Swept Away: From Family Broom Business to Synagogue Consulting

By Robert Leventhal

"We affectionately called my father Harry, the Bear," Robert Leventhal writes. "Big, garrulous, and gruff, he cast a big shadow. I would struggle to determine how to be my own kind of bear."
Swept Away is the story about the father and son relationship that shaped Leventhal's life. The journey of becoming his own kind of bear is one that lead him from being a manager in his family broom and mop business in Springfield, Ohio to becoming a well-known synagogue leadership consultant in New York City.
Leventhal spent 23 years in his family's broom business, which would evolve into O-Cedar-Vining cleaning products. After the business was sold he stayed for 5 years with new owners. He then resigned from full-time work with O-Cedar and began exploring Jewish communal interests. He was interested I what was giving him energy in life and what was draining him. Along the way, he became a 7th grade religious school teacher, a Jewish day school president, and a Federation leader. From these experiences sprouted Leventhal's idea of combining his business background with his emerging Jewish learnings—into a career as a synagogue consultant.
Leventhal tells this story through a series of chronological vignettes that are organized around the narratives of key eras of his life: childhood, high school, college, early career and courtship, entering family business, choosing a new career, Jewish spiritual awakening, thoughts on love, legacy and loss. This is not an exhaustive biography full of dates. It's more like a charm bracelet: stories on a glinting chain of narrative themes.
Leventhal's relationship with his father and his father's legacy are certainly themes along this chain. Leventhal writes, "Dad was the hero of our family story. He went out from our home in Springfield, Ohio each week to sell his brooms. On these lonely highways, pre cell phone or Sirus XM radio, curiosity was his companion. On his return, he entertained us with his curious adventures."
Leventhal chose to mirror his father's style: its adventurousness, ambition, and curiosity. Swept Away tells the story of Leventhal's longing to learn new things, to be a story gatherer and story teller, to hold court, to entertain the table as his father always had. Unknowingly, just a kid, he also accepted the burden of his father's restlessness, driven nature, and loneliness. He would be swept away from home and hearth—by ambition and by fate—to launch his own adventures.
The first Jewish senior consultant at the Alban Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, Leventhal was taught how to patiently and carefully consult to congregations. He would use his entrepreneurial marketing skills to develop leadership, learning programs. After 10 years at Alban, he moved to New York City, to become the director of leadership at United Synagogues of Conservative Judaism.
During this time, he was a Jewish work-in-progress. Through trial and error, he created a synagogue consulting practice and worked to create a life of Jewish learning, living, and leadership. Leventhal writes that, "As I did this work, I came to feel that God was smiling on my construction site—cheering me on."

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798350952216

Book preview

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Swept Away

From FAMILY BROOM BUSINESS

to SYNAGOGUE consulting

Copyright © 2022 Robert Leventhal. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author.

Not Bad, Dad, Not Bad, used by permission of its author, Jan Heller Levi

and first published in her 1999 book, Once I Gazed at You in Wonder,

Louisiana State University Press

eBook ISBN: 979-8-35095-221-6

Contents

Part One: Childhood

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Springfield, Ohio

Chapter 3. Man in a Hurry

Chapter 4. The Broom Shop—A Childhood Memory

Chapter 5. Young Capitalists

Chapter 6. Middle School Passage

Chapter 7. Not a Wrinkle

Chapter 8. Crime Wave

Part Two: High School

Chapter 9. First Prom

Chapter 10. Hawt Wieners

Chapter 11. The Rev. Bob Marshall and Me

Chapter 12. The Big Yank

Part Three: College and Postgrad

Chapter 13. Hazy Crazy College Days

Chapter 14. MBA or Bust

Part Four: Courtship

Chapter 15. Southern Exposure

Chapter 16. Wedding Plans

Part Five: Business

Chapter 17. Jackson: Hell or High Water

Chapter 18. Foot in the Door

Chapter 19. The Prince Returns

Chapter 20. Solution Selling

Chapter 21. Grumble, Growl, Glare

Chapter 22. Entrepreneurial Stories

Chapter 23. Painted Orange

Part Six: Family Stories

Chapter 24. Never Boring

Chapter 25. Sarah’s Catering

Chapter 26. Dan-Trouble

Chapter 27. Micah World

Chapter 28. Eli—Imagine That

Part Seven: Emerging Judaism

Chapter 29. Get on That Plane

Chapter 30. Shabbos Angel

Chapter 31. If Your Life Was a Business, Would You Invest?

Chapter 32. Called to the Classroom

Chapter 33. Shabbos Group

Part Eight: Congregational Consultant

Introduction

Chapter 34. The Call

Chapter 35. Special Gifts

Chapter 36. For Whom the Bells Chime

Chapter 37. Utterly Worthless

Chapter 38. Seeing Like Barnes

Chapter 39. Sulam Sherpa

Chapter 40. Messages

Chapter 41. Stepping Forward—Indefatigable

Part Nine: Spiritual Life Under Construction

Introduction

Chapter 42. Walking in Wonder

Chapter 43. Opening One’s Eyes

Chapter 44. Standing at the Gates

Chapter 45. Building a House of Blessing

Chapter 46. Remembering—Yizkor

Chapter 47. Engaging—A Weight Shall Be Lifted

Chapter 48: J Dating

Chapter 49. Wedding—It’s Never Too Late

Chapter 50. Letting Go

Chapter 51. Struggling—House of Jacob

Part Ten: Legacy and Loss

Chapter 52. My Sister’s Studio

Chapter 53. Poem-She Reigned

Chapter 54. Art Students League of New York

Chapter 55. Laurie—Our Guardian

Chapter 56. In the Arena

Chapter 57. Foundations of Faith

Chapter 58. Eulogy for Shirley Leventhal

Chapter 59. Dad and Me

Chapter 60. Not Bad, Bob

Part One:

Childhood

Chapter 1.

Introduction

This is a story about the father-and-son relationship that helped shape my life. My father, Harry, was the hero of our family story. He went out from our home in Springfield, Ohio, each week to sell his brooms. On those lonely highways, pre cell phone or Sirius XM radio, curiosity was his companion. On his return, he entertained us with his adventures.

Dad had coal black hair and was a solid five-foot-eleven, though he looked even taller to us. I would have to emerge out of his shadow. He had bright, welcoming brown eyes when in good spirits. He had a gravelly Fred Flintstone voice. He was happiest playing cards, hitting golf balls, and dreaming up new products to take on the road. After a great golf shot or sales call he might yell, Yabba Dabba Doo. I would inherit some of his boyish enthusiasm, storytelling, and humor. These would be helpful resources for me to carry on my life’s journey.

My father’s nickname was The Bear. He could be a teddy bear or a grizzly bear, often in the same evening. The teddy bear was a gregarious greeter and a funny storyteller. The grizzly bear was an impatient, frustrated, fearful, and angry sales manager. Like his father, Louis, he was a dapper bear. In Dad’s closet, suits hung by color and season. Shoes stood at attention on shoe trees, snugly on duty. Our maid said, Mr. Harry, you are a peacock. He drove an ultramarine Buick Electra 225—a princely carriage.

Dad the teddy bear could be endearing. He told stories with drama and comic timing. I chose to mirror my father’s style—its adventurousness, ambition, and curiosity. I longed to be a storyteller, to hold court, to entertain the table as he had. Unknowingly, as just a kid, I accepted the burden of his restlessness, drivenness, and loneliness. I learned well how to leave others, choosing to leave my family and friends for the work and rituals of the road. I grew up as a traveling bear in waiting.

Bears are big, lumbering beasts, so there was not always room in my childhood house for two bears. From Monday until Thursday afternoon I would forage with freedom. I could raid the pantry. While he was gone I could hold court at the family dinner table. By Thursday dinner, the big bear was back. Time for cubs to take a lower profile.

As an elementary school boy, I remember how Dad usually went out on the road for four days and left his young wife (nine years his junior) at home with us kids. On the trail, he would be in pursuit of customers. I was left on the home front with my mother and two sisters. Mom often seemed lonely and afraid. She fought these anxieties with an organized household regime. Dad came home the conquering hero to a well-ordered home. He was given the largest plate and the most dinner talk airtime to tell his stories.

As I grew up I tried to keep up with him by eating and talking FAST—gulping, gasping, and grabbing for every speaking opportunity. I had just three days to work with. Come Monday, he would be gone. To this day, if a client gives me five minutes to speak, I make the most of it.

For our family he was The Bear. While bears were on my mind, I did not adopt the bear name for myself until my sixties as I began to see, through my memoir writing, these bearlike qualities in myself. My second wife, Carolyn, refers to me as her bear. I got a plush teddy bear on Valentine’s Day and a collection of toy bears for my bookcase. I captured this bear spirit in a poem I wrote in 2020.

13 Curious Things about Bears

My father was a booming big man,

dark black hair on head and chest,

curly toenails and gruff, gravelly voice.

We called him The Bear. He roamed the highways.

Black bears are often hidden

among trees of green and brown.

I am a big man,

Stand out in any crowd.

I feel small, head down,

when facing some challenges,

or when I imagine a tall black Daddy bear

walking on his back legs.

A wet chill grabs me when winds wail,

Bears are bothered little,

One layer of fur pushes back the freeze,

the other keeps them dry on damp days.

Bears are fast for big beasts,

As a big man, I like to think I have fast feet,

particularly on the dance floor. Surprised?

Bears can run for two miles without stopping.

I could run longer when I was young,

Won’t say how long now.

I admire how bears daringly dash about,

and don’t overstay their welcome at a diner waiting for a check,

or whining about doctor’s appointments.

When bears hibernate, their heart rate drops to eight beats per min,

They don’t have to get up to pee,

After a scary dream, I wake up, heart beating fast,

Without a nightmare—up twice a night to pee.

Bears scavenge campsites to graze,

They will eat anything, snowmobile seats, rubber boots

I tore up my friend’s pantry one night,

looking for marmalade.

I used to smell my food as a child,

and kept my peas within their frozen dinner compartments.

Bears have one hundred times better smell,

Don’t think they care about compartments.

Bears can live up to thirty years,

Do they have midlife crises?

I have had several.

I often remind my wife during Jeopardy,

I’m smarter than you think.

Bears might surprise you,

they can open a locked car door with a claw

and lift the ring tab on a Coors.

At sixty-nine, I was thinking about my life and my father.

I was swept away on a curious journey.

Bears are big, live large, celebrate a life of curiosity,

appreciate a well-earned nap.

I am curious, faster than you think, and a formidable presence. I can leave a mess. I have tried to live large and follow my adventurous instincts.

Appreciation

My parents worked hard, lived modestly, and saved their money. They cared for us. They valued learning and brought it into the home. They were hopeful for us, even though they had grown up in a culture of anxiety. They carried the baggage of their childhood, their generation, Jewish history, and their own personal mishagas (craziness) while still building a home and doing their part for the Jewish community.

Having been in memoir classes for five years, I have shared in the lives of fellow writers. How many, as four- or five-year-olds, internalized the anxieties of their families? Before they had the ability to describe their anxiety in words, their bodies held fear of shame, abandonment, and loss. I saw in their writing the inner child who still remembers those fears. How many teens remember painful words, some spoken in anger, others as careless, uncaring quips? The disapproving facial expressions of their parents and sounds of hurtful words were carried forward by their children. I have come to believe that this is the inheritance of childhood.

I regret the stress I unloaded on my wife and kids. By scanning through my life as I wrote this memoir, I found the capacity to forgive my parents. They tried their best. I pray I will have compassion for myself, too. I hope, in my recollections, I will discover that I worked hard, lived modestly, saved money, cared for my family, valued learning, and contributed to community.

My Own Kind of Bear

After growing up amidst my father’s big bearlike presence, I would go on a life journey to discover how to be my own person. At thirty-three I became the sales leader of our family broom business (O-Cedar/Vining) and, after a major career transition at fifty, a consultant to synagogues. This memoir tells the story of how I was swept away from a small Midwestern town to New York City and from a family broom business to synagogue leadership.

In 1993, when my father was seventy-six and semiretired, we sold the business to outside investors. Three years after the sale, I began to scribble down ideas on my legal pad, just as my father did. But instead of new broom products, I dreamed about new career ideas. I wanted to get off the road. I hoped to be less driven by the rigors of nonstop combat in the cleaning products business. I wanted to write the script for a new kind of bear.

In 1996, I gave the new O-Cedar investors notice that I wanted to explore new things. During this 2-year transition, I worked as a consultant for the new O-Cedar investors and as an independent marketing consultant. I created a business school class in entrepreneurship at the University of Dayton. I got a Master’s degree in Jewish education and taught religious school. I spread a lot of ideas across my table, and finally a picture appeared. I went to a life- and career-planning workshop and came up with the idea of combining my business background and my emerging interest in Judaism. Over the next three years I committed to putting my plan into action. As all this was percolating, I got a letter.

The Call

I received a form letter from the Alban Institute about a job opening. Based in Washington, D.C., the Alban Institute was the largest consulting firm for mainline Protestant churches. I had met a Jewish leader from D.C. at an educators’ conference, and he’d taken my business card and given it to Alban.

Alban had recently received a grant from three big Jewish philanthropists to hire one Jewish person to develop a practice of synagogue consulting at the all-Protestant think tank. They now had my name on their list. Sure, their writing me was a bit of a fluke. They didn’t know me. I didn’t know them. I might have had doubts about this calling, but once fate got me invited to apply, I used all my sales skills to get the job.

Our Jewish tradition encourages us to listen for our call:

Therefore, God endows each person with unique talents and attributes necessary for him to fulfill his task. These talents

cry out within each person, demanding to be expressed and

to fulfill the mission for which they were sent to this world. (Hamodia, 10 Cheshvan 5759)

As a child, I had not planned to be a broom salesman; I was swept into the family business out of college. At age fifty, I tried to hear what was crying out to me—to find my calling. Once I got the job at Alban, I threw myself into this new congregational work. I was swept away into a new career.

Jews on the Run

The Torah tells a story of a people who wander to get to the promised land; indeed, throughout Jewish history, this people has been on the run from one region to another. In these migrations Jews have been outsiders looking at the dominant culture. It is no accident that Jews have been leading psychologists, sociologists, and political theorists. As a consultant, I come from a long history of Jewish social analysts.

My book Stepping Forward Together (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020) celebrates those who lead the leadership journey into the future. I still have a special place in my heart and imagination for the hero who leaves home to conquer the world. I admire the man in the arena who takes the risk to make things happen. I appreciate the courage of someone who is not totally prepared, but steps up regardless, to learn on the job. Like a bear, they may make a bit of a mess, but they are curious and bold. I know a lot more about bold initiatives than about the patient, caring construction of a home life.

At age sixty, I met my second wife, Carolyn, and have finally begun to hang up my traveling shoes. In these years, I have learned to appreciate the joys of home and how to contribute to maintaining one. Late in life, I began to transition from being a success-driven bear to being a more reflective and relational bear. A secure home has given me the stability for the deep work of memoir writing and for the journey of imagining my next chapter.

Swept Away is not purely a linear recitation of events. The Jewish people had to wander a circular path for forty years before they entered Canaan. They meandered. So have I. Like Torah study, this autobiographical memoir is more interested in meaning-making than in history. Swept Away is a series of poems and vignettes loosely organized by periods of life (childhood, schools, broom business, and synagogue consulting). It narrates a curious journey on life’s long and winding road.

Chapter 2.

Springfield, Ohio

I was born in Springfield, Ohio, but, looking back, it never quite felt like home. Springfield was a leafy Midwestern town of 70,000 between Columbus and Dayton. While I have some pleasant childhood memoires, I spent much of my teen years trying desperately to fit in. I tried to be cool and make friends, I struggled to make the basketball team, I even joined a group of so-called delinquents. I never succeeded in feeling a part of the community. I dreamed of getting out.

Springfield prospered in the robber baron years at the end of the 19th century. The High Street mansions were the town’s trophies. Springfield was home to great companies, like Crowell-Collier Publishing Company (Collier’s magazine). It had an International Harvester truck plant that employed 10,000 union members. These companies ensured a middle-class status for many with little education. The town was on the old national Route 40 that took settlers west. There was a statue on the road called the Madonna of the Trails to commemorate these journeys. Springfield was also home to Wittenberg University, a small college of mostly tidy white Lutherans.

When I was growing up there, Springfield could have been a setting for Ozzie and Harriet. We tried to do all-American things. We went to school festivals and chased the ice cream truck. We rooted for our town’s football teams. My cousin Todd and I were early entrepreneurs with a host of small-town for-profit schemes.

In the spring of 1983 Springfield was the subject of a Newsweek 160-page special edition called The American Dream. The town had been chosen because it looked like an all-American city, but its foundation was crumbling below the surface.

Springfield was already showing early signs of decline. From my childhood in the 1950s until 2000, lots of Springfielders moved on. By 2011 it was described in one article as one of the unhappiest towns in the United States. From 2000 to 2014 it would have the biggest middle-class decline in the country. It was very much the mirror of Middletown, Ohio, depicted in the book Hillbilly Elegy. A town of many who are lost, lonely, and angry. The American dream seemed out of reach for them. Many were swept up in despair.

When I was a child, Jews in Springfield were taught to fit in, to be tidy, just like the Lutherans at Wittenberg. Rightly so. There were risks to sticking out. You could be the top cardiologist in Springfield, treating the town’s upper class, and still not be able to join the Springfield Country Club. As late as the early 1960s, Jews didn’t feel fully welcome in the Rotary or the Chamber of Commerce. For Springfield’s anti-Semites, nothing was too small to object to. After my father booked a golf lesson at the country club, the pro called him back to cancel. That lesson would not be possible.

Not surprisingly, our little Jewish temple was more than a house of worship; it was an ethnic enclave, a house of refuge. We had a small section in the giant Fern cliff cemetery. Our Jewish stones created a protective barrier, like covered wagons engulfed by circling Indians. Our little cemetery shtetl of Klein’s, Romanoff’s, and Scoffs rested in a sea of Kunkles, Kellys, O’ Connells, Crawfords, and Schultes.

This was before the Six-day war of 1967 in Israel. Many of the Jews of Springfield were ashamed to talk about the Holocaust. There were no Jewfros on the streets. No Stars of David dangling down. We were not named Reuben, Moshe, or Devorah. We were named Barbie, Bobby, and Laurie Jo for safe keeping. I ironed the Jewish curls out of my sister Barb’s hair so she could sport the Beach Boys surfer girl look. In the ninth grade I wanted to fit in, so I joined a group of petty shoplifting pranksters.

My father was privately passionate about being Jewish, but he’d chosen a town with few Jews or Jewish’s culture to live in. We watched Walter Cronkite’s The Twentieth Century documentary series. When as kids we learned about the Nazis, my father turned red-faced, saying—almost yelling—that we were never to forget. I was eleven. I did not forget his red face. He never trusted gentile Springfield and stayed away from it, living his life on the road. After we had all left home for college and he was ready to cut back on work, my mother and he moved to Dayton, where they joined a Jewish country club. He’d spend half the year in Boca Raton, Florida, surrounded by Jewish delis, bridge games, and golf. Springfield was never home to him. He was gone a lot. Unfortunately—he left us in Springfield.

When I was in the third grade, in 1960, I had to sit in the library when it was time for Christian prayer in my classroom. The announcement for prayer would come over the PA system. That was my cue to leave. I felt so alone as I stood up in front of the others and marched slowly out of the room.

I was bigger than the average kid in elementary school and a decent athlete. These qualities did not protect me from the shame of cruel and callous words. I heard anti-Semitic words on the ballfield—Nothing burns like a Jew in the oven. I can’t remember if I pushed back and called out the haters for their cruelty. My guess is that I followed the example of other Jews in town and remained silent.

I saw classmates go sledding at the country club. I saw them throwing snowballs and slushing down the hill in silver metal saucers. The sounds of laughter cut through the winter chill. The gates to the club came clanking to a close in front of me. I imagined a sign: No Jews Allowed. My classmates did not look back.

When my sister Barbara was blocked from attending a birthday party at the Club, my quiet, unassuming mother called the birthday girl’s mother to tell her how hurtful her actions were. In Springfield that was a courageous act, but my father’s younger brother, Fred, objected. He did not want to rock the boat. He was my father’s business partner and always wanted to find a way to live with gentile Springfield. I have to live here, he reminded us.

Progress

Uncle Fred’s patience would eventually be rewarded fifty years later when he led the major redevelopment drive for downtown, as president of the community hospital and the first Jew on the Wittenberg board. The Chamber of Commerce named him Man of the Year. He had worked to gain respect, and his rising inclusion and acceptance marked an evolution in Springfield’s attitudes to Jews and other minorities. Despite his laurels, he would not apply to be the first Jew to in the country club. He was not willing to be humiliated by some anti-Semite wielding a black ball to exclude him during the membership review process.

In those days even the fine business and professional people who respected Fred might well have looked the other way rather than call out the bigotry of their fellow club members. They would not have stood up. But things changed. At Fred’s funeral in 2016 the temple was overflowing with over four hundred people. He had worked hard to earn their respect. He had succeeded. They stood up for him that day.

There were moments of progress: In 1966, Springfield elected Robert Henry, the state’s first black mayor. He would not have been allowed into the country club, however. My cousin Ed, who worked with Fred in operations, became an active and well-liked member of the community. In recent years Ed was a school board leader. Springfield has evolved over the last sixty years; it is not the anti- Semitic and racist Springfield of 1950s and early ’60s.

Unlike my father, Fred did not live on the road. He ran company operations and managed the employees. He was emotionally invested in the Springfield community. Dad did not emotionally invest in Springfield. He stayed detached from the town. He did not understand the pain of a birthday snub or a gate that closed in your face. My father did provide one message to his children: Get out of Springfield. My mother was ready to pack her bags. She would have to wait until 1980 to get out when they moved to Dayton.

Chapter 3.

Man in a Hurry