Book Review By Toby Klein Greenwald
Sometimes a book appears that is exactly what is needed at the moment. I’m Not the Boss, I Just Work Here is one of those books. COVID has led to more people suffering from depression and threatened with financial ruin, but even for those who are not coping with these issues, there are precious takeaways.
It is all the more intriguing because I’m Not the Boss, I Just Work Here (Toby Press) is actually updated and republished, based on a book that Howard Jonas, founder and chairman of IDT and of Genie Energy Ltd., wrote 20 years ago. Some truths are, apparently, universal and eternal.
It is only 102 pages—perfect for a cold or snowy Shabbat—but in that short space it packs vital business and entrepreneurial tips from an uber-successful businessman, coupled with anecdotes about his personal struggle with depression and how he overcame it.
Perhaps the brevity is part of the message: you can convey the most important truths succinctly, just as anyone who has been involved in a startup is familiar with the concept of “the elevator pitch,” the way you describe your project to someone you meet briefly in an elevator, and have only a few floors’ ride in which to make your point.
Jonas opens by telling us that, even though he is an Orthodox Jew, “I am not an expert on G-d … I am an expert on depression.” His house burned down, at one point his wife almost left him, and he almost went bankrupt several times. In his preface to the new edition, he writes, “I lost hundreds of millions of dollars drilling for oil that wasn’t there and promoting technologies no one wanted to buy.” And later, “…there is no mental, spiritual, or emotional depth from which you cannot rise … G-d is always there to help.”
At the age of nine, he was convinced that he caused the great northeastern blackout of 1965 by spinning the blades of a fan backwards while hanging out in his father’s office.
He was fourteen when he started a hot dog stand.
The Kennedy assassination, the Black Panthers, Mickey Mantle, the Vietnam War, tear gas … He lived during tumultuous times, and he had many questions, but no answers. He started reading Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and Adam Smith.
Then one day he picked up a Bible. But what really changed things for him, at the age of 17, was reading about the halachic concept of yovel (the jubilee year), during which all farmland reverts to its original owner. As he thought about it, he achieved the realization that only G-d could have come up with a system like this.
He ponders good, evil, controlling and non-controlling societies, and personal responsibility, all with a deep empathy and sardonic wit. And he believes, unequivocally, that G-d’s central value is liberty; He wants people to make their own choices.
Jonas asks, since G-d knows everything, what is the point of giving us challenges? Part of his answer: “People who’ve lived through adversity and confronted challenges are deeper people than those who haven’t … The real idea is to challenge oneself every day … by attempting to climb new mountains. Someone who lives this way, when challenges are thrust upon him, will be well prepared.” He urges us to respond to tragedy not with hopelessness, but with love.
He describes three classes of people in the world: shirkers who try to mooch off the efforts of others, regular people who do what is necessary but no more, and those who “…go all out to try to accomplish the most they can with whatever G-d gave them.” They may be CEOs, or top athletes, or janitors.
Jonas relates that his father told him a story (source unknown) about how when Joseph, as a lowly slave, was a sweeper, he kept sweeping when others had stopped, and that was why Potiphar noticed him. “Joseph not only rose to be master of Potiphar’s house, but wouldn’t even ‘steal’ Potiphar’s beautiful wife when she threw herself at him. Eventually, after several ‘hiccups’ along the way, this led to Joseph becoming viceroy of all Egypt and the savior of his people. Why? Because he kept on sweeping,” Jonas writes.
As a longtime student and teacher of Tanach, I was intrigued. Neither I nor my scholar husband nor several Tanach scholars who are my colleagues were familiar with this story or could locate it in any book or database. It may be an obscure Midrash, or an embellishment on the theme of Joseph working hard, that a teacher shared with Jonas’s father long ago. The left side of my brain wondered: If the source is unknown, why quote it?
The legendary storyteller and author, Professor Penninah Schram, said in a workshop in an ATARA conference I attended in New York in 2009 that we should think about the first story we remember being told. “That story,” she said, “is the story that informed your life.”
It may not have been the first story that Jonas was told, but, he writes, “This story had a dramatic effect on my life.” The message was that Joseph worked hard, in difficult circumstances, and was ultimately successful.
The significance of this anecdote is clear. The stories we hear and that we share with our children and grandchildren and others can affect their lives profoundly.
The Value Of Failure
“I’ve never insisted on hiring the guys from the best schools or with the fanciest résumés,” writes Jonas. “I’ve always wanted the people with a fire burning in them … The charities that have the most appeal for me are those that give people the chance to elevate themselves.” Cooking schools, he says, are better than soup kitchens, and “Those who graduate can make their own soup.”
He tries to hire only two kinds of people: those who are obsessed and intensive about what they do, and those who have had profound “failures, screw-ups on an astonishingly grand level.” Because look how daring they were, and how far they came before the crash. “It is how we deal with the aftermath of failure and hardship that truly defines us.”
Jonas’s depression started in 1992; he infers that it may be linked to the time that he transformed his business life from a small family-type operation to a large telecommunications business, with new hirings every week, new equipment, an expanded budget, articles appearing about them, and a move 15 miles away to New Jersey.
Then his father was diagnosed with cancer. Jonas began spiraling downward, started going to a psychiatrist, was put on (the wrong) drugs, and contemplated suicide every time he drove over the George Washington Bridge. He changed doctors and medication, and things improved a bit. But the real breakthrough came when he was in Israel, traveling near the Dead Sea. To learn about this remarkable experience, you’ll have to read the book.
He went on to have four more children (they have nine altogether) with his wife, Debbie, to whom he attributes much of his ability to have come back from the depths. He continues to try to improve the world. In addition to his other business projects and his extensive philanthropy, a company of which he is the chairman and CEO, Rafael Holdings, is in Phase 3 FDA trials of an anti-cancer drug.
Would he prefer to turn the clock back and not have experienced failures and depression, and live a “plain, happy life?” Yes, he writes. “But this wasn’t my choice.”
One of the most touching chapters is about his grandmother, who lived in a housing project, with whom he spent many weekends as a youngster and from whom he learned deep, formative lessons in life. He says she was his best friend. His favorite place to sit in shul had been with Holocaust survivors, much older than him, but from whose stories he learned.
In addition to passing on our values and experience to the next generation, Jonas writes, “Remember that G-d wants us to be happy and enjoy life.”
You will want to read and reread this book, small in size, but vast in wisdom. Keep it by your bedside or recliner. And, like your values, pass it on, along with your own stories, to your next generation.
The author lives in Israel. She is an award-winning journalist, theater director, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of WholeFamily.com
