Does history repeat itself (or do we learn from our mistakes)?

The author, Oscar Wilde, once said that experience is the name that wise people give to the mistakes they make. I couldn't help think about that when I read "Jewish Immigrant "Bankers," Financial Failure, and the Shifting Contours of American Commercial Banking, 1914-1918," by Rebecca Kobrin, a professor at Columbia University (published in the Association of Jewish Studies Magazine, AJS Perspectives). 

The article described the failure of the Jarmulowsky bank in 1914, and how it brought about changes in the way commercial banks did business. The bank was founded by Sender Jarmulowsky, a learned and philanthropic Orthodox Jew who made his fortune by speculating on the price of steamship passage. Jarmulowsky bought tickets in bulk during the winter when prices were low, and then sell them in the summer when prices were higher. He then developed the practice of allowing people to pay for their tickets over time.

According the Yiddish papers of the day the name Sender Jarmulowsky was known to "every Jew in both the old and new worlds." While the large bank building which he built on the corner of Orchard and Canal Street is still there, the Jarmulowskys are gone. The bank failed because of his sons speculation on Manhattan real estate. They used bank deposits to buy 37 buildings in Harlem, driving real estate prices through the roof, but when WWI broke, many of the bank's depositors (mostly Jewish immigrants) tried to withdraw money to send to their beleaguered relatives in Europe. The bank could not cover the withdrawals and it had to close its doors. The judge handling the bankruptcy, Learned Hand, wrote a decision which led to legislation establishing new regulation on banks to prevent such failures from happening in the future.

Real estate speculation... unregulated banking practices, financial disaster ... the whole story sounds like it comes out of today's newspapers! Which makes me wonder: Does history repeat itself? Do we learn from the past? The answers are: yes and yes. Yes, history does have a way of repeating itself. And, yes, we keep learning from our past mistakes so that we might make the future more secure.

The story of the Jarmulowsky Bank and the story of today's economic woes are similar, and there are two important lessons that we can draw. First, after every economic crisis that we have had, our country has made changes and come back even stronger. If history repeats itself, that means that we are going to come back from today's economic woes. Secondly, just like in the realm of economic matters, so in our personal lives. We are bound to make mistakes in life, but we can also make corrections for the future.

The true mark of living well is not just minimizing failure; just as important, perhaps more important, is how we come back after failure. 

Pin Me

Last week I saw Madeline Albright's pin collection at the Museum of Arts and Design. It runs through January 31 but if you can't get to NYC this weekend, it will be in Washington DC this summer.

Madeline Albright, the former UN Ambassador and US Secretary of State, was known for wearing brooches. Her collection includes bees, butterflies, and spiders, doves, eagles and other birds, missiles, ships, and serpents, political pins, flags and Americana; and many other things as well. She acquired some of these wonderful pins for herself, others were family heirlooms, many were given to her by friends, visiting heads of state, soldiers or other people she met during her service to the United States.

She wore her pins to convey her mood: When things were going well, she might wear a sun; When work became complicated, she might wear a spider web. She wore pins when she met with met with foreign leaders: She wore a bee pin when meeting with Yasser Arafat, as if to say "watch out because I can sting"; She wore a miniature missile brooch when negotiating an arms reduction treaties with the Russians (they asked her if she meant anything by it and she pointedly told them it represented how small we can make our missiles so they better negotiate with us seriously).

I gained new respect for Madeline Albright. I knew that she had discovered late in life that her parents were originally Jewish and that she had many relatives who died in the Holocaust. What I didn't know was that she completed her Masters and Ph.D. at Columbia while living on Long Island with her husband, Joseph Albright, whose family owned Newsday. I didn't know that she had three daughters, one of whom died at a young age. I didn't know that upon returning from a research trip to Poland her husband left her for another woman.

Looking at her life made me think about life's ups and downs. No matter how accomplished a person is, no one's life is smooth sailing. Difficulties, loss, tragedy... they touch everyone, maybe not in equal measure, but all of us celebrate happy times and accomplishments, and face difficult times and challenges.

Every day of her life Madeline Albright chose a pin, and put it on, as if to say: "I am going out there to face the world." She consciously chose and she wore that choice on her clothes. What a great lesson for all of us: We, too, can choose what pin we are going to wear every day in response to the vicissitudes of daily life! That is empowering.

Driving to Florida

When I was a kid we drove to Florida to visit my grandparents every year. It was so wonderful to spend time together as a family. Even the drive was fun, tedious, but fun. I remember the things we did together. Stopping at my dad's favorite restaurants, driving through towns, seeing the US a little bit. "Look out the window," my mom would say. "Don't you want to see what Georgia looks like?"

Driving to Florida today is somewhat different. You see, they have finished I95 and so, today, it is much faster and easier. No more getting off the Interstate and driving on US 1. No more driving through those little towns and seeing how other people along the way lived.

I was thinking about that as we drove 20 hours on a road that pretty much looked the same. Travel in the US has become easier, but has it become better? Instead of getting off now and then because a stretch of 95 wasn't complete, we missed going through those little downtowns and seeing what life was like along the way.

Of course, if you put out some effort and get off the Interstate you can still see a little bit of what life used to be like. But in many places the downtowns are crumbling. The old shopping districts have given way to the suburban shopping mall. Sadly, every shopping mall in the US has pretty much the same stores with the same products whether you are in New York or Minnesota.

If you are looking for what makes a place special, it may be harder to find, but it is still there. You just have to get off the Interstate and be open and willing to explore. The thing about exploring is, of course, that it doesn't always work out. You don't always find what you are looking for. But is that a good reason to forgo doing it?

The same is true in our lives. If we want to find something special we have to get off the Interstate. We have to make an effort to take a detour and get out there and search. We may not always succeed, but then again, on occasion, we might.