Coach Uses Hillel ‘If Not Now’ Quote To Sell High-End Bags

But what would Shammai say? Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer June 7, 2018

The luxury leather accessories brand Coach is employing Rabbi Hillel’s famous maxim to sell purses, it seems. A tipster sent the Schmooze an Instagram ad for Coach — an image of the brand’s classic design of oblong ‘C’s underneath the words “If Not Now, When?”

Spotted: Luxury Pirkei Avot Image by Instagram

The famous saying belongs to the first century rabbinic scholar Hillel, also known as Hillel the Elder. It has been borrowed by Emma Watson, Ivanka Trump, the band Inkubus, and the anti-Israeli-occupation group “If Not Now.”

Just in case you were wondering, Coach’s CEO is member of the tribe Joshua Schulman, so using the moral dictum to sell luxury goods is, arguably, part of his birthright. But Coach items tend to run in the mid-three-figures, price-wise. A more accurate Hillel quote for the brand might be part of the same quote, which Hillel-acolytes tend to leave off: “If I am only for myself, what am I?”

Jenny Singer is the deputy Lifestyle editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.