Howard Jonas
(1956 - )
‘A Telecom Exec Transmits a Message of Philanthropy’
The 18-story headquarters of IDT Corporation in downtown Newark boasts a huge kosher cafeteria complete with sushi bar, a pool with separate swimming hours for men and women and a synagogue that draws several hundred employees to afternoon services. A sign pointing visitors toward the executive offices consists of an arrow and the words "Department of Psychiatry."
"For me, going to work is like going to Disneyland," said Howard Jonas, the soft-spoken 46-year-old who is the company's founder and controlling shareholder and chairman of its board of directors. "What more could you want than to eat sushi, swim and do business?"
The business of IDT may be telecommunications but for Jonas, who is said to be worth more than $300 million, supporting Jewish causes is a major priority. He and his wife Debbie, who have nine children, give away more than $5 million a year through the Jonas Family Foundation. And Jonas serves on the boards "of a lot of things," including the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, International Rescue Committee, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Yeshiva University, his local YMHA, his Riverdale, N.Y., synagogue, State of Israel Bonds, the American Friends of B'nei Akiva and Edah, the Modern Orthodox advocacy group.
But associates and observers say the list of beneficiaries does not begin to describe the impact of IDT's success, Jonas's largesse and his employees' philanthropy in Jewish, especially Modern Orthodox, circles.
"A lot of the desire to get involved in my own community and support charities and Israel has come from being inspired by what Howard has done on his level," says Yona Lloyd, a vice president at Net2Phone, an IDT spin-off that is involved in Internet telephony. Lloyd sits on the board of directors of Congregation Bnai Yeshurun in Teaneck, N.J.
"We try to emulate that as best as we can on our own level," Lloyd said.
A substantial portion of IDT's nearly 3,000 employees are Orthodox Jews. Though IDT is thought of as a haven for Modern Orthodox, Jonas insists that more than half of the observant Jews who work at the company are ultra-Orthodox or "black-hat" Jews.
Jonas said he assumes that IDT's black-hat employees think that his rabbi, the Modern Orthodox maverick Avi Weiss of the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, is "off the wall."
"They think it's some sort of aberration that I'm supporting Chovevei Torah," Weiss's upstart Modern Orthodox rabbinical seminary in Manhattan, Jonas said. "But I don't complain to them that they give money to [ultra-Orthodox yeshivas in] Lakewood [N.J.] and they don't complain to me that I support Chovevei Torah. We sort of all co-exist and try to help each other."
Peaceful co-existence is part of Jonas's libertarian worldview, which is clearly stated in the lobby of IDT's office on Broad Street. The line from the Declaration of Independence about "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" appears on a wall along with quotations from Hillel ("What is hateful to you, do not do to others") and Theodor Herzl ("If you will it, it is no dream"). Employees who park in IDT's thousand-car garage are greeted by Ronald Reagan's words at the building's back entrance: "America is too great for small dreams."
Jonas certainly can't be accused of thinking small. The Bronx-born Jonas built IDT up from a scrappy little long-distance telephone company to one of the top 100 technology firms in the world. At a time when telecom companies are dropping like flies, IDT has a billion dollars in the bank and virtually no debt, according to company spokesmen. In addition to IDT's long-distance business, a new wireless division occupies most of Jonas's attention these days. Later this year he intends to direct his focus on IDT's recently acquired media properties, which include a talk-radio network and digital animation studio.
While the IDT Charitable Foundation supports secular activities, including the Newark Public Library and a kosher mobile soup kitchen that serves mostly black residents of the city, the Jonas Family Foundation is dedicated almost exclusively to supporting Jewish groups. One beneficiary of the family foundation is the Yatzkan Center, a residential drug treatment center for Jewish youth located on the grounds of the Brunswick Hospital Center in Amityville, N.Y. The center opened in April 2001 and is named in honor of Jonas's wife Debbie, whose maiden name is Yatzkan. It serves between 17 and 40 patients at a time.
The Jonases have also supported a number of Jewish educational institutions, including Beth Jacob-Beth Miriam, a Bronx yeshiva with a large population of Russian immigrant students. The couple initiated the building of a new Jewish high school in Riverdale. A groundbreaking for the school, which will be affiliated with the SAR Academy in Riverdale, is scheduled for October, with classes set to begin in the fall of 2003, according to Naftali Harczstack, its principal.
The Jonas Family Foundation is providing funds for Mesifta of North Jersey to rent space in the IDT building in Newark this fall. The two-year-old Modern Orthodox day school for boys has 60 students from Teaneck and Passaic, N.J., and Monsey, N.Y., according to Avi Stokar, who is chief information officer of IDT Telecom and serves on the school's board of directors. Stokar also serves on a committee that reviews technology for the Orthodox ambulance group Hatzoloh. He was sent to Israel by Jonas to set up an IDT call center, creating about 100 jobs answering customer service calls. Jonas says IDT is creating a back-office business services operation in Israel that could eventually employ several thousand Israelis.
Jonas has created jobs for a slew of friends and relatives, including Weiss's son-in-law, Michael Fischberger. In his 1998 autobiography "On A Roll," Jonas writes that "Fisch" was hired "as a favor to his family." The young man had worked in construction and apparently was not destined for great things prior to being given a low-level position in IDT's tech support office. He is now the corporation's chief operating officer.
"Howard has a soft spot for the vulnerable," Weiss said.
The IDT effect is being felt throughout the New York metropolitan area. Jonathan Levy, the 31-year-old president of IDT Telecom, started Aim Habonim Smicha, a charity that assists 700 single-parent Jewish families in Israel and the United States. Motti Lichtenstein, the CEO of IDT Telecom, helped build a synagoguge in his neighborhood in Monsey and supports his brothers' religious institutions there. Brian Finkelstein, the CEO of IDT's newly acquired Winstar division, has volunteered with Ohr Somayach, a yeshiva for newly religious Jews in Monsey, and is currently working with the administration of Nefesh Academy, a girls yeshiva in Brooklyn. The 42-year-old executive serves on the boards of Mesifta Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn and the Yeshiva of Spring Valley, where two of his five children are enrolled.
"Having worked for so many years in corporate America where it's such a challenge to observe many mitzvot, it's been a real pleasure being in an environment where that is not an issue," Finkelstein said of IDT.
Levy recalled attending a negotiating session in Manhattan with Jonas recently to acquire a French company. Two platters of sandwiches were left over after the meeting; Jonas carried the platters to the Port Authority bus terminal and gave them out to homeless people.
"That's Howard," Levy said. "His heart knows no end when it comes to tzedakah."
By JON KALISH
FORWARD CORRESPONDENT
Courtesy of:
http://www.forward.com/issues/2002/02.07.19/news11.html