The spirit of Shabat

Published on 1/7/2007 in THE POST-STAR

GLENS FALLS -- Peter Shabat doesn't look like a rich and powerful businessman. He looks more like the Maytag repairman, with a Jewish twist -- blue work pants and sneakers, a Carhartt vest embroidered with the words "Northway Service," and a faded black yarmulke that nearly blends into his dark hair.

His office is in a former feed store on South Street, near several bars and a tattoo parlor. Grimy fingerprints cover the cash register and photocopier, and a trickle of chicken feed occasionally lands on his desk from the ceiling.

He doesn't need to be there. He has enough money to retire. But while the Maytag man is known for having nothing to do, Shabat works at least 60 hours a week. He spends his days darting among his office, his pickup truck, and businesses around the region, checking up on malfunctioning bagel ovens and malfeasant tenants.

In his office, he is nearly always on the phone, though most of his conversations go like this: "Seeyouattwothankyoubye."

The only day he takes off is Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath -- "Shabbat" in Hebrew.

This is what Shabat, 55, calls "slowing down" after open-heart surgery several years ago.

He grew up in Israel, as his accent still reveals after 35 years here. He had little money when he arrived, but a wealth of motivation. He started an appliance repair business, which eventually grew to include restaurant equipment sales and service from three locations in Albany, Schenectady and Glens Falls.

By the 1990s, Shabat owned three hotels in Lake George and what he estimates was 80 percent of South Street's commercial real estate. He has sold many of his properties and downsized his repair business in recent years, but still owns four South Street buildings and handles most repair calls personally.

"When you're poor, you work hard and save...Now that I have the money, I can't stop working," he said. "What am I going to do, sit home? I have to use my hands; my mind."

His most notorious investment is the Madden Hotel, a boarding house with a reputation that matches its battered exterior. The tenants are mostly people with troubled histories, struggling with things like mental illness, substance abuse, debt and disability. As a result, Shabat admits, the Madden has a troubled history of its own.

"There's a lot of people coming in there who are just coming out of jail, having nothing...some have problems with drugs. I can't say there is no drugs there now, but it is a lot better than what it used to be," Shabat said.

Long-term tenants say they do their best to improve conditions by reporting those who damage the property or commit crimes. Those who end up on Shabat's list of "troublemakers" are banned.

"A place like that, it's what you make it," said Brian Black, who has lived at the Madden since 2001. "A lot of transients come through and say, 'It looks like he (Shabat) doesn't care about it, why should we?' But there are those of us who do...we used to have fights in there constantly, and drugs in and out of the place, but we've pretty much cleared that out now."

Black stepped into the lobby of the Madden a few minutes later, taking a reporter on a brief tour.

"Ah, shoot. Someone stole that lightbulb again," he said, glancing up.

Shabat said he keeps the building up to code, but it can be a challenge. When he first bought the Madden about 20 years ago, he renovated the place "from the ground up," he said.

"We made it nicer to begin with, but it didn't do any good. They break it, we fix it. They break it, we fix it. It gets expensive," he said. "Some people keep their rooms nice, but others are like animals, punching holes in the sheetrock and breaking doors."

The property is for sale, but Shabat said he won't sell it unless the buyer agrees to provide housing for the current Madden tenants. He hopes to work out a deal with the city.

"I could close that hotel, and it's never going to affect me financially, believe me. But there's a lot of people who, either mentally or physically, have no place to go," he said. "What would happen to them?"

Black, who is disabled by vision loss, said he, for one, doesn't know what he would do.

"If the Madden closed, I haven't a clue where I'd go. It would be a serious inconvenience, because right now I've got everything a stone's throw away," he said.

Shabat said he's "not desperate to sell," although there are days when the property is more trouble than its worth. Evicted tenants have retaliated with everything from swastikas to baseball bats, and the tires of his truck have been slashed several times.

"I don't think anybody else is going to take as much abuse as me," he said with a wry smile. "But you can't throw out the whole bunch because of a few bad apples. You can't give up."

He also insists that any potential buyer agree to keep renting space to the adjacent soup kitchen, called The Open Door.

Last year, a portion of the Madden's brick facade crumbled and fell through the roof of The Open Door, nearly landing on Rev. Bruce Hersey, the Open Door's director. But the falling wall didn't damage Hersey's opinion of Shabat.

"I've watched him over the years, and quietly, he has been very generous and kind," Hersey said, explaining that Shabat was the only South Street landlord to welcome the soup kitchen when Hersey started it from the back of a van about 15 years ago.

"He has come by numerous times to fix equipment for free," Hersey said. "And on Christmas day, he and his Jewish friends took care of feeding people so we could have a day off."

Shabat is an Orthodox Jew, the youngest of nine children born to North African immigrants in the Israeli village of Beit Shemesh, near Jerusalem. "I started working when I was 9 years old in a little market, and picked vegetables in the summer," he said. "I paid for my own bar mitzvah. My parents were very poor."

Shabat joined the Israeli Air Force at 15, and was still a teenager when he fought in the Six-Day War of 1967. When the Air Force sent him to Pensacola, Fla. for a training exercise a few years later, he fell in love with a girl named Lynne who vacationing there from Glens Falls with her family.

"I thought when I came here, it was only going to be for a year or so, but things change," he said.

He moved to Glens Falls, married Lynne and had two sons, but they divorced a few years later. He remarried and had a daughter, then lost his second wife to cancer. His children are grown now, have jobs in law and health care, and live in other states.

"I don't really want to talk about all of that," Shabat said, a weary look in his eyes.

Light returns to his eyes at the mention of another woman -- Ornit Reindorp, his longtime girlfriend. She also grew up in Israel, and served a year in the Army there before moving to her mother's hometown of Glens Falls about 15 years ago.

Shabat heard of her arrival from other members of the local Jewish community, and welcomed her to the neighborhood with what Reindorp considered a precious gift.

"He came over with an Israeli newspaper!" she remembered, her hazel eyes glowing.

When Reindorp stopped by the soup kitchen during a recent weekday lunch, many of the regulars greeted her affectionately. She said many of them have asked Shabat for help in the past, and they usually receive it, under certain conditions.

"If you come up to him and ask him for five bucks, he'll give it to you...but you have to show that you are willing to work for it. I mean, when he came to Glens Falls, he had holes in his shoes, he was so poor. But he was willing to work," she said.

Elvis Whorf, 25, said Shabat has "always been a motivator" for him to get his life on the right track.

"I can remember many times when I've been without a place to stay, and Peter's said, 'Hey, I've got a room.' He worked with me on rent when I couldn't pay it all at once," said Whorf. "I think he's got a heart of gold."

Reindorp looked thoughtful. "He has a unique personality," she said. "I never met a person with so much patience."

That patience does have its limits, however, as Shabat noted.

"I really don't have any conflicts with people, unless they don't pay their rent or bills," he said. "Then, I take them to court."

---