With a little help from my friends: Campaigns to cover coronavirus losses

Even though Holzer’s NIS 25,000 Headstart campaign ended successfully last week, he adds, with a sad smile, that this doesn’t even begin to cover the losses caused by the coronavirus.

By PEGGY CIDOR
LEOR HOLZER: While his bookstore will remain open, the situation is fragile. (photo credit: YEHUDA SHILO)
LEOR HOLZER: While his bookstore will remain open, the situation is fragile.
(photo credit: YEHUDA SHILO)
For Itzik Ya’akov, the Health Ministry’s coronavirus guidelines couldn’t have come at a worse time – threatening the future of his small coffee shop, an iconic little place in the Baka neighborhood.
His spot, the aptly named “Hamakom Shel Itzik” (“Itzik’s Place”) clearly was not going to turn him into a millionaire, and with his second child born recently, Ya’akov knew that if he was going to stay with his dream of being independent with a business of his own, life was not going to be easy. But nothing, he says, prepared him for the blow the invisible virus gave him. Rent, taxes, waiters’ wages and his suppliers – it was a sum he realized he was not going to be able to face with a locked down business.
Ya’akov was not alone. The economic impact hit all local and small businesses across the city, and while some simply decided there was no point in continuing and closed up shop, others, mostly based on the understanding that their businesses had something special to offer, tried to find other solutions. The most common was to launch a crowdfunding campaign, with fingers crossed, hoping to find at the end of the all-or-nothing fund-raising deadline that businesses’ customer loyalty paid off.
“We launched on our own, my wife and I, a Headstart [crowdfunding campaign], but after a short time, it was clear we failed to reach the large audience,” recalls Ya’akov. “NIS 13,000 – the sum we reached – was so far from the sum I needed that I was that close to giving up and closing down the place, which is so important for me.”
But then a friend found out about his situation, alerted a few others, a Facebook account was launched, a campaign ran, which even brought Ya’akov to breakfast television, and the rest is almost history. “The sum requested was NIS 70,000,” he says, with more than a glimpse of emotion. “Within less than 10 days we reached NIS 92,000, most of it from people I don’t know, from people who have never come to my place, just because they realized that what was at stake was far more important than a coffee shop going bankrupt.”
The same goes for Leor Holzer, who was deep into preparations for celebrating the first decade of his very special bookstore, when the coronavirus froze everything. Holzer Books is not just another place to flip through a novel – and not just because it is an independent business, striving to survive in an era of large retail chains. Holzer holds lectures, study evenings and special programs all focusing on the love of books, which attracts to his shop, located off Davidka Square, a true mixture of Jerusalemites.
“We have here a mix of people that exist only in this city, with haredim [ultra-Orthodox], religious, atheists, young and seniors, academics and lay people, men and women, Jews, Muslims and Christians, all united by their common interest in philosophy, theology, literature, history and poetry,” Holzer says. “At Holzer one can buy new and used books, in various languages – but the main thing that drove so many people to answer ‘present’ to this Headstart, I believe, was the love for a place that is local, familiar, widening horizons and dedicated to something they all share, something that cannot be found in large commercial chains.”
However, both Ya’akov and Holzer know that their chances to hold on, even after the coronavirus becomes a fading memory, (something nobody can say when, if at all) is that life is almost a mission impossible for small businesses in this age.
“Today, if somebody asks my advice about opening such a place,” says Ya’akov, “I will tell him, loud and clear, don’t even dare do that.” Ya’akov adds that he is sure that as life goes back to normal, we will see more cases of small and local places closing down. “And even worse – young people won’t dare to become independent – you will see more of the young generation renouncing their dream of running a place of their own and preferring to become employees. That’s bad, but there is no other option in my eyes.”
Even though Holzer’s NIS 25,000 Headstart campaign ended successfully last week, he adds, with a sad smile, that this doesn’t even begin to cover the losses caused by the coronavirus. “It’s not that before it I was making a big profit – this is not the kind of business in which one expects to make a lot of money. This is something you do and keep despite all the difficulties because you believe in it, because you are convinced that this is the right thing to do, especially in such a city like Jerusalem. But yet, the burden is heavy and with this crisis you realize how fragile it is when something like this virus attacks.”
As of this week, Ya’akov is reopening his place, with a full menu and tables and chairs outside, almost just like before the coronavirus era. Besides being happy about that, Ya’akov is also worried he won’t make it. “My customers will come back – in fact most of them continued to come and take whatever I could provide as takeaway – but now it will be the real thing again. The question is will it be enough to hold my head above the water? I am far from being optimistic. This is a special place – journalists, artists, religious and secular, residents of the neighborhood, a mixture of Anglos and locals – they love this place because they feel at home, they can sit here and exchange opinions, talk about the latest news and feel they can rebuild the world. But is it a livelihood for my business? I am not sure.”
Holzer says that he knows this is not really a livelihood, but that was his choice from the beginning. “When I opened this place 10 years ago, with the books filling up to the ceiling and the little attic, where, sitting on colorful cushions, Jerusalemites of all kinds come to listen to a lecture on Kant, or to learn something new on psychoanalysis, or on Maimonides or Rav Kook, or a lecture on the climate crisis in the world and its impact on us – that’s why I keep this place open nevertheless.”