In May, 1969 when I was a senior at the University of Wisconsin, I was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital. The Vietnam War was raging and Madison, WI was an epicenter of anti-war furor. Fear of being drafted into a war I didn’t believe in, combined with old personal issues and a steady diet of psychedelics, sent me barreling over the edge.
One day, while confined to the maximum-security ward, I peered out a small bathroom window through a dense security screen. As I looked out towards the leafy manicured grounds, I made a vow that someday I would rejoin “The Outside” and escape the imprisonment of my own thoughts. After getting out of the hospital in February 1970, I fell in love… with a rough-hewn salad bowl. That love led to the development of my first business, the Alper Wooden Bowl Company. My entrepreneurial passion led to the creation of five more ventures, including Noah’s Bagels, the largest kosher retailer in the United States.
In 1996 Noah’s was sold for $100 million. The sale allowed me to realize my dream to study at The Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, while my sons attended Israeli public school, and my wife did volunteer work. Soon after our arrival, in Elul, I was sitting in Yakar, a neighborhood synagogue, during Kabbalat Shabbat services. Surrounded by ecstatic singing, clapping, and faces filled with joy, my gaze was drawn outside through a window covered by wrought-iron bars. I looked at the rustling leaves of a tree, and was emotionally transported back to the bathroom at the hospital.
The promise I had made to myself half a lifetime ago was fulfilled. I had returned to the green verdant world to build a family, a career, and a future.
Noah Alper is a serial entrepreneur, a business consultant and author. www.businessmensch.net
