In 1984, at the age of 38, Noah Alper visited Israel for the first time. The trip had such a profound effect on him that he promised himself he would go back there one day for a year of yeshiva study.
But first there was a small hump he had to get over. He needed to set up a successful business.
The Noah’s New York Bagels that opened in downtown Berkeley in 1989 might not have looked like the start of a major enterprise. But Alper felt confident that the West Coast would like his bagels.
The rest, as they say, is history.
With 92 stores now open from Seattle to Los Angeles, and another 75 planned by the end of 1997, you could safely say Alper’s hunch was a good one. A year ago, the business merged with a Colorado firm and became Einstein/Noah’s Bagels; Alper became vice chairman. And — importantly to Alper — the business’ phenomenal success means that he can now fulfill his longtime dream.
When the Alper family sets up home in Jerusalem this August, Alper won’t be the famous bagel guy from Berkeley. He’ll be just another student toting his books to the Pardes Institute. Though he remains on the corporation’s board of directors, he’s taking an unpaid 18-month sabbatical, which has already begun with six months of training and preparation for life in Israel.
“I’m studying Hebrew three days a week, and I’ll soon start classes in Jewish history and Midrash,” he says.
He has also embarked on an exercise program with a personal trainer, hoping to increase his strength and aerobic fitness, and “tighten up my belly.” Afternoons might find him cycling around Berkeley, book-filled rucksack on his back.
“I’m doing the Berkeley student thing,” he says, grinning.
Along with studying and working out, Alper says he is currently “flirting with the idea” of writing his autobiography. He’s written a trial chapter and has spoken to an agent who thinks there might be a market for the book.
The 1984 trip to Israel influenced him in two ways. First, he witnessed a strong sense of Jewish pride unlike anything he’d ever known before. His Reform upbringing in Boston had not been strong on tradition. There were things he’d never heard of, such as the Pirke Avot (Ethics of Our Fathers): In Israel he attended a lecture on this ancient ethical text, which left him thrilled and determined to learn more.
“What I learned from that first trip to Israel is to be proud of who you are, and that’s psychologically crucial,” he says.
In 1988, he joined Congregation Beth Israel, Berkeley’s Orthodox synagogue. Today, he describes himself as a “traditional” Jew.
Before the Israel trip, his first two businesses had been connected with comestibles — a health-food store and a gourmet cooks’ mail-order catalog, both in Boston. He decided his next business would have a Jewish orientation.
“The concept was right, but the delivery was off,” he says of the enterprise called Holy Land Gifts that he ran from 1985 to 1987. The reasoning behind the business was logical enough. Thirty million born-again Christians in America have an emotional connection to the Holy Land. Yet they don’t have easy access to gifts and handicrafts from the region. In selling them gifts from Israel, Alper told himself, he would assist Israel’s economic development by bringing its products to a huge market.
“It had some potential,” he now says of the mail-order gift business that failed. “But in order to succeed I should have had Christian ministers advising me. I needed to understand my market. In business, you have to be very positive about what you’re doing, and my ambivalence about dealing with born-again Christians was a real dampener.”
When Holy Land Gifts folded, it was hard for Alper to pick himself up. He went to a recruiter, who told him he was too old and entrepreneurial to work for anyone else.
“Then he said to me, `You’ve had an interesting life so far,'” Alper recalls. “I’m a competitive person, and that `so far’ fueled me to take chances. It made me think there was much more out there.”
There was indeed. It came with sesame seeds, onion and blueberries. It came with cream cheese and lox. It came steamed, not boiled. And highly significant for observant Jews, it came kosher. Alper credits his older brother Dan with the idea for bagels and says it was clear from day one that the business would succeed.
“The first customer was a blind guy who couldn’t tell that the `open’ sign wasn’t up yet,” he says. “He came in tapping his cane, and said, `Smells good in here; what are you selling?’ And I knew we were OK.”
When he goes back to the business after his sabbatical, it will be mainly as an adviser and figurehead — or, as he puts it, “the Jewish Colonel Sanders.”
This is not as frivolous as it sounds. One of the things he’s most proud of, he says, is promoting Jewish culture to a wider population. It may be because of Alper that non-Jews all over the West Coast know their borscht from their bubbeleh, gleaned from Yiddish primers Noah’s hands out.
He’s also determined not to compromise his standards as the business expands.
“Before we opened in Sacramento, I was advised to cool it on the Jewish presentation,” he says. “The reasoning was that Sacramento isn’t as cosmopolitan as San Francisco.
“For example, you say `spreads’ instead of `schmears’. But then you lose touch with what made you successful in the first place.”
So in Sacramento, he says, “We stuck with `schmears.'”