All after the jump. I could ask him some more questions later, when he gets off a plane, so if you’ve got any you think I’ve missed, let me know.

So, how do you feel?
“I feel great, honestly…it was an unbelievable experience…everyone’s telling me I carried myself very well…everyone’s pretty happy and pretty supportive.”
Is it tough to have lost?
“Losing…I’m a very competitive guy, and the experience last night was unbelievable…just to be on live television, just to be poised…and throughout the show, all the public relations, and the photography, and the interviews…it’s been like light speed for gaining experience.”
What’s the experience been like?
“One day I’m sitting at school, and the next day I’m recognizable all across the world…so it’s unreal.”
“We had about 500 people there at the Lawrence-Cedarhurst Firehouse for the party…the biggest crowd for a hometown party.”
To start off, is there anything that’s been out there in the articles or blogs about you that you’d like to correct or add to?
“You guys have been speaking to people who were really really close to me, and they really represented me well.”
At the conclusion of last night’s finale, “my grandfather rushed the stage…he missed my bar mitzvah but he came in for this…ran up to Mr. Trump and said ‘you made a big mistake, mister.’”
How have people responded to your appearance?
“I get e-mails and phone calls from people…of all different religions that are so happy that they have someone that’s out there that’s young who’s serving as a role model…from pastors, from rabbis, just all different people from different religions.”
What are some of the aspects of religious observance we didn’t get to see on the show?
“It was really, really tough keeping kosher…I lost 20 pounds. People look at me and I’m a skinny guy, and they wonder how I could’ve lost 20 pounds, but it was tough. They brought in kosher food for the suite, but when we’re on a task in the middle of New Jersey or somewhere, you can’t necessarily get kosher food.
“Sitting out for the tasks was not easy, obviously…Lenny was upset at the beginning, but by Yom Kippur he was good with it.”
“Some of the others fought about it, but we we were always fighting because it’s like you’re family. The eighteen of us are like a family…when we all got together it was like a kumbaya.”
“I understood why they were upset, that I didn’t participate the way I’d have liked to on those tasks, and I wanted to make up for it,” which is why he stepped up so often to be project manager.
What are some of the things about the show that you didn’t expect going in?
“I didn’t expect it to be that intense. I thought, ‘Y’know, I’ll go to Trump Tower and sell a couple pizza sandwiches…you really just don’t fathom or comprehend how rigorous it is; I didn’t expect it going in.”
“Production doesn’t have kosher food…certainly they were very very accommodating in the suite…I had to bring in instant soup…I definitely have a new appreciation for instant food.”
Do you think you’ll sign endorsement deals with any of the instant food companies whose products you were eating, like Tradition’s kosher soups?
“I could push so many instant soups and foods…they had these meals that they instantly get hot when you open them up…”
The La Briute meals…
“Yeah, I lived on those things. Those meals, instant soups, salad and bread.”
“When you live in a suite, you’re expected to cook, and all I know how to make is spaghetti.”
What about Dan Brody, the other Orthodox candidate, who owned a restaurant?
“Dan brody’s a good cook, actually…he used to cook a lot of the meals.”
“You know that he and I are speaking this Shabbos at the Jewish Center.”
What are you going to talk about there?
“I’m particularly gonna speak about being young in business…team dynamics and office politics stuff, ‘cause I’m ‘The Politician’ now.”
“And there’ll be a lot of q&a, because people have lots of questions. They show you on TV, they show you brushing your teeth without your shirt off…people feel like they know you really well. I got hundreds of e-mails last night, I’ve just begun to sort through them.”
What are other areas in which your religious observance came up during the show?
“Well, basically you had the holidays of course. There were the little things like shul…we had to film the boardrooms earlier because of the holidays, so instead of 8:00 it was at 4:00. Going to shul and everything, it was really…it was a weird experience for me, because I’m used to going to shul with my family on Yom Kippur, on Rosh Hashana.”
Was your religious observance a frequent topic of conversation?
“There was always, always, always discussions going on about what’s kosher, what’s not kosher, why can you do this but you can’t do that. A lot of them didn’t really understand what Judaism was; they didn’t understand if it was a nationality or a religion. People sometimes had probably never even seen a Jew in their life…it was a learning experience for them. I learned a lot from living with them, too…I’ve had non-Jewish roommates in college, but this was different.”
What are some religious concerns that weren’t part of what was eventually broadcast?
“The kosher, they completely left that out…”
Were there any other areas of religious observance that came up besides kosher and the holidays?
“Not really, to be honest with you…a lot of stuff, if you’re not really looking for it, you don’t see it. Like prayer…I was really delicate, the way I handled everything…so in terms of prayer and things like that, I really kept that to myself.”
“But really, all the time, I was so hungry…[a potential theme for] any given episode was: Lee hasn’t eaten the entire time.”
Lenny Veltman said that Brent ate all your bagels; did that happen?
“Everything is marked in the suite…everything that’s kosher, and it’s marked pareve, meat, dairy. We had the bagels for me, it was marked ‘pareve’ and everybody was eating them. They kept asking [the production people] if they could eat pareve bagels…they thought pareve was a brand name, and when I came back, all my kosher bagels were gone. I didn’t make an issue out of it. If they didn’t have any steak and we had kosher steak, I’d let them have my kosher steaks.”
“They provided plenty of kosher food in the suite, but we spent so little time in the suite. They do bring kosher food in…they brought bagels…but when you’re spending forty-eight hours at a wal-mart, there’s nothing to eat…deep in new jersey, deep in queens, where it’d take a half-hour of driving back and forth to get kosher food, I stuck to the task, I kept it to myself, I didn’t complain once.”
Tell me about yourself and your religious perspective.
“I’m a very spiritual person…a lot of middle eastern customs…I wear a hamsa around my neck all the time…I’m really into including everybody, whether Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Reconstructionist, or whomever, and that’s very important to me, because e tend to segregate, and it’s really self-defeating.”
“Just the values, principles…having high morals is really important to me.”
Where do you go from here?
“I have a ton of options right now…Mr. Trump told me to meet with him next week…we had an after-party after the show last night, and I got contacted by dozens of people…”
[Lee interrupts for a second to say hello to someone: “Bill’s on the line next to me…” at the airport, referring to the first season’s winner, Bill Rancic.]
“I just need to sift through everything…I’m going to be doing speaking engagements…writing a book.”
What will the book be about?
“Working under pressure.”
I asked some people on IM for some questions to ask you, some of them came from John Carney of the DealBreaker blog — by the way, do you read any business blogs, or other blogs?
“I started reading a couple of blogs for the show, that were talking about the show.”
Do you read DealBreaker?
“The book?”
No, it’s a business blog. Anyway, one of his questions is, do you think the show would have gone differently if there hadn’t been a popular vote?
“I don’t really think the popular vote played into it at all.”
“I think they made a big deal of my age at the end…made it out as though I have no experience, and I have a ton of experience…how could you cast someone who can’t win the show? The popular vote…I think if the popular vote was different, yeah, it could’ve gone the other way.”
He wants to know if you’ve seen anybody wearing ‘Vote for Lee’ t-shirts.
“Yeah, I’ve seen ‘Vote for Lee’ t-shirts…there were tons of signs in the audience last night and people wearing t-shirts everywhere.”
“People out there, they’re making a lot of other ‘Vote for Lee’ paraphernalia…a lot of people are selling a bunch of merchandise…people keep telling me that they’re making a lot of money off of me.”
Are you upset that they’re cashing in on you without including you in the cut?
“No, they’re being very supportive of me.”
Back to the religion issue, a lot of people took your unwillingness to talk about Summer in the first episode as a lashon hara lesson; do you think it should be taken that way?
“I think it definitely could be taken as a lashon hara lesson…I felt really uncomfortable talking about her behind her back.”
What are other ways your religious observance affects how you act in business?
“I think in terms of the way you conduct yourself, there’s always a way to cut corners, be a little corrupt, or attack people…I’m very upfront…I’m really grounded; when you have religion, it keeps you grounded. Also, having Shabbat at the end of the workweek is very helpful.”
A lot of the bloggers think you chose a bad team; how do you respond to that?
“Unfortunately, the way the show was edited, it came out that way. I had to pick Lenny…he was my first pick. If you give him something to do, he gets it done. Everyone has their moments, they happened to highlight a few of Lenny’s…they could’ve dogged out sean’s team…for whatever reason they chose to harp on my team…I picked a great team, I picked a diverse team.”
Another IMer wants to know if you’ve gotten any marriage proposals.
“I haven’t gotten any marriage proposals…”
When you saw Trump asking Sean if he’d marry Tammy, were you afraid he’d turn around and ask you the same question?
“That was like, y’know what, I didn’t get involved in any of that garbage…I never went on an interview where they asked you a question about whether you’re going to marry someone. I got really frustrated with that because I didn’t think it had anything to do with who he should choose. But the American public loves it, it’s a television show.”
Were you afraid that he was going to ask you the same question?
“What, that I’d marry Tammy?”
No, not that you’d marry Tammy — that’d you’d be getting married.
“I was not afraid about that at all…I introduced him to my girlfriend last night.”

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