“I wanted to make these mitzvos as beautiful, as halachically acceptable, and as comfortable as possible” 

Photos: Naftoli Goldgrab

IT

all started 25 years ago, when a friend convinced Rabbi Mottel Tenenbaum to go into business with him.

Rabbi Tenenbaum worked in the family nursing home business in an office building on 14th Avenue in Brooklyn, across the street from the Keter warehouse, where they manufactured sets of tzitzis, talleisim, tallis and tefillin bags, and other Judaic textile accessories. One Friday afternoon, he saw his close friend, who owned Keter, exit the warehouse looking worried. Business was grim, competition was strong, and his friend was facing severe financial issues.

“He wasn’t sure it was sustainable,” Rabbi Tenenbaum remembers. “I said to him, ‘Let’s talk after Shabbos.’ And somehow he convinced me to go into business with him.”

Eventually, Rabbi Tenenbaum bought his friend out, viewing it as a business opportunity for his chassidish sons who wouldn’t attend college. When he joined the industry, it was stagnant. Issues in halachah and comfort were rarely addressed, and tallis bags and coverings for sifrei Torah were, for the most part, standard stock items. Many men walked around with old, yellowed talleisim and the majority of them carried similar velvet bags.

Rabbi Tenenbaum, a self-described “simple guy, a businessman who tries to solve problems,” knew he wanted to change that.

“ ‘Zeh Keili v’anveihu,” he says. “I wanted to make these mitzvos as beautiful, as halachically acceptable, and as comfortable as possible.”