Baruch Herzfeld
| Baruch Herzfeld | |
|---|---|
| Born | Staten Island, New York |
| Residence | Brooklyn |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Yeshiva University |
| Occupation | Businessman, founder and president of ZenoRadio and ZenoLive |
| Relatives | Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld (brother), Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld[1] (brother) |
| Website | https://zenoradio.com https://zenolive.com |
Baruch Herzfeld (born 1972) is an American entrepreneur and the founder and president of ZenoRadio, ZenoLive and former owner of Traif Bike Geschaft.
Career
ZenoRadio
Herzfeld created a tool using conference call technology to broadcast online radio that connects immigrant communities in the United States to their homelands. Focused primarily on New York City feeder communities, this tool, he named ZenoRadio, recruited its first users who were new residents hailing from San Jose de las Matas, Dominican Republic; San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago; and Governador Valadares, Minas Gerais, Brazil.[2] Herzfeld set up alternative voice over IP routes in these immigrant hometowns to keep families affordably linked between their old and new lives. Today these connections extend to more than 25 countries, from China, Cambodia, Nigeria, and Congo, to Nicaragua, Haiti, Brazil, and the Dominican Republic.[3][4][5][6]
Traif Bike Geschaft
Herzfeld is the former owner of Traif Bike Geschaft, a bicycle repair shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He lent 500 used bicycles he had purchased from Japan to the Satmar Hasidim free of charge in an attempt to alleviate neighborhood tension between the burgeoning hipster community and the long-time Hasidic Jewish community. Herzfeld purchased 40 used mobile home trailers to store the bikes resulting in what was Brooklyn’s first and only trailer park.[7] A trailer park full of bikes and no one to ride them then inspired his personal mission to supply the local Williamsburg, Brooklyn community of Hasidic Jews[8] with wheels to ride around the neighborhood, emerging as a cultural disruptor.[9] Herzfeld became known as a community disruptor by local media, and dubbed a macher by Jewish media.[9] His crowdsourcing experiments also include: a bike vending machine,[10][11] a bike share program,[9] a landlord business using a psychic to vet tenants,[12] and an ATM machine that rewarded the 10th user with an extra $20 bill.[13][14]
The Merengue Scandal
In 2010, prior to his incarnation as bike advocate, Herzfeld spent a year shuttling back and forth between the Dominican Republic, where he ran operations for SkyMax Dominicana (a telecom company), and Brooklyn, where SkyMax’s parent company is based. Herzfeld reported to Moses Greenfield, the company’s owner and a Williamsburg Satmar Hasid. In the spring of 2007, after Herzfeld clashed with his colleagues one too many times, Greenfield fired him. An ugly dispute followed over how much money Herzfeld was owed. As per their contract, the parties took their conflict to the beth din, or rabbinical court, which functions as arbitrators, from a legal point of view. Greenfield’s attorney was Nathan Lewin, an Orthodox lawyer who regularly argues before the Supreme Court of the United States. According to Herzfeld, Lewin’s approach to the beth din case was to besmirch Herzfeld’s character and to highlight his least Orthodox habits, including a photograph of Herzfeld dancing the merengue with an immodestly dressed Dominican woman.
According to Herzfeld, who "reports being happily married to an Orthodox woman," the photo was used in court to back up the charge that he had sexually harassed two Dominican SkyMax employees. Lewin presented affidavits signed by the young women making these claims; Herzfeld asserts that their supervisors paid them to sign the statements, and indeed—at Herzfeld’s behest—one woman later said as much on video, which is currently private. Lewin, in turn, counters that the harassment charges were just a small part of the evidence that Herzfeld’s conduct as a SkyMax employee was inappropriate. The beth din ruled that Herzfeld was entitled to some of the profits he demanded. However, in Herzfeld’s view, it did not go far enough in enforcing the verdict. [15]
References
- ↑ "Rabbi Akiva Herzfeld - Rabbis 2013". The Forward. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
- ↑ Gusovsky, Dina. "ZenoRadio, a Poor Man's Pandora, Is Booming". CNBC. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ "Zeno Radio offers immigrants a connection to home". Metro New York. Retrieved 2015-11-03.
- ↑ "Cellphones As Radios: Immigrants Dial In To Native Stations". NPR. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ "ZenoRadio: AudioNow competition in Port-au-Prince". Le Nouvelliste. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ "ZenoRadio Turns Cell Phones Into Far-Reaching Radios". Chicago Dispatcher. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ "Bushwick Trailer Park Welcomes Artists". AOL. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
- ↑ "Brooklyn's Bicycle Man Uses Two Wheels To Bring Hasids and Hipsters Together - News". The Forward. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
- 1 2 3 "Clash of the Bearded Ones". New York magazine. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
- ↑ Butler, Erica. "Bike to the Future: New Vending Machine a Fix for Brooklyn Cyclists". NBC New York. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ Moynihan, Colin. "24-Hour Bike Shop (Bring Plenty of Quarters)". New York Times. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ Lipinski, Jed (16 June 2011). "Landlords Rely on Psychic to Vet Tenants". The New York Times. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ "Unkosher Wheels, Friendly Faces". The Jewish Week. 29 April 2015. Retrieved 11 May 2016.
- ↑ Signore, John Del. "Video: Bike Parts Vending Machine in Action". Gothamist. Retrieved 2015-11-01.
- ↑ Brostoff, Marissa (14 April 2010). "THE GREAT ORTHODOX MERENGUE SCANDAL: Major bike-lane player dances to a different tune". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 18 May 2016.