Yesterday I lay the groundwork for what I am tentatively calling the WST—Writing a Sefer Torah—phenomenon. Widely understood, this refers to the cultural and economic renaissance developing in Israel (and in some ways in the diaspora) informed by the Torah. It is a wide interpretation of the text’s last mitzvah. By “writing commentaries” on the Torah—in other words, creatively manifesting its principles—we sustain our tradition, enriching our lives and the text itself.
In this essay, I want to start with the economy. A word of warning — these ideas aren’t fully formed (hence the name of this newsletter and its role as a sandbox of experimentation). I am trying to connect the dots.
For the past few years, Israeli business headlines have come to be dominated by two things: capital raises and public offerings. 2021 shattered records, with more than $25 billion in startup funding and 33 companies entering the so-called Unicorn Club of private businesses valued at more than $1 billion.
You know the story. All of Israel does, and the world. The high-tech economy is Israel’s coveted, and its 8.7% of Israeli employees benefit hugely both in income terms and status. Thanks to Dan Senor and Saul Singer, “Startup Nation” has become a global sensation. “How many people get to brand a country?” often quips my boss, Michael Eisenberg. From Waze to Mobileye, Riskified to Taboola, the high-tech scene now pays an outsized 24% of the country’s taxes, ushering unprecedented wealth and Teslas into a country once overrun by malaria-infested swamps and barren hills.
To any rational observer, this is nothing short of a miracle. But as spectacular as the capital raising is (and against all odds, in a land surrounded by enemies, yes), it is no longer the most interesting thing about what’s happening in Tel Aviv’s tech scene, and it is no longer just banal software products or cherry tomatoes that constitute Israel greatest contributions today to the world. Simply said—there are an increasing number of Israeli companies embedding Jewish principles into the core of their business models, thus creating tremendous social and economic value in very tangible ways.
Take riseup for instance. At first glance, the company is a standard fintech startup, a daily cash-flow management tool on Whatsapp. But peeling back the layers reveals a different kind of business—one where the company wins when the customer wins. By unifying customers’ entire financial state into one number called “remaining discretionary spending available,” the company enables financial control and resilience. With knowledge comes power. When more people save more money, the company succeeds. The business is aligned. It is unabashedly supportive, not exploitive. In a world where financial legacies profit most when we fail to pay our credit card bills on time, this is a huge deal. Companies that partner with citizens to build wealth, rather than suck their consumers dry, are the future, the future of capitalism, I would argue. And it’s coming from Tel Aviv.
More on that tomorrow.