To me, Judaism is all about respect for others and yourself, as well as manifesting that respect through action that helps other people. I watched my father transform the retail clothing industry by respecting everyone he dealt with, and I’ve tried to carry on that tradition.
On my desk is the famous quote from Golda Meir: “Nothing in life just happens. It is not enough to believe in something; you have to have the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them, to struggle.”
I have also taken inspiration from another great Jewish woman—my grandmother, Clara Glickman, a Romanian immigrant in the early 1900s. She was the first woman I saw and heard express her pride in getting a job, which was in a shoe store.
She became the assistant manager. She often told me, when we were alone, that I needed to make my own living. Be independent. Always stay involved. This was before the surge in feminism prompted by Betty Friedan and others, and before I knew anything about Susan B. Anthony or the suffragettes. I got this message from my bubbe, and it stuck early.
At the age of 12, the feminist in me was preoccupied with convincing my elders that I should get a bat mitzvah at our Conservative synagogue.
This was not the practice in the early 1960s. Maybe because they got tired of me asking, they finally gave me a Friday-night service (rather than the usual Saturday service that the boys got).
As a gift, the women of the synagogue gave me a Bible with my name on the front, signed by the rabbi. I was encouraged, not too much later, when the bat mitzvah became routine in Reform and then Conservative temples.
When I was little, we moved to a five-bedroom, five-bath house in Bronxville, N.Y. It was a beautiful Georgian colonial formerly owned by the president of Reynolds Aluminum, who was transferred. Seeing it for the first time, I thought I was starring in a Disney Sunday night show with “Tinker Bell” and “Snow White.”
But the move turned out to be the worst decision they ever made. My siblings and I were the only Jews in the school system, even though we were only 18 miles from Grand Central Station. We later found out that a petition to keep us out of that school got a lot of support but failed.
In Bronxville, we experienced physical threats and life-changing antisemitism. The prejudices we encountered ultimately made me prouder of my Jewishness and not afraid to show it in public. Being Jewish was not something that would make me cower or apologize or not want to be what I was, and I always tried to be genuine. I wanted to be valued for who I was, and to gain people’s respect, I always tried to respect them.
Respect has been central to how I operate, and part of that is respect demanded by Judaism. We are commanded to leave the world a better place than we found it, and that requires being seen, being regarded and being considered—in other words, offering and receiving respect.
My dad, Sy Syms, made respect for our suppliers, our employees, and, above all, our customers the cornerstone of his life.
Respect informed everything at Syms—from the cash payments to the suppliers to the descriptions of our merchandise to the clean floors to the logo, “the more you know about clothes, the better it is for Syms,” and then providing the information needed.
Starting from a tiny store in Lower Manhattan in 1958, Sy and, later, I helped grow Syms to more than 50 stores in 16 states. We took pride in our slogan: “An educated consumer is our best customer.” Even as we grew, our tradition of respect never wavered.
The Jewish tradition also demands charity, and when we started our foundation, one of the first and longest-lasting (it’s still going strong) engagements was with the Sy Syms School of Business at Yeshiva University in New York. Sy had always found it ironic that the largest Jewish university in the country—smack in the urban heart of a venerable and thriving Jewish business community—had no business school in 1986.
He met and was taken with Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm, YU’s president at the time, himself an expert on modern Jewish life and the Diaspora. I was all for investing in this institution, and I’ve never changed my mind. What started with an accounting class of 24 students in 1987 is now a full-fledged school with more than 900 students, and courses on finance and management, an institute for entrepreneurship, and a joint program with Cardozo Law School and Einstein Medical School.
The business school teaches that respect is a central ethical pillar of business, life and Judaism. I find it invigorating every time I visit to think that this will be a lasting Syms legacy.
“Leading With Respect: Adventures of an Off-Price Fashion Pioneer” was launched during the week of Aug. 26, 2025.
