Mortin Levy // Levy Commodities

I was born in Kinston, North Carolina, in 1937. My father, Rabbi Noach Yehuda (Louis) Levy, was an Orthodox rabbi who was smuggled into the United States from Hungary through Cuba. He was a rav in Satu Mare (Satmar) way before the war. The small town that he and my mother, Rose, lived in was on the border of Romania. At the time, there was heavy political instability due to the constant fight for power between Hungary and Romania. My parents used to laugh at how one day, a photo of the Romanian leader was hanging in City Hall, and the following day, it was replaced with a photo of the Hungarian leader. My parents decided to remove their family of two from the line of fire. They entered the United States illegally in 1929.
“My mother was a Cuban citizen because her father was from there; that is why they went through there. Even in America, my parents had a persistent fear that the government was going to find them and send them back to Hungary. To combat this, they moved from town to town in the hopes of staying under the radar. Thankfully, they were granted amnesty in 1945. My father had to maintain a livelihood for his family, so naturally, as a rabbi, he set up a shul in every town they lived in. Over seven years of nomadic life, they had four children in four different states. I am the youngest. Unfortunately, my sister Esther and my brothers Maurie and Leonard have all passed away.
“My father was a rabbi in St. Louis, Missouri; Elgin, Illinois; and Kenosha, Wisconsin, before my parents settled in Chicago, Illinois, for the last 30 years of their lives. He was the rav of Congregation K.I.N.S. of West Rogers Park, and my mother took care of us kids.
“My mother’s father was a shochet, and her mother, my grandmother, was the smartest woman I have ever met. She had a knowledge of the world like no one else. She never read a newspaper, but she knew everything that was going on in the world. Almost all of my father’s family was murdered during the Holocaust, except for my uncle. As I mentioned, my father was lucky enough to escape before the war. The Holocaust was one thing that he never spoke about. The topic of his family was a very sore subject for him.
“As a child, I never went to public school, only Jewish schools. I actually taught other boys their bar mitzvah portions when I was nine years old. I went to yeshivah for basically my whole young life. When we lived in St. Louis, I went to the Yeshivah Ketanah of St. Louis. It wasn’t a big place, but the rabbis were good and I really enjoyed it. We learned Gemara and all of the other traditional subjects. After that, I went to a Jewish state school called Epstein Hebrew Academy. Years later, I sent my daughter there as well. Before I started high school, we moved to Chicago, and I went to Ida Crown Jewish Academy. One of my daughters also went to school there, as did her four children.
“Growing up, I learned how to speak English, Hebrew and Yiddish. At my bar mitzvah, I gave a speech in all three languages. I was a baal tefillah and a baal korei in my young life. I also sang in a shul choir for many years.
“When I was a teenager, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was very religious as a kid, mostly because my father was a rabbi. I always had to be the first person at shul. Today, I still consider myself to be religious.
“After I graduated high school, I went to Yeshiva University. I only stayed for one year, 1955, because I couldn’t stand New York. I was a chazan in Brooklyn because the man I roomed with was the rabbi of that shul. We lived in a residential community that was built on top of an old garbage dump. In one year, all of the houses sank. I think that explains my opinion of New York.
“When I was at Yeshiva University, the rav of the university was Rav Yosef Breuer, and the dean was Pinchas Churgin, who eventually moved to Israel and became the first president of Bar-Ilan University.
“I met several special people when I was at YU. For example, I actually heard the Lubavitcher Rebbe speak. I didn’t get to talk to him personally, but I remember that what he said had an influence on me at the time.
“I didn’t have any long-term plans—I decided that I would go to college and figure out the rest later. After my one year at YU, I switched to Roseville University (in Minnesota).
“I had several jobs while I was in school. First, I worked for an insurance company. Next, I worked in a post office, but I left because the hours were terrible. I was working from midnight until eight in the morning. After that, I was a cab driver. I eventually stopped because I knew that it was not my lot in life, but I can tell you that it was the most interesting job I ever had. You meet all kinds of people. I could write an entire book about being a cab driver.
“My next job came about through a chazan who was a friend of my brothers. He knew a company doing commodities trading that was hiring. I started working for them the summer before I was due to graduate, and right away, I knew that this was what I wanted to do for my career.
“I was one credit away from getting my degree, but I didn’t see any reason to take that last course. ‘What do I need the degree for?’ I asked. ‘The point of college is to set you up for what you want to do in life, and I already found out.’ If you know what you want to do, then the degree is just a piece of paper. I dropped out of college.
“My parents were supportive; they just wanted me to be successful. Actually, my father wanted me to become a rabbi. But I am the type of person that if one congregant told me what to do, I would tell them off and get fired. It was just not for me.
“At the commodities company, I was the phone man for people who would call in orders. I worked on the floor of the Chicago Exchange. Eventually, they bought me a membership and I went to fill in orders.
“My boss was often drunk, and he would yell at me from the time I walked in until the time I went home. But he was also very smart, and I knew I could learn from him. I said to myself, ‘The day I know more than him is the day I am leaving this job.’ I picked his brain, and when I knew more than him, I told him, ‘Either you make me a partner or I’m leaving.’
“The latter happened, and I left in 1963 with $100 in my pocket. I was really bad at saving money in those days. I moved into a flophouse with my brother for $8 a week. It was in a really bad neighborhood. One day, we came home to find that the building had been condemned because there was a small fire inside.
“Before I got married to my wife, I was supposed to marry my cousin. It was very common during those times. She was 17 and I was 30. I went to stay with my uncle in Israel. Every night, I would hear him cry. I eventually asked him about it, and he told me that his first wife and three of his children were killed in front of his eyes in the concentration camps and that he had been having the same nightmare every night for 17 years. Although he remarried after the war, he confided in me that he felt he didn’t truly love his family because ‘the Nazis burned all of the love out of him.’ For me, it was a rare insight into the Holocaust. In the end, I didn’t marry his daughter because we weren’t compatible.