“Potential American investors–including until recently. Abe Goodman–haven’t fully appreciated the potentialities of Israel as an area for investment. Israel is small in size and population, but it is big in terms of scientific and technological skills. In fact it is second to none in these fields.
The speaker was Abe Goodman, a New York industrialist and philanthropist, head of H. Goodman and Sons, manufacturer of “Goody” trademark hair-grips, bobby-pins and other ladies hair appurtenances. Goodman, in Israel since early May and “busy every minute of the time,” as he attests, is in the advanced stages of a plan to open a machine tools plant at Holon, outside Tel Aviv, which will manufacture tools for his four giant factories in Georgia. New Jersey and Florida. If the plan works out well, (Goodman predicts expansion and already has his eye on another site at Ramleh) it will eventually export machine tools to industries other than his own.
Israeli plants could actually manufacture the hair appurtenances themselves, to international standards and specifications. But until now this has proved uneconomical as a small attempt by Goodman at Ashdod demonstrated. The Israeli market is simply not big enough, Goodman explained. Now, however, with the new Israel-ECC (European Economic Community) tariff agreement, it may be possible to open up markets in Europe for such Israeli products.
But this is all in the future. The immediate plan calls for the Holon plant to farm out work to the myriad small workshops around the country, guiding quality and specification, assembling the parts in Holon, and shipping them to the U.S. for installation in Goodman’s factories. Tools involved in both the metal and plastic “Goody” products will be manufactured in Israel. The Israeli government, says Goodman, “gives generous support in encouraging export. There’s lots of room for American businessmen to move in there–and I’m talking in terms of industry, not charity.”
He does not blame the Israeli government, he says, for the lack of awareness among American industrialists of investment opportunities here. The information is made available, the promotion is fairly good. “But people just don’t take the time to get acquainted with the opportunities.” So far, says Goodman, he has not run into the legendary Israeli red tape. His cousin is Moshe Baram, Minister of Labor, and he has spent pleasant hours socializing with him on this visit. He has not–yet at any rate–had to call on Baram to bail him out of a tangle of red tape, the reputation of which alone often deters overseas investors.
Goodman, who is treasurer of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, is well known among Jewish leaders and philanthropists. Just how well known was touchingly demonstrated during the interview. At the next table sat Sir Isaac Wolfson, the leader of British Jewry. The two men had not noticed each other, but when their eye met–their faces lit up, and they stood to warmly embrace.
Active for years in the Zionist Organization of America, Goodman is perhaps best known for his sponsorship of the Hebrew Arts School in New York. An “Abraham Goodman House.”–a center for Jewish communal and intellectual activities–will soon rise on a site owned by the school at Lincoln Center. One section of the House will be devoted to a permanent exhibition on the Nazi Holocaust, Goodman met with officials of Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial and toured the Memorial in Jerusalem to learn effective ideas for the New York project.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
