Here’s My Story: My Business Coach

Mr. Laibel Lipszyc

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My family came to America in 1946, when I was seven years old. We had run away from Antwerp, where I was born, when the Nazis invaded. First, we fled to Portugal, where a younger brother was born, then to Cuba, where another sister was born, until eventually — after the war — America began to let more ships in.

We lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn, near several Lubavitcher families, until we moved to Charleston, South Carolina, where my father got a job as a shochet, a kosher slaughterer. But then, in 1949, my father got the news about his parents. He had been trying to save his family throughout the war, and it was only then that he learned that his mother, father, and two siblings had been killed by the Nazis. When his sister, who told him the news, blamed him for not saving them, he had a nervous breakdown. We moved back to New York, and he spent the next few years in and out of the hospital. Throughout this time, the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe helped our family by sending my mother some money every week.

Because he was sick and away from home, my father wasn’t at my Bar Mitzvah in 1952, nor did he participate in my first audience with the Rebbe in honor of the occasion. On top of that, my older brother also had some health troubles, and so a lot of things that had to be done around the house fell to the next boy — me.

I was a student in the Lubavitcher yeshivah system. But because of everything that was going on in my family, I became a bit rebellious. I started to hang out on the streets with some non-Jewish boys, and my mother didn’t like the way things were going with me. When I was eighteen, her younger sister, who lived in Argentina, suggested sending me to live with them for a year. Her husband had a jewelry store, and he could help me get into the jewelry business. “He’ll learn a trade, and we’ll straighten him out,” she said.

Before going to Argentina, I had another audience with the Rebbe. He told me that I should only go on the condition that I would be able to continue studying in a local yeshivah alongside my work. I agreed, and at first I spent half a day studying Torah and the other half training for the jewelry trade.

But after a few months, I wrote a letter to the Rebbe suggesting that I spend less time learning Torah in order to work longer hours. Back in New York, my family was living on welfare, which in those days meant getting coupons that allowed you to pick up food from a government warehouse. These warehouses didn’t have a lot of kosher food, so my mother would go there just for eggs and vegetables. The city’s welfare authorities could come into our house to look around at any time without even knocking on the door. If they saw anything new, they would ask how we paid for the item. Most of our household items were second-hand, and for a time, we weren’t even allowed to have a telephone.

Because I felt so driven to do my best economically for my mother, my father, and my family, all of my thoughts were on making a living. My training was originally supposed to take two years, but by working more, I would be able to finish up faster and come home.

The Rebbe did not agree.

“You must not consider your study as something which is beneficial only for after-life,” he wrote in his response, “but as something which is also of vital importance for your present and future in this life.

“One of the many benefits of the study of the Torah is that it equips the Jew with the necessary ability and powers to cope with daily life and whatever trials that may lie ahead. This is all the more important in your present environment.”

But, the Rebbe went on, continuing my Torah studies didn’t have to come at a cost: “If you apply yourself diligently to your training, I am confident that you could complete it much sooner than you anticipate, all the more so since the very study of the Torah will bring you Divine blessings in every respect, including your progress in your training and your future economic status, so that you could always serve G-d with peace of mind and joy.”

A few weeks later, I wrote again, this time to say that I was worried my boss — who was Jewish but hostile to religion — didn’t want me to work only half a day. In his reply, the Rebbe addressed my concerns and explained how I should respond to my boss:

“It seems to me almost certain that if you will speak to him nicely, but firmly, that it means very much to you to have half a day free for study and that this is something that vitally concerns your future and your entire outlook on life, etc., he would surely agree.

“Since you have apprehension on account of your boss’s attitude to religion, you need not stress the religious aspect of it but other aspects such as cultural, educational, character training, peace of mind, etc. When your boss will see that you are really sincere and that it means very much to you indeed, I’m sure he will agree to this arrangement.”

When I had originally come to Argentina, my mind was on material things, but with these letters, the Rebbe reoriented my thinking. If I put more energy into studying Torah, he was telling me, then everything else would fall in line as a result. The physical comes through the spiritual.

In a very practical way, I saw this happen shortly after receiving this letter. In the first place I worked, I was learning the trade well, but they weren’t teaching me the main skill I needed — soldering, which is the technique of joining metal with heat. So I left and went to another apprenticeship, where they were willing to teach me properly. It was hard work, and they were glad to push it on me, and so I learned quickly.

I was prepared to do this work for free, because I was learning the trade, but my second boss started to pay me, and he even gave me a raise each month.

When I eventually returned to New York, I started working straight away. After a week and a half, the owner finally told me what I would be getting paid: Twenty-five dollars a week. In those days, people were getting around eighty dollars.

Right away, I decided against staying on and said goodbye. As it happened, that very same day I had an appointment to see the Rebbe — my first audience after coming back.

In the audience, the Rebbe asked about Argentina, and I related various stories that had happened there. Then, before I left, I told him about this job and how I had been offered twenty-five dollars earlier that day.

“For twenty-five dollars a week,” remarked the Rebbe with a smile, “I don’t let you leave yeshivah!”

Instead, the Rebbe told me to call a certain Israeli jeweler by the name of Ahron Stein, who lived in Crown Heights. I went over to Stein, told him what the Rebbe had said, and on the spot he made a phone call and got me a proper-paying job — my first after coming back to America.

Mr. Laibel Lipszyc worked as a jeweler in New York from 1959 until 2002. Today he is retired and lives in Deerfield Beach, Florida, where he was interviewed in December 2025.