By Janis Siegel, JTNews Correspondent
In 1856, Jewish immigrant Jacob Furth, a 16-year-old from Bohemia, came to America to work as a clerk. When he moved to Seattle, 26 years later in 1882, he brought $50,000 with him and founded the Puget Sound National Bank.
By 1899, PSNB was the biggest bank in Seattle and Furth expanded his institution’s reach. During the great Seattle fire in 1889 that destroyed what is today’s Pioneer Square, he made $150 million in loans to the community, and declared that his bank would not profit from the disaster.
When the 1893 financial depression hit the U.S., Furth also refused to call in overdue loans.
Furth’s tale of Jewish business and Jewish values is only one of the 177 stories that the Washington State Jewish Historical Society will bring to life at a community celebration on June 7 at Congregation Ezra Bessaroth. The exhibit, “Who’s Minding the Store? Celebrating 150 Years of Jewish Business & Commerce in Washington State” will showcase many of these early Jewish-owned businesses.
These turn-of-the-century Jews who came to the Pacific Northwest to make a life not only settled in the region, but forged many businesses that thrive today, as they seeded their deeply held Jewish values into the communities they came to love.
Some came with cash while others just took a gamble on a better life.
“They peddled junk, rags, and clothes, and they managed to make successful businesses out of them,” said Carol Starin, a WSJHS member and co-chair of the event.
The state’s Jewish businesses spanned the state, as the exhibit will show. Starin helped organize the Seattle Jewish business history while Larry Grossman developed the historical background for more than 10 Jewish businesses in the Spokane area, and Jack Warnick researched roughly 20 stories from Jewish businesses in Tacoma — making for about 200 histories in all. Andrew Hess, a graphic designer, created all of the storyboards using photographs and text, mostly provided by the descendants of these historical families.
“This is a chance to meet history,” said Starin. “Over the months, I’ve fallen in love with these stories and these people. The oldest ones are over 135 years old.”
In a year when there is so much success and integrity being honored locally, it has also been a year of challenge for the Jewish business community globally. Billions of dollars of wealth on paper simply evaporated when financier Bernard Madoff was arrested in New York and charged with investment fraud after decades of swindling some of the world’s largest Jewish philanthropic agencies and many others.
As a preview to the event, the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island in collaboration with the Community High School of Jewish Studies, sponsored a panel on May 13 of local Jewish business leaders to discuss Jewish business ethics, partly in response to the Madoff scandal.
Albert Israel, a certified financial planner, WSJHS board member, and Seattle native moderated the event, which included Jon Bridge from Ben Bridge Jewelers, David Masin from Masin’s Furniture, and Moti Krauthamer, owner of Thumbprint Corporation, a multimedia production and distribution company based in Seattle, and an instructor at Hebrew High, as CHSJS is known.
While more than 30 high school students and several community members took their seats, Israel reflected on current events.
“The Bernie Madoff situation has definitely cast a shadow on the Jewish business community,” he said.
Krauthamer agreed.
“I don’t consider Bernie Madoff a businessman,” he said. “He was a criminal who used business as a front for his criminal activity.”
Krauthamer is teaching a class at Hebrew High called “Shame On You, Bernie Madoff,” in which students discuss business ethics and Jewish values.
Students came prepared with questions, ready to grill the panel.
When asked if any of them would lay off employees when their bottom line was thriving, Bridge opened the session.
“My first thought whenever I have to make a [business] decision is the word empathy,” Bridge, co-CEO and general counsel for Ben Bridge Jewelers, said. Bridge is a fifth-generation Seattleite who said he believes his family’s business success has been realized in direct proportion to its service.
“You try to keep as many people working as possible,” he continued. “We’re cutting hours rather than terminating employees and we’re trying to keep benefits intact.”
Ben Bridge Jewelers currently operates 80 stores in the Pacific Northwest, an incredible success story considering that patriarch and watchmaker Sam Silverman opened his first store in downtown Seattle in 1912.
After selling the business to his son-in-law Ben Bridge in the 1920s, it remains in the family today, run by Jon Bridge and his cousin, Ed Bridge.
The business values they exercise toward employees, said Bridge, are dignity and respect, truth and honesty, and equal opportunities for their workers.
“Layoffs are the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do professionally,” said Masin, the newest member to join his family’s furniture business. Masin assumed his supporting role in E. Masin’s Furniture in 2002 after the company suffered losses following the devastating economic effects of the 9/11 attacks in 2001, and a fire that destroyed their Bellevue store that same year.
Masin left his job in San Francisco, where, at the time, he worked for an Internet start-up company. He instead applied his communications and marketing degree to his family’s business.
“What I do during the day, and the way we do business every day, are Jewish fundamentals,” Masin told the audience. “It’s not the money that you pass on; it’s the values surrounding the wealth that makes a big difference.”
An audience member in the “adult” section questioned the panel about their lack of references to the ethical business teachings of the Torah.
Bridge responded quickly and forcefully.
“The word ‘empathy’ is everything we need to know and the rest is commentary,” he said. “If you treat people the way you want to be treated, you’re living a Jewish life.”