The Genius of Israel
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How has a small nation of 9 million people, forced to fight for its existence and security since its founding and riven by ethnic, religious, and economic divides, proven resistant to so many of the societal ills plaguing other wealthy democracies?
Why do Israelis have among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse? Why is Israel’s population young and growing while all other wealthy democracies are aging and shrinking? How can it be that Israel, according to a United Nations ranking, is the fourth happiest nation in the world? Why do Israelis tend to look to the future with determination and purpose while the rest of the West struggles with an epidemic of loneliness, teen depression, and social decline?
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, the writers behind the international bestseller Start-Up Nation, have long been students of the global innovation race. But as they spent time with Israel’s entrepreneurs and political leaders, soldiers and students, scientists and anti-government activists, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Tel Aviv techies, and Israeli Arabs, they realized that they had missed what really sets Israel apart.
Moving from military commanders integrating at-risk youth and people who are neurodiverse into national service, to high-performing companies making space for working parents, from dreamers and innovators launching a duct-taped spacecraft to the moon, to bringing better health and climate solutions to people around the world, The Genius of Israel tells the story of a diverse society built around the values of service, civic engagement, and belonging.
Widely admired for having the world’s highest density of high-tech start-ups, Israel’s greatest innovation may not be a technology at all, but Israeli society itself. Understanding how a country facing so many challenges can be among the happiest provides surprising insights into how we can confront the crisis of community, human connectedness, and purpose in modern life.
Bold, timely, and insightful, Senor and Singer’s latest work shines an important light on the impressive resilience of Israeli society in the face of external and internal challenges—and what other countries can learn.
Reviews
“How has the tiny country of Israel, beset by external foes and internal strife, stayed so resilient? This book offers big ideas for how all of us, not just Israelis, can tackle the central challenges of our times.”
-Walter Isaacson
“A thought-provoking study that non-Israelis will find particularly fascinating.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“[The book] offers important insights into a nation that has punched far above its weight even as it now grapples with existential crises both external and internal...[T]he country may be facing a reckoning because of deep societal divisions and its precarious place in the Middle East, but paradoxically, Israel arrived here as one of the world’s most successful societies, with a thrumming energy. And that may prove its salvation…”
-The New York Times
“[T]he authors point to a cluster of qualities that explain the genius they see in Israel’s temperament and in the ‘reservoir of social solidarity that it can draw upon.’ Their anecdote-driven reportage sheds light on a larger question: How is a country so incurably divided also a country so resolutely united?”
-The Wall Street Journal
“The authors acknowledge the very real differences among Israeli population sectors: religious and secular, Jewish and Arab, rich and poor. Yet they present a compelling case that Israeli society succeeds where other wealthy, Western democracies flounder.”
-Jewish Journal