Financial crises occur. Personal trainers need their access. The All-Star Game can run late.
"I had some, uh, mixed feelings, Seth, about your missing our last appointment," said Rabbi Stuart Shiff, sitting one morning the other week across the table in a midtown Manhattan office from one of his private students, Seth Horowitz, executive vice president of Modell's, the sporting goods company .Like many such sessions, this one began with an apology: Horowitz explained that he had been at the 15-inning All-Star Game with clients until 2:30 the morning of the last session, and on top of that his infant son had hurt himself - not seriously, but still ...
The rabbi thumbed the pages of the Torah on the table. "I hurried back from a weekend trip with my family to be with you," he said.
Shiff is one of five rabbis employed by an international Orthodox Jewish organization known as Aish HaTorah, which offers many services to regular people at its Upper West Side center, but offers some special attention to those whom its managing director, Rabbi Adam Jacobs, refers to as "very significant people."
To participate in its Executive Learning Program, one makes a very significant contribution - $10,000 a year, more or less - and in return, a rabbi comes to one's corner office about once a week to offer Bible study, Talmudic exegesis, personal counseling or just an hour of intellectual jousting...
... Some new sign-ups, in fact, are recently unemployed - but still significantly affluent - "guys who suddenly have time on their hands," Jacobs said. One rabbi has been traveling to Greenwich, Conn., to meet with a man he used to visit at an office at Bear Stearns, and who was laid off after the troubled firm was acquired by JPMorgan Chase this spring...=============================================
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