I never had the privilege to meet Aaron Feuerstein, but I am sure that I know the cloth from which he was cut. It’s not because his obituary appeared in The New York Times, The Boston Globe and elsewhere or just because he gained national recognition for his business ethos. It’s the gestalt—because he exemplified “To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
Although I never met him, I already had connected in one way or another with some members of Feurstein’s renowned family. For the first two summers following my return from seminary in France, I attended classes at Torah Umesorah’s Summer Institute. It was there that I first heard about the family’s philanthropy.
Aaron Feuerstein’s grandfather, Henry (Naftali) Feuerstein, an immigrant from Hungary, had opened the Malden Mills knitting factory in Massachusetts. Samuel, his eldest son, helped found Torah Umesorah, the National Society for Jewish Day Schools, and was its first and only president. Samuel Feuerstein actively worked to rescue European Jewry from Nazism and helped establish many Jewish educational institutions, including the Maimonides School in Boston and Torah Schools for Israel. His children continued his philanthropy and chesed.
The Kovacs family’s connection to the Feuersteins goes back decades. I first met them in Brookline in the late 1970s, initially through Aaron’s brother Moses (Moe) Feuerstein, and much later through Moe’s son Henry, where my son and I were Shabbat guests.
Louis Kovacs, my late father-in-law, A”H, was an MBA student at Harvard Business School in the late 1930s; Moe Feuerstein attended at the same time. Harvard, circa 1938, was not the most philosemitic campus in the U.S. (understatement), and certainly not a comfortable place for an Orthodox, yarmulke-sporting young man, which Moe clearly was. Kovacs was a proud, if not a yeshiva-educated Jew. Although not built like a bouncer, he was a husky, very formidable presence indeed. He became Moe’s bodyguard at Harvard.
Dor L’Dor, generation to generation, the Feuersteins’ community action and our personal connection continued. My youngest son became close friends with Moe Feuerstein’s grandson in yeshiva and college. In Maryland, I socialized with his daughter and her husband, who headed a volunteer job networking organization. All this could have merely reflected the interconnected and chesed-based world that we Jews inhabit and that the Feuersteins graced, were it not for another area of impact that was revealed to me in textbook (literally) style.
I had taught public relations at university level for some years and selected a highly recommended text, “Public Relations Practices: Managerial Cases and Problems,” Sixth Edition, for a new class. I flipped to the section on employee relations, a critical area of PR practice. I was stunned to find that the Malden Mills case—Aaron Feuerstein’s handling of the company’s employee relations—was the lead case in that section. It was an absolute honor that in the global business environment, Feuerstein’s concern for his factory’s workers reached a figurative “gold standard.” Despite the devastating fire that had destroyed Malden Mills, he had paid his workforce through the holiday break, bucking against the tide of accrued “business wisdom.” His sense of loyalty to them, which outweighed his personal interests, resulted in a bold and unprecedented step. These workers repaid him with 200% productivity, and as word of his kindness spread, business owners who had no connection to Feuerstein, offered him loans to rebuild the factory.
Ultimately, not even the widespread success of Polartec, Malden Mills’ own creation, was able to preserve the Feuersteins’ ownership of the company. Nevertheless, the legacy that Aaron Feuerstein left behind—integrity, loyalty, and a stake in community—had made a kiddush Hashem. He had raised the consciousness of a wider, diverse audience, so that they could share and hopefully follow in his caring and wise footsteps. May his memory be for a blessing.
Rachel Kovacs, Ph.D., teaches media at CUNY and is a PR professional, writer, and theater reviewer. She can be reached at [email protected].
