Israel 61

Start-ups come in all shapes and sizes. Most are for profit companies trying to make a living while others are non-profit start-ups trying to make the world a better place.

Then there is something just a wee bit larger and probably more difficult and that is starting up an actual country or state. That is no easy task for anyone.

I just watched a powerful DVD put out by Rabbi Berel Wein’s Jewish Destiny organization as part of their Faith & Fate series. This one was called “The Miracle of Israel” focusing on the years 1945-1948.

It just under two hours this amazing presentation showed the Jewish People from right after the Holocaust to the founding of the State of Israel. They did a remarkable job of showing how much the odds were against the State to even get started and once they did get started to even survive their first year of existence. The world and the odds were against them from the beginning.

Imagine enduring the holocaust and then having no where else to go. No one wants you and the British will only let 1500 Jews a month get into “Palestine”. Then the world finally feels guilty enough to allow the Jews to have their own home land and for the first time in almost 2000 years the Jews finally come home. They are week and exhausted and the land was not exactly the metroplois that it is today to say the least. Yet the Start-up Founders of the State of Israel relaised that they had no place else to go and so had no choice but to succeed.

61 years later we can look back at this start-up with tremendous pride. There are books written and the amazing success in almost every area of Israeli life and this post is not about all the achievements that are well known and documneted elsewhere. But since this is a magazine about being an entrepreneur in Israel, we should look at the two biggest factors that made Israel such a success; and if you can apply these two things to your start-up then for sure you will succeed.

1. Backs against the wall – as mentioned above there was no where else to go and their lives were literraly on the line. Is that how you feel about your start-up?

2. A Promise from G-D and daily miracles – This is probably the best way to success, if you can get the Creator of the world to promise you that you will succeed and if G-D will perform the crazy amount of miracles that has been shown to Israel every day since it’s inception, then you too will succeed with your start-up.

Happy Birthday Israel, lets hope we can finally get out of beta.