4,000 Years of Business Wisdom

Twenty Jewish Business Secrets

About two months ago, American rapper, singer-songwriter, producer and fashion designer Kanye West was embroiled in a fracas over some highly offensive, blatantly anti-semitic remarks he made. In the midst of the resulting furore, Berel Solomon an orthodox Jewish executive coach (Wealthy Executive Coaching) with a strong following on Linked In, posted a video, which gained a good deal of attention and provided a masterclass in what Sam Keen in his book “Fire in the Belly” refers to as “the art of loving combat” as he turned the useless rage and indignation on its head by enthusiastically embracing and articulating those elements of Jewish culture that might explain the enduring success of the Chosen People.

In a seven-minute video entitled “Ten Jewish Business Secrets Revealed” Berel Solomon describes ten deeply ingrained practices that over thousands of years have guided the approach to business of the Jewish Community. It goes without saying (but I am going to say it anyway) that not all business people professing a Jewish faith adhere to all of these tenets all of the time any more than people confessing a Christian faith adhere strictly and unwaveringly to the teachings of Christ, let alone our shared Ten Commandments, but these values, articulated by a committed Orthodox Jew, are compelling, practical and have a high explanatory function as variables in the equation of success, with an r2 approaching 1, I would image.

This video, shot for the express purpose of countering the hateful discourse exacerbated by Mr. West’s (evidently deranged) outpourings was a condensed version of a previous series of Berel Solomon’s “Twenty Secrets of Jewish Business” which I produce below

# 1 Trust in God: Have Faith that you are supported and nurtured by the All-Knowing and move in the world accordingly

# 2 Tithe always. Reserve 10% of your income for charitable giving to support the weakest in the community, the widows, orphans, and sojourners of antiquity.

# 3 Be a part of your community and promote and support the interests and celebrate the successes of those who are in your community.

# 4 Observe the Sabbath - take 25 hours every week and remove yourself from your business activities entirely. Regenerate, disconnect from your devices, don’t drive or travel, be still and present for your family and yourself.

# 5 Be honest in all your dealings. God is always watching. Use “equal weights and measures” in all your transactions.

# 6 Never, ever make a promise so as to avoid disappointing your client or partner. Be mindful of the fact that God disposes so you never know what will happen that might prevent you from keeping a promise made. Always preface intentions with ”God willing”.. to keep the unknowable ways of God in mind.

# 7 Don’t talk badly about other people. In doing so, three people get hurt: the person you are bad-mouthing, the person who has to listen to you, and you yourself. Just don’t.

# 8 Assign a mentor for yourself. Profit from the wisdom of an experienced teacher and guide, someone who can help you remove doubt from your decision-making and help you find clarity.

# 9 Establish and commit to a system of judgment or mediation by selecting a party trusted by both sides of a dispute to mediate between the two having heard the case presented by each party.

# 10 Believe that everything happens for the good and for your own good, even and especially when things do not go as YOU expect them to.

# 11 Don’t do anything to others that you would not want to be done to you (do as you would be done by).

# 12 Understand and know that money is not the end goal but a tool to help you build community and family. Develop a positive attitude to money and see it as something that helps you do God’s work.

#13 Don’t be superstitious, believing in either good or bad luck unconnected to your own behaviour. God rewards good behaviour and punishes bad. Finding four-leafed clovers or black cats does not bring good or bad luck, only consistent behaviour does that.

#14 Do not be afraid to take (calculated) risks - Trust that God will guide you and support you if you follow His commandments.

# 15 Build a community outside of your business and spend time with them without thinking of your business or commercial interests.

# 16 Allocate your wealth wisely with one-third in cash (or gold), one-third in Real Estate, and one-third in inventory (your business).

#17 Aspire always to be a business owner, not a servant. Serve God in your business and not an earthly master.

# 18 Teach your children how to make a living and earn their keep. This is the primary duty of a father towards his children. If you do not you are encouraging them to steal or be dependent on others.

# 19 The synagogue is where deals happen. Here the poor man can sit next to the billionaire and they are equal before God and can interact as equals. Friendships and deals are sealed in the community of the synagogue.

# 20 Your best negotiating position is always when your Plan B is better than your Plan A. Having multiple opportunities allows you to pit them against each other giving you more leverage than if you just had one option.

I enjoyed consuming Berel’s list, not because it brought any particularly new insights (although numbers #6 and #19 made me sit up and think), but because of the strength and energy that resonates from them as a construct, a latticework of values that woven together become stronger with each strand.

It is my belief that nothing on earth is as powerful as the compounding effect of good and virtuous behaviour.

It is powerful enough in an individual life, but many times more so when compounded over generations or even hundreds of generations. Many of the tenets of that which Berel Solomon ascribes to Jewish business ethics are rephrasings of wisdom that his namesake King Solomon collected for posterity during his fabulously successful reign in the first century of the last millenium BC. Solomon’s main contributions to the ancient store of wisdom in the Old Testament were captured in the 31 Books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Songs of Solomon, and these foundational behavioural guidelines and the paradoxes contained in them have sustained men and women seeking actionable wisdom and a way to be for thousands of years (since 971 BC at any rate). Many of those tenets found their way into what the German social philosopher Max Weber described as The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism in the eponymous treatise and which in previous centuries the likes of Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers of the new republic formed into their own system of communal and individual ethics, neatly captured in the “doing good by doing well” referenced in Poor Richard’s Almanac. Our human culture in all its manifestations has evolved these tenets, fully understanding that an alignment of community and self is key to our happiness and general and individual prosperity. I am currently studying the writings of the Japanese monk Yoshida Kenkō and his 14th C. “Essays in Idleness” which I am sure will reveal similar ethical precepts for living a valuable, productive and peaceful life as are to be found in the texts referenced here.

In his 2020 book “The Joy of Compounding”, value-investor Gautam Baid spends most of his text underlining the necessity of building character and an inner value system as a prerequisite to business - or in his case - investing success.

“let your life be guided by internal principles, not external validation. Self-respect beats social approval. Every time. We are not perfect, nor should we pretend to be, but we should always endeavour to be the best versions of ourselves.”

~ The Joy of Compounding — Gautam Baid

He quotes Charlie Munger, a latterday Benjamin Franklin himself as saying

It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule so to speak. You want deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end. There is no ethos, in my opinion, that is better for any lawyer or any other person to have. By and large the people who have this ethos win in life, and they don’t win just money, not just honours. They win the respect, the deserved trust of the people they deal with, and there is huge pleasure in life to be obtained from getting deserved trust. [emphasis mine]”

~ Charlie Munger USC School of Law Commencement Address May 13. 2007

As we close the first week of the new year and ponder the personal and professional goals we have set, many of them I imagine quantitative in nature - more revenue, better margins, less weight, - we do well, I think to ensure that the qualitative aspects of our behaviour and our community building do not get short shrift in the planning process. The wonderful thing about behaviours and beliefs is that are immediately mutable. Beliefs, I heard from a valued advisor this week, are a choice. They may not be easy to change and resistance to so doing may be high (a function of synaptic strength through years of use), but the process of changing them is simple enough. Wherever you derive your “value system” - be it theological texts from past millennia, canons of schools of philosophy, such as the newly popularised Stoics, or from self-help books - it doesn’t really matter as long as they create a framework in which service, community, self-reliance and honesty flourish.

With the best of wishes for a prosperous and healthy New Year in 2023, I will leave you with the benediction I have published on the first Pitchfork Paper of the year from John O’Donoghue

For A New Beginning

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time, it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the grey promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

~ from Benedictus - JOHN O'DONOHUE