The Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management by Moshe Kranc
Devora Publishing (August, 2004)272 pages
reviewed by Allan Gould
A Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management: Maybe a Good idea, but not well executed.
You know what a "franchise" is, don't you? In the world of retailing, it usually refers to a McDonald's store, a Tim Horton's, a KFC, or-to be kosher about it-a Yogen Fruz. In professional sports, the "franchise" is the player who really carries the team; the one around whom the team is truly built. So, people would say that "Roger Clemens is now the franchise of the Houston Astros," or "Michael Jordan was the franchise player of the Chicago Bulls."
In the world of books-which is the world of this regular column for Kolel.org-a franchise is a book series which is truly, often wildly successful, such as the Chicken Soup for the _______Soul, or the ________ for Dummies, or even Harlequin Romances.
Business books themselves often border on franchises, even if they are not from the same publishing house. For instance, there are many texts about How to Run Your Company Better which have titles on the line of Jesus in the Boardroom or Lao Tse on Management or Machiavelli on Business; you've all seen works of this type, and they're all rather similar in purpose or theme: you can learn a lot about how to run a better company if you learn from this or that religious or political leader.
Jews (alas) are not immune to wanting to play this game, and one of the first examples I've seen of this is The Hasidic Masters' Guide to Management by Moshe Kranc, an Orthodox Jewish hi-tech genius who is actually a descendant of Jacob Ben Wolf Kranc, the famous "Magid of Dubno," who was an esteemed 18th century preacher and storyteller in Vilna.
Nothing wrong with this; as a full-time author myself, I would love to create a comic/satiric franchise myself, based on a book like Toronto's Irshad Manji's internationally best-selling THE TROUBLE WITH ISLAM. My idea-which I'm still unsuccessfully pushing with a few publishers-is to call my parody THE TROUBLE WITH JUDAISM, except mine would be filled with petty complaints, such as "sometimes I'm placed too close to the very loud band at a Bar Mitzvah party" and "those shivas can go on forever, and who wants to see those family members of mine from Pittsburgh?" Nothing wrong with a franchise!
In the case of Mr. Kranc's Jewish guide to management, there's plenty wrong. Not that this very successful entrepreneur and inventor doesn't understand the genius of Hasidism. After explaining its "powerful means of stories, parables, and anecdotes to transmit wisdom," he then stretches his point a bit:
There are striking parallels between the circumstances that catalyzed the Hasidic revolution and the world of business today. In modern business, the inherent tension between the 'letter of the law' and the "spirit of the law' expresses itself in choosing between maximum shareholder profits, even if only temporarily and on paper, and ethical behavior; Hasidism looks for a balance that respects both. Today's employess are all too often frustrated by their inability to act on their personal values and beliefs in the workplace.
Fair enough. Who can argue such a truism? But then, this kindly, intelligent man chooses dozens upon dozens of (sometimes) classic Hasidic tales, and somehow cheapens them by hooking them with clichéd or obvious statements from famous business writers of the recent past, usually in such pat and even irritating ways that the power of the original Jewish tales are horribly vulgarized.
A good example of this comes early in the book. Kranc describes the famous Rabbi Israel Salanter, who listens to a group of rabbis complaining "of struggles with their rebellious and unruly flocks." The great rebbi proudly declares that he has "no such problem; I have full confidence that my congregation will follow any command I give." How can he possibly have such confidence? His inferiors challenge him. "It is simple. I never give my congregation any command I do not think they will follow."
Sweet. Even profound. But guess what the author follows this lovely story with: a paragraph from one of the giants of modern business thought, Peter F. Drucker: "a manager motivates and communicates. He makes a team out of the people that are responsible for various jobs. He does that through the practices with which he manages. He does it in his own relation to the men he manages." As many a great Jewish scholar has noted in earlier centures, about far better thoughts and segues: feh.
This entire 262-page paperback (published by Devora Publishing of Jerusalem and New York, with unprofessional editing and ugly drawings on the covers) is much like the above: tell a story-often unpleasantly lengthy and usually NOT Hasidic in any classic fashion (a la the Tales of the Hasidim, collected and translated by Martin Buber, and several other anthologies over the past century), but merely Jewish parables from any time in history which the author CLAIMS are Hasidic in origin.
So, we get a touching (or is it sentimental and even silly?) tale of "Little Shlomo" who was born deaf and mute. After no results from "the finest doctors," the desperate parents go to a rabbi, who somehow gets the child to hear and talk. "When I grow up, I would be an informer, selling information about my fellow Jews to the authorities," the child blurts out, after being challenged by the (Hasidic?) rabbi's question, "If you could talk, what would you say when you grew up?" The punchline of this awesomely offensive, even antisemitic story-which one senses Mr. Kranc invented himself? "I could cure your son," the rabbi tells the child's parents, "but I do not wish to do so. It is better for him to remain silent." That's for sure.
Last line of this hideous "tale": "Shlomo resumed his silence, and never spoke another word for the rest of his days."
To quote the Beverly Hills Rebbi, Gag me with a spoon. And what is worse is the author's "insight," which the author crudely draws from this repulsive story. "Shlomo's parents, understandably, would do anything in their power to enable their son to hear and speak. Rabbi Moshe Zvi shows them that, though the status quo may seem tragic, it is, in fact, the preferable alternative for Shlomo, his parents and his fellow man. At a strategic juncture where you must determine whether to make a change or maintain the status quo, it is your job as a manager to extrapolate the consequences of the available alternatives." The Business Lesson from this vile little tale? "The Current Situation, With All Its Flaws, May Be The Best Available Alternative." Ahh, if only Martha Stewart had listened to the Hasidic rabbis, before she blabbed about that fabulous Stock Tip she got. She could have learned so much from the deaf and mute Shlomo: it would have been A Good Thing if she shut her mouth.
When I read a book on business, and I've read and reviewed many dozens for magazines and websites, I expect to find real gems of profundity, wit or thought. This book is almost condescending in its eternal finger-wagging. And even worse, there are far too many "Jewish tales" in this publication which are not Hasidic at all, but merely famous (or obscure) (or made up?) descriptions of boring rabbis or congregants who do this or that, which the author then stretches into a Jewish and/or Hasidic framework, and then forces his business "point" to score with the reader.
Not this reader. And I wanted to like it, too. So, when you see a "blurb" on the back of a book, such as Martin Rutte's (co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work-part of one of those grand franchises of publishing, noted above), which declares "Its stories of time-true values along with real world, modern examples, makes it a valuable contribution to anyone who manages. Buy this book, you'll be glad you did," I for one wasn't.
Don't get me wrong, dear Internet reader and Kolel supporter: Hasidic Tales aren't "holy," merely because their original tellers or their descendants died in the Holocaust, or because every single one of them illuminates. These thousands of stories, gathered over three centuries, are often uneven and some are ill-advised. And Mr. Kranc's decision to try and link "great" Hasidic stories with modern business practices could have been a good one, had the tales been better chosen, and the "hooks" to the business world more precise; more inspired. I just Googled "Hasidic tales" and I came up with that marvelous collection by Yaffa Eliach of several years ago, "Hasidic Tales of the Holocaust." And "Wrapped in a Holy Flame: Teachings on Tales of the Hasidic Masters" by Schachter-Shalomi. And the magnificent Hasidic stories of the brilliant Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, who may well have been the father of the modern short story-as much as Poe or Chekhov.
So, as the saying goes, "Tzay Ul-mud"-go and study. There are superior collections of extraordinary, moving, meaningful Hasidic tales out there in the marketplace; in libraries; in bookstores. Just don't try to force them into business frameworks; it doesn't appear to work, and it only cheapens the originals.
