I questioned my leadership and wondered if the personal sacrifice was worth it.
That episode stayed with me. It made me wonder if the Bible has something else to teach me about entrepreneurship — things I had yet to learn. While pondering this, I saw Abraham, Moses, and David in a new light. Wasn't Abraham, a founder of our religion, and wasn't the story of his struggle like the story of any founder who was going from 0 to 1? And what about Moses? Wasn't he the master of the turnaround? It takes vision and character to take a people enslaved and create out of them a free nation. And David — a cautionary tale of a Wunderkind, who just can't patiently wait for his turn for the throne, but starts a civil war to gain power.
Once I saw the Torah in this light, I couldn't unsee it. I had an urge, a strong desire to see what the wisdom of my ancestors forged thousands of years ago could teach me about my vocation in the twenty-first century.
I told Zack Bodner about it and he gifted me Rabbi Sacks' Lessons in Leadership, which was an inspiration. Sacks framed his views of the Torah from the perspective of Leadership. I found this lens immensely productive and wanted to try on the entrepreneurship lens. Shortly after, I met Rabbi Joey of JSN. When I told him about my idea, he immediately volunteered to study with me and look at the stories of the patriarchs from this perspective.
We've been studying now for more than a year. These notes are a result of our ongoing hevruta conversations.
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Entrepreneurial Wisdom from the Torah
Non-FictionIn our current society, we've been taught to ask: what's in it for me? This is a question that is often asked of religion and religious texts, after which, without much thought or study, religion and its sacred texts are dismissed as irrelevant to m...
