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One of the gigantic economic advantages that Judaism confers on its devotees is this deep, internalized conviction that making money is largely the consequence of a mutually beneficial interaction with other human beings.
“Take out a dollar bill and look at it,” he said. “Now pat yourself on your back because you are looking at a certificate of performance. If you did not rob or steal from anyone to obtain that dollar, if you neither defrauded anyone nor persuaded your government to seize it from a fellow citizen and give it to you, then you could only have obtained that dollar in one other way—you must have pleased someone else.”
Having money is not shameful; it is a certificate of good performance granted to you by your grateful fellow citizens.
business is not akin to theft, and profit is not plunder. I may be trying to sell you a product or my services chiefly in order to survive and thrive, but having the care of myself and of those who depend on me as my paramount concern is right and moral.
the only way for humans to judge one another is on their actions, not on their intentions.
It makes little difference to me if I am stabbed by someone who loves me or by someone who hates me. I may legitimately defend myself and retaliate in both cases.
It is right to thank someone who benefits you even if he wished you badly. It is even more right to thank someone who benefits you but is indifferent to you. It is still more right to thank someone who deliberately benefits you out of regard for your welfare.
Any person doing good for another deserves to receive gratitude rather than psychoanalysis of his or her motives.
it is clear to almost everyone who is truly interested in facts rather than beliefs that modern industrialized countries are far more merciful toward the environment than other countries. One need only recall the condition of the environment within the old Soviet countries or in places like China today.
The one large public eating room that is today’s restaurant is a relatively recent phenomenon.
But even now restaurants are arranged to give dimers the illusion of privacy.
Jewish tradition has always taught of the need for people to distinguish themselves from animals and to unequivocally demonstrate who won that primeval conflict. Seizing another’s property by force is animalistic and a victory for the serpent; purchasing it voluntarily for the price set by the seller finds favor in God’s eyes.
when extracting specific performance from people, the only alternative to a gun is money.20
With no verifiable information that he will be successful selling his wares, the merchant nonetheless purchases inventory. He then delights in selling out his entire inventory, even vital commodities like food or clothing, in exchange for little metal discs. Instead of despair at how he will now feed and clothe his children, he has complete faith that whenever he wishes, there will be someone who will gladly sell him food or anything else he may need for those very metal discs. It is that faith that converts metal discs and printed paper into money.
It is really a spiritual representation of a magical combination of a promise and a claim. And without faith in the value of a promise, the promise itself is useless.
It is precisely a preoccupation with the needs of others that characterizes the entrepreneur.
Religious Jews always accepted that only God was perfect and only He had the capacity to ultimately bring perfection to the world; but until He did so, it was just fine to take the best available option even if it wasn’t perfect.
The more involved people were in business activities—such as working for wages or buying and selling goods to others—the more generous they were. “The most altruistic and trusting societies are those that are the most market oriented,” says Jean Ensminger, an anthropologist at the Californian Institute of Technology, Pasadena.22
The one entity that it is well worthwhile struggling to perfect morally, is yourself.
Is it possible to train people to become leaders? The short, if paradoxical, answer is that one can learn to lead, but one cannot really learn to become a leader.
When feeling fear and uncertainty, people turn gratefully to the man or the woman who seems fearless and who seems to know what is going on and the direction in which people or events should be going.
One key to being a leader is to leap at the opportunity for leadership.
leadership depends partially on circumstance.
Judaism has always been guided by the conviction that Hebrew is the Lord’s language and that it possesses a word for every reality in the world. Conversely, when you encounter an idea for which no Hebrew word exists, you are led to question the reality of that idea.
Learn to follow if you want to learn to lead. • Maintain a clear vision of your goal. • Confrontation is often necessary. • Leadership requires mastery of both faith and facts.
Parents are advised by Jewish tradition never to respond to the question “Why are you doing that?” with merely a “Because I want to” or “Because that’s how it is.” Instead, they commonly tell even their youngest children, “Because that is what God said I must do.” In so doing, they are not weakening their parental authority, they are enhancing it.
everyone needs a vision. Someone intending to lead when the opportunity presents itself needs one even more urgently.
no leader fears confrontation.
Leadership is rare and it requires more than courage alone.
Those destined to succeed in leadership when the circumstance presents itself are those who have mastered both faith and fact.
he must teach them to swim.11
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You must also regard it as part of your mandate to ensure that no employee languishes in loneliness.
Your team must be a family
from the very start, Jews absorbed into their very beings the idea that you must act as if the desired outcome was already the reality.
That is what I mean by saying that faith is more important than facts.
Paradoxically, the more certainty you attempt to inject into the situation, the less successful is the outcome.
It simply is not adequate to merely think positive thoughts; instead, you must also actually utter them.
Through prayer, you have the capacity to bring about powerful consequences, but only if you actually utter the words loudly enough for your own ears to hear.
Unlike resolutions, goals are specific and they have deadlines. This makes all the difference in firing up your soul to improve your life.
any leader, whether military or corporate, needs to view those under her command simultaneously as both pieces in the overall puzzle and as unique and all important human beings.
The wise leader recognizes this dichotomy between “nobody is indispensable” and “everybody is indispensable.”
Wise leaders do their best not only to get to know the personality but also to make certain that the personality realizes that, to the leader, he or she is more than merely a function.
many people fail at leadership because they fail to convince that they care.
Another area in which anyone wanting to lead must find balance is short term versus long term thinking.
Nobody needs to come to an event to hear the keynote speaker read his speech.
Leading means not always revealing one’s inner feelings of doubt.
Greater store is set by sincerity than it deserves.
there are times in leading that it is simply inappropriate and counterproductive to reveal doubts, because doing so would undoubtedly cause ripples of morale sapping fear to spread throughout the organization.
You might mistakenly assume that you act in accordance with your feelings, but the ancient sages teach that in reality, you just as frequently come to feel in accordance with how you act.
If you don’t like the way you feel about something or about someone, start acting the way you would act if you already felt the way you wished you would feel, and you will soon come to feel that way.
if you act the way you would act if you really were filled with optimism and courage, then pretty soon you actually will start feeling more courageous and optimistic.
say out loud
