Efraim Reich Profile on Blogspot

 

Efraim Reich Biography

Efraim Reich says he would prefer to be a teacher or a scholar rather than a millionaire. Not that he is overly modest about his achievements in the business world; nor does he have reservations about what his money can buy. But just the same, he has a far higher opinion of Torah luminaries than of businesspeople. He hopes that all five of his sons will opt for the Torah world. 

 

About Efraim Reich Company

Efraim Reich is the owner of Imagestore, a company that specializes in digital archiving - scanning documents to turn them into computer files and microfilm, and deciphering scanned documents to turn them into digital files. Since he bought the company in 2000, he has turned Imagestore from a small company with only 20 employees and a sales volume of $500K a year into a company with over 200 workers, whose sales volume this coming year will total $10 million. 

 

Efraim Reich Character

Efraim Reich is an impressive man: about six feet two inches tall (he says he doesn't know exactly), and with his black hat, he appears even taller. Today, says Reich, his most important task in life is to provide people with a livelihood so that they can be independent. At the company center in Petah Tikva and at the branch he has established in Modi'in Ilit (Kiryat Sefer), he employs mainly ultra-Orthodox women, handicapped women and older women immigrants. They earn slightly more than the minimum wage and those with a good output receive an additional NIS 2,000 a month. Reich is proud that women he calls "super ultra-Orthodox" work alongside completely secular women, and he loves to relate that the employees' dining room has three microwave ovens - one is kosher, a second is mehadrin - more stringently - kosher and a third, "I don't want to know what goes into it." 

 

Efraim Reich History

From the wall across from the desk in his office, one can see a picture of the man who, together with his father, shaped Reich's worldview - Rabbi Yekutiel Yehuda Halberstam, the previous rebbe of the Sanz Hassidic sect. In the picture, the rebbe can be seen leaning on the young Reich, who at the age of 17 was sent by his parents to serve as the rabbi's personal assistant in New Jersey. Reich's father was one of the rebbe's Hasids. After the Holocaust, he immigrated to the United States, and from there, in the late 1950s, the rebbe urged him to immigrate to Israel.

"The rebbe made him into a contractor. Father didn't know anything about contracting, but he built Kiryat Sanz in Netanya," says Reich, and then interrupts the interview for a few moments to answer a telephone call from his 84-year-old father, with whom he converses in Yiddish. "Tati, you never disturb," he responds to his father's apology.

Understanding people Reich, 43, the eighth of 12 sons, suffered from an attention deficit disorder, and this had a great deal of influence on his life. His parents made sure he excelled in other areas - for example, visiting the ill and arranging books.