Yesterday we introduced our Amazon hero Judah Bergman, who noticed 70 iPads on sale for $40. Rather than capitalize on someone’s error and keep them for himself, he realized a fellow Jew had made an error so he purchased them all in order to return them. What a Kiddush Hashem! Now some background:
Judah noticed the Ami story about the Amazon Kiddush Hashem written by Rabbi Yoel Gold posted on Telegram, a social media platform that broadcasts a chat of thousands of religious, Jewish, private Amazon vendors who share ideas.
The article was posted there by the moderator, Ephraim Ed Rosenberg. Ephraim has his own personal Amazon saga which was published by Mishpacha magazine on March 2, 2016.
That article, titled Lost in the Rainforest, reports that Mr. Rosenberg received a message from Amazon one day, notifying him that he’d been suspended from selling anything on Amazon until further notice. He was shocked. Amazon was his whole business! After doing some research and educating himself about the mistakes he’d inadvertently made, he decided to publicize his newfound knowledge of this business. He started a chat for family and friends in the same business, to help them avoid the pitfalls. This chat grew to 100, then eventually to hundreds of members, and although he was back selling on Amazon, he eventually decided to drop the selling entirely to focus solely on being an Amazon consultant. He’s helping a lot of people successfully this way. What started as a hessed became a business venture. Now 1,000 Jewish people belong to that group on Telegram, sharing ideas and learning from one another.
After Rosenberg posted the Ami article, he heard that Rabbi Yoel Gold wanted to make a video about the story, now that he had all the pieces in place. The entire Telegram chat chipped in to group-fund the expense of the video, because they strongly believe in spreading the concept that when Jews help each other out you don’t lose, you only gain. The message is spreading. After we began this topic, I got a text which read:
“Hi Rabbi,
My wife listens to your class everyday. She wanted me to text you because she got inspired from your class about competition. She sells Syrian pastries. She came up with a great idea recently to save money and make sure the pastries don’t stick together. She was so inspired by the recent class about competition, that she called up a competitor- another woman from our community and gave her the tip.”
Bh people are acting on it. Hopefully we all take the message. Myself as well.
I work in the Yad Yosef Torah Center, as does Rabbi David Ashear. On Friday nights we all pray together in one minyan and I speak to the whole congregation. On Shabbat mornings, Rabbi Ashear and I pray in separate minyans and we each speak to our respective kahal. When my printer was broken and Ralph Tawil was making me copies, Rabbi Ashear noticed the Amazon article. He asked me if I could save the story for Shabbat morning, rather than speak about it Friday night, as he wanted to share this story in his minyan too.
I had really planned to use the story in my Friday night speech. I even started explaining to Rabbi Ashear how it fit in so well with my other topics for Friday night, and so I didn’t want to put it off until Saturday morning, but then I caught myself. It hit me - I am speaking about people helping their competitors and I don’t want to share an article about this very topic with a fellow rabbi?
“No problem,” I said, “I’ll save it for Shabbat morning. I’ll use something else Friday night. I’m sure it’ll work out.”
This is a message for everyone: Businessmen, rabbis and housewives baking pastries. Share with other people. You won’t lose. You’ll only gain.