr. Feuerstein to do the same. The next morning, Mr. Feuerstein called a press conference. Thousands of people were crammed and jammed into this huge auditorium. Senators, politicians were there. And in front of everyone, he gets up and he makes the stunning announcement. He pledged to rebuild the factory right here in Massachusetts, bigger and better than ever before. And not only that, he continues and he says, "Every single one of you will continue receiving your monthly paychecks until it's rebuilt." All our employees will

be paid their full salaries. The entire place erupted. There was so much emotion. It was charged because people were so anxious and nervous up to that point thinking they lost their livelihood and all of a sudden this same of a man gets up and he pledges and he promises that they have nothing to worry about. News media outlets showed the footage of him making the announcement and they also showed people waiting online afterwards to pick up their paychecks. It made national and international headlines. You'll receive your bonuses and everything today. He was interviewed by dozens of news media

outlets and they asked him, they said, "Why would you even do that?" My father, who was a very observant Jew, uh taught me and I still remember the uh his quotation, which was uh "B'kol ram she'ein anashim." In those circumstances where there is a moral vacuum, "Hishtadel liyosish." Do everything within your power to be a man. And that's what he instructed his children to do and that's what I'm trying to do. The President of the United States, Bill Clinton, in 1996 invited him to the State of the Union and sat him next to the First Lady and honored him, calling him periodically afterwards to

ask him for business advice, recognizing that here was a man who didn't see money as the end of it all, as the bottom line. Some might have said the proper business decision for a 70-year-old guy is to take the $300 million in insurance and retire. And what would I do with it? Eat more? Buy another suit? Retire and die? Huh. No, I That That did not go into my mind. That That was not an option. Not for a second. I was only 14 years old when this happened. But recently, when I heard about it again, I wondered, is Mr. Feuerstein still alive? Can I interview him? Can I meet him? And maybe even

can I get a blessing from a great man like that. I made some calls and I found that he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. He's alive and well. He hasn't given an interview in 25 years. He said yes. I took along my 12-year-old son Shalom. We traveled to Boston. We came to the house of his granddaughter, Marika Feuerstein. He lives with his granddaughter, 95. Not a young man anymore, but completely healthy and completely with it. As I walked into his home and shook his hand, I can see in his eyes the wisdom, the life experience. And I was really excited to sit and talk with him. The first

question I asked him, I said, "Mr. Feuerstein, what gave you the courage, the strength to walk away from hundreds of millions of dollars and do what's right and treat the workers properly like human beings, take care of them?" First of all, the Torah. As a young man, when I read and studied the Torah, that showed me the way of life. That was very very important. Lo sa'ashok sachir. Not to oppress the worker. You got a lot of workers. Not to oppress the worker because he's an oni and an evyon. We considered him a human being, not a pair of hands. And there's a difference. He said, "My father

was a great example. He was a big tzaddik. He also taught me to be a mensch. Umokem she'einish hishtadli lihiyos ish." My father was a tzaddik and had great influence over me. Today we see Orthodoxy prospering, but when my father was a young man, Orthodoxy was dying. And my father was the one who kept the Orthodox alive in Boston. The business was started by his father, Henry Feuerstein. He came over to this country in his teens, and he read in the Forward's Yiddish newspaper that there was a factory for sale in Malden. He went to see the factory. He knew nothing about knitting machinery,

nothing about sweaters, nothing about anything, any product. He said, "There's a place where I can go to shul, I'll be my own boss." And he bought it. And the business prospered, and by the time I got to the business, the Malden Knitting Mills was ranked AAA1 for credit, and they were worth millions. I asked him about the employees when they returned to work at Malden Mills after it was rebuilt. They increased productivity by 40% without a wage increase just as an expression of gratitude to Mr. Feuerstein and what he had done. We had good employees. Many of them couldn't even speak English,

but when treated like a human beings, they they were just terrific. They wanted me to succeed, and they increased employment without a wage increase. Then I asked him a very difficult question. I said, "Mr. Feuerstein, I know that eventually your company went bankrupt. Do you ever feel that had you not done that good deed and spent the tens of millions of dollars on the employees paying them while the company was being rebuilt, do you ever feel like you would have had the money to continue going?" No. You have no right to defame God's name with your business or with your family, whatever your

enterprise is. I was too enthusiastic. I should have gone slow. I wanted to go rapidly. And so, I paid for it. Something he was really proud of was the building of the shul of Young Israel in Brooklyn in Massachusetts. And he kept telling me, "Make sure you go see the shul. A beautiful piece of architecture." I remember as a young man, it was a fight to get a minyan in the shul. I wanted to have a shul that was not in the basement. I thought that was a kavod for God. If you wanted to dwell in the house, you have to make a nice house. So, we put together the money and we built an Orthodox

shul. And it's something that God could walk into. I feel like some of the Jews who went to the basement years ago, I'm in the presence of God. I couldn't help but feel the entire conversation with Mr. Feuerstein was just an incredible experience. I was sitting in front of a giant. He didn't look to sound good or to look good. He just looked to impart the wisdom that he had gained over the years. And that he had lived by. And finally, I asked him, "Mr. Feuerstein, bless me. Bless my son. I'm in awe of what you have done, what you have accomplished, the decisions you've made." May God bless

you and make you secure. Amen. May God see you through a security intellectually. Most important. Yes, I know it one of the lack of your same or shalom. And he should give you what all you do. The divine objective. To spread Torah. My son and I will never forget that interview. That experience. I said my goodbyes. We wrapped it up. Went back to LA. Shortly after we came back to LA, we got a call from the family. Mr. Feuerstein had passed away. I thought if he hadn't given an interview in 25 years, why did he agree to do it now? I couldn't help but feel that um Hashem sent me to Boston to do

his story before he passed. So the world could know. The laws of Hashem Kodesh when it comes to the south of Israel. I always kept in my mind that I should make it a kiddush Hashem. And not a chillul Hashem.