And twentysomething San Francisco artist Nikolas Weinstein expanded his glass sculpture business, now displaying his colorful creations in such high-end stores as Barney’s and Gump’s.
Without the help of the Hebrew Free Loan Association in San Francisco, those Bay Area Jews may never have achieved their goals.
This year, the organization turns 100 and plans a range of events to celebrate the many Glickmans, Rothfarbs and Weinsteins it has aided over the years through a variety of interest-free loans.
“In a hundred years, it’s six figures [of recipients] easy,” says Irwin Wiener, executive director of the organization. “We help 600 to 800 a year on the average.”
Annually, those hundreds include undergraduate, graduate and professional students who need help financing their education; first-time homebuyers who need assistance with down payments and closing costs; business people who need a boost jump-starting their enterprise; and people who need help affording such basics as food, clothing and shelter.
More recently, HFLA has instituted emigre loans to help sponsors contend with the costs of resettling family members here, as well as loans to help families with the formidable cost of adopting children, both domestically and internationally.
And there are other types of loans as well — institutional loans for Bay Area synagogues and educational organizations, for example, and debt-consolidation loans for those facing financial woes.
Needless to say, the world has changed in myriad ways since turn-of-the-century Eastern European immigrants founded HFLA to help fellow Jewish newcomers make new lives in California.
In those days, the organization loaned peddlers $50 to fill their pushcarts. Today, recipients get thousands of dollars to fill their offices with fax machines and computer equipment.
Still, the organization’s philosophy has changed little over the years. “This is not a hand-out program, it’s a hands-up program,” says Wiener, who succeeded longtime executive director Cantor Julius Blackman in 1990.
“When people leave here, their heads are high, they walk out proud. It’s not just that we’re helping them; they’re helping themselves.”
The default rate on HFLA loans, he adds, is less than one half of 1 percent — lower than the average for most banks. “Most people consider it a moral obligation” to make good on their loans, he says. “Their part is to pay so that the next person who needs help will be able to receive it.”
Such well-known Bay Area businesses as House of Bagels, Just Desserts and the long-successful though now-defunct Zim’ Restaurant have seen the HFLA loans they received in their early days pay major dividends later on.
Another HFLA loan recipient, Sammy’s Pet World in San Francisco, opened its doors in 1992 at an 800-square-foot location. Feb. 8 it will launch its latest offshoot — a 14,000-square-foot superstore in the Potrero Center that is nearly four times larger than any pet store or pet supply store in the city.
Nikolas Weinstein appears to moving in a similar direction.
Since getting his $15,000 loan — which he is paying back in monthly installments over the course of three years — the artist has watched his small business, Nikolas Weinstein Studios, double annually.
The loan helped him hire extra staff during slow cycles, enabling him to build up inventory.
In addition, “the loan helped finance a really outstanding catalog,” he says. “A lot of the work I do is fairly high-end design. It’s very important to have a catalog that sets one’s best foot forward.”
Indeed, the 42-page museum-like color catalog presents Weinstein’s work in all its glory, highlighting delicate twisting bowls, platters and vases as well as candles and bronze cases with enamel interiors.
“I’m trying to make something a little more artistic and unusual and it demands a great deal of time and attention,” Weinstein says.
“That’s difficult to come by if you’re constantly watching your back and worrying about a paycheck and meeting a bill.”
HFLA derives its funds from individuals, foundations, bequests and charitable trusts. Some loan recipients, in fact, have gone on to become donors.
Dian Rothfarb can’t express enough appreciation for HFLA. The organization’s $10,000 loan helped her and husband Allan — a project manager at a computer programming company — finance an international adoption that cost at least twice that amount.
This fall, while her husband stayed at home with the couple’s older daughter Marissa, a second-grader, Rothfarb flew to the former Soviet Union to pick up Julianna, now 9 months old and “beautiful, healthy and crawling all around.”
“It’s a dream come true,” she says of the new child.
For Dian Rothfarb, being able to stay home with Julianna has been a dream as well. Had the family not gotten an interest-free loan, she is convinced she would have had to return to work and put her baby in day care.
“I didn’t want to do that,” says Rothfarb, who has worked as a paralegal. “A normal loan would have put us over the top. It would have been too much.”
Candidates for HFLA’s loans must meet a few simple requirements: The money has to be for a legitimate purpose and the borrower must be Jewish and must have two Jewish co-signers. For those who do not have co-signers, HFLA has an endorser’s fund that steps in.
Approximately 10 percent of the loan applications are turned down, according to Wiener.
“The biggest low is having to say no,” he says. “The high is to see the faces of the people when they do receive the help, and the gratitude they express either in writing or in the expression on their face.”
Glickman’s gratitude comes through in her voice.
The author and editor had lived as a renter in the same Berkeley house for several years. When she heard her landlord muttering about selling, ” I thought, `I cannot move one more time,'” she recalls.
Instead, she moved to purchase the property to which she had grown so accustomed. When she realized she was short the amount it would take to cover closing costs, HFLA kicked in and loaned her $7,500.
“They were very professional, very prompt,” says Glickman, who currently works as an emigre caseworker at Jewish Family and Children’s Service of the East Bay. “There was no hanging around wondering with trepidation what was going to happen. Everything was smooth.”
For Glickman, the transition from renter to homeowner has been relatively smooth as well — and more exciting than she could have imagined.
“Suddenly I became house-proud. I wanted to make things beautiful,” she says. “I didn’t expect the rush of elation that I had when it finally went through. I thought, `Nobody can push me out. This is mine.'”