Arrivals: Thinking positively

Saphira Tessler-Greenberg, 25, from Potomac, Maryland, to Ra'anana 2010.

By SUSAN DE LA FUENTE
Saphira Tessler-Greenberg (photo credit: AVIAD TEVEL)
Saphira Tessler-Greenberg
(photo credit: AVIAD TEVEL)
Saphira Tessler-Greenberg’s suburban Potomac childhood home was a center of community involvement. Her father, Joel Tessler, with a master’s degree in social work, was for many years the Orthodox rabbi of Beth Sholom, which grew into a large congregation.
Tessler still helps out there as rabbi emeritus. Her mother, Aviva, a marriage and family therapist, worked alongside her husband, simply “because her passion is giving.”
“My parents were there for every single family in that community,” Tessler-Greenberg says.
“We had teenagers who were looking for help live with us since I can remember, funerals and weddings every Sunday. My parents would run out at 2 or 3 a.m. for someone who needed help. I mean, they were always on call, similar to a doctor, I suppose.”
More than once, family vacations were interrupted when an emergency arose.
They were also strong supporters of Israel. During a long visit here in 2001, when the second intifada raged, Aviva Tessler went into action, taking her daughter to visit victims of terrorism in the hospital and at home. Together with friends in Potomac, she formed a nonprofit called Operation Embrace to assist in the recovery of terrorism victims.
“The organization fills the gaps left by Bituah Leumi, and all requests are made by social workers,” Tessler-Greenberg explains. Since the Tesslers moved here two years ago, her mother goes to Sderot at least twice a week.
When in January 2006 the Tesslers came to Ra’anana on a five-month sabbatical, the rabbi’s son and daughter confronted a new school experience.
“I was in 10th grade and pretty devastated to leave my high school and friends at the time,” Tessler-Greenberg recounts.
“When I went to the school, Ulpanat Tzvia, the first day, the girls made me a cake, balloons. They really went all out to make me feel welcomed. It was very special. With such a warm welcome, I quickly adapted and fell in love with being in Israel.”
After the sabbatical, Saphira decided to stay and finish high school in Herzliya. Her mother joined her, while her father and brother returned to the US but visited whenever possible.
“It was a pretty incredible commitment my parents made in order for me to live here in Israel,” she acknowledges.
The school also supplied tutors to help her overcome language difficulties.
Saphira took private voice lessons to continue an early involvement with musical theater. Summers were spent in New York studying the subject further.
Even after graduating, while attending the Midreshet Lindenbaum seminary in Jerusalem, she got the lead part in a musical and continued singing.
Although initially uncertain about staying in Israel, she soon enrolled in the Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) of Herzliya to major in psychology.
“It felt like a very good fit. The school made me feel like I had a family within the campus,” she says.
Saphira and a friend brought the American non-profit group Strong Women, Strong Girls to IDC. The organization provides female role models and mentoring for small groups of underprivileged girls to broaden worldviews and build leadership skills from an early age. Saphira and other students went to orphanages to teach positive psychology and empowerment in this social impact program.
“We translated all the lessons, selected mentors for the girls, and it was incredibly rewarding. I was also president of Hillel for a year and class representative. I really loved the school and got involved as much as I could.”
At the end of her second year, Saphira married Aviad Greenberg, a lawyer from Givat Shmuel. Aviad worked in marketing for his father, a wholesale distributor of hair care products to salons. The young couple boldly invested all their funds in creating a new line of hair products using Dead Sea minerals. Because of Aviad’s work experience and her training in positive psychology, Saphira was not discouraged by setbacks in the company that carries her name.
“We went to a lot of different factories and learned on the way. We made a lot of mistakes, but what I learned from Prof. Tal ben-Shahar in Positive Psychology at IDC is ‘learn to fail or fail to learn.’ This stuck with me, and we really just learned what to do by experimenting and taking a lot of risks.”
The beginning, of course, was rough.
“We were packing everything by ourselves, climbing over boxes, sitting in the freezing cold in a friend’s warehouse packing up orders. We really started from nothing. We had no idea the line would take off like it has, and we give all the credit to God and to hard work.”
Even today, when they export to several countries and have opened a new boutique called Saphira Salon at the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem, the work remains challenging.
As Saphira says, “It is definitely hard. We work Israeli hours for manufacturing and American hours because of our customers, so it’s kind of like you work 24/7.” Unexpected help came when her parents joined their daughter and son-in-law in the business.
“We were honored how much they believed in us. They really saw the future, and for almost two years now the four of us have been working together.”
Only after her two-year-old returns from nursery school does Saphira set aside her phone to give her daughter undivided attention.
“So she is my space where I can just focus on being a family.” As for relaxation, “That’s a funny question because for my birthday this year all I wanted to do was go to a spa where cell phones were not allowed. So this way we would have to try and relax and not check our emails every second, and it was so peaceful.
“However, we could not help but take a walk out of the hotel to call a few customers!”