Ethics pumped at meeting of Orthodox Jewish Chamber

The Orthodox Jbewish Chamber of Commerce brought its Small Business Alliance to the Five Towns last week, holding a networking event at the Lawrence Yacht and County Club that was attended by several dozen local entrepreneurs.

“We’re looking to empower people and build economic development,” said Chamber Founder Duvi Honig.

Motivational speaker Kivi Bernard, author of “Leopardology: The Hunt For Profit In A Tough Global Economy,” related his own business story where the lesson was simple: Don’t obsess over money, do the right thing by treating people fairly and honestly — following Jewish values — and you’ll be okay.

“What is our purpose,” he asked. “Do I see money as an end destination, because that’s what my body tells me? Or is it as my soul defines it, as a delivery mechanism to the world?”

“You buy a house for a million dollars so that you can have a Shabbos table that has 15 or 20 people around it who can make a blessing on a Friday night in 2018 when there are centuries of history that said otherwise,” he said. “But when the paraphanalia of my physical existence become the dominent thing, I become a victim of that.”

Bernhard said that the Orthodox Jewish Chamber “put us together to remind us that what we are chasing as we engage business is a sanctified pursuit of the physical material world, so we can excavate out of the physical material world godliness.”

He continued: “That beautiful magnificent luxury car that you are driving in, with audio equipment that Bose spent hundreds of millions of dollars developing — you know why it exists? So that you can put a Torah tape in it [or] Bluetooth out of your phone and jam in a Torah lesson, taking this physical, material, corporeal asset and humanizing it.”

Afterwards, Bernard was asked about Jews who get in trouble for violating business law. He said it’s more serious when a Jew does wrong than when a non-Jew does so. The non-Jew “wasn’t commissioned with this responsibility, we were,” he said.

He volunteered the example of recently-freed Rabbi Sholom Rubashkin, saying that “it’s beautiful that Rubashkin is out — 27 years  was a total travesty of justice — but don’t celebrate him as a hero” and use him as a role-model for Jewish youth.

“He committed significant violations of the law,” Bernard said. “He didn’t deserve 27 years.”

While this was the Orthodox Jewish Chamber’s first event in the Five Towns, the organization’s been active in the metropolitan area for a number of years, holding similar networking events elsewhere and hosting a major job fair.

The group’s chairman, J. Morton Davis of Lawrence, championed Honig’s single-minded determination to facilitate opportunities for parnasa in the frum community.

“It’s the highest form of charity,” Davis said. “He spends his whole life doing good things.”

Davis is the Davis in DRS — Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere. His sons-in-law are Renov and Stahler.

Honig said the chamber’s Small Business Alliance would meet again in the Five Towns on Feb. 19. For information, visit OJCchamber.com.