Howard J. Samuels, former US Undersecretary of Commerce and Small Business Administrator, and now president of the Off Track Betting Corporation, is scheduled to announce tomorrow that the American Jewish Committee has launched a program to secure previously unavailable bank loans for Hasidic businessmen. The Committee efforts have already produced hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans by the eight large commercial banks in the city to hard-pressed Hasidic-owned businesses in Williamsburg. Samuels is slated to tell a news conference at the Americana Hotel where the American Jewish Committee is holding its 66th annual meeting.
Samuels, in a prepared statement released today, notes that the Committee’s New York Chapter whose director is Haskell L. Lazere, concerned with the inability of the Orthodox Brooklyn merchants to secure commercial credit because of their unusual working schedules and large families, had intervened on their behalf. The project, undertaken with a Williamsburg Community Committee from the Council of Jewish Organizations, Samuels notes, “was designed to help Hasidic businessmen help themselves and their community by expanding businesses and providing more employment.” The chairman of the Committee, Jed S. Rakoff, prepared a comprehensive plan to aid the Hasidic businessmen.
SOLUTION TO POVERTY
Samuels notes some of the special problems the Hasidic Jews had encountered in securing bank loans: “Families of twelve and fourteen children are not uncommon. Ordinarily, if this information were on a loan application, and a man’s income from his business was $15,000, banks would regard him as a poor risk. An application does not convey the determination to succeed, to provide adequately for the family.”
In addition, he points out, “Who will hire a strangely garbed bearded fellow with side-curls who barely speaks English, has little technical education, and must leave work at noon each Friday to prepare for the elaborate Hasidic Sabbath? It seems unlikely that large numbers of Hasidim will find adequate employment as workers in the outside economy, at least in the foreseeable future. A more likely solution to their poverty is their employment in Hasidic-owned-and-managed businesses.” However, Samuels adds that on the whole, such businesses are too small and uneconomic to meet the community’s need for gainful employment. “What are needed are somewhat larger businesses providing goods or services that could be sold to the outside economy. But who is to provide the capital to get such businesses going?” It was this situation. Samuels states, that led to the American Jewish Committee’s Williamsburg project.
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