If this were not true it would be a great joke. The author is using the widespread belief that Jews are rich, good at business, and smart to sell them a book about how we are rich, good at business, and smart. LOL. Ok, but really, I hope that there is some Torah in there – maybe the author will send us a copy to review? Maybe Larry read this book?
Levi Brackman & Sam Jaffe, authors of Jewish Wisdom for Business Success: Wisdom for the Torah and Other Ancient Texts (AMACOM/American Management Association (AMA) 2008), maintain the reason Jew are disproportionately successful and good at business is because of lessons, wisdom and teachings that come from the Bible/Torah/Five Books of Moses/Old Testament/Hebrew Bible that they learn from a young age and then apply to business.
Larry
10/5/2008
HAHAHHA … i am aware of the book and it is on MyJewishBooks.com and our business editor, CHaim Hilton, assumed to be the baal tshuva Jewish cousin of Paris, .. is reviewing it, but i am loathe of thesetyoes of books… ok ok… not loathe, just jealous, since I have been working on a similar book for a decade, called Moses on Management, which gleans business mgt concepts from each week’s parsha
Sam Jaffe
10/5/2008
As co-author of the book, let me respond to your accusation. We’re not trying to trade on the reputation of Jews being good with money to “sell books”. We’re trying to open up the debate. As the husband of a fine Jewish girl from Seoul, I noticed how her family and friends would discuss the economic success of Korean-Americans with a mixture of pride and scrutiny. But they weren’t scared of raising the subject. Why can’t we Jews be the same way? The answer is obvious–anti-semitism. But dead wrong, in my opinion. By not talking about Jews and money, we Jews are leaving the discussion to the lunatic fringe. Let’s embrace it and celebrate it and analyze it, not be so scared of our own shadows that we can’t mention it. So Levi Brackman and I put forth a book that suggests our hypothesis on the subject: that the success Jews have had in business in the last century is a direct result of the Torah and its teachings. Just like it tells us how to make love to our wives, how to free our slaves and how to handle toilet paper, it talks about that activity that takes up 75% of our waking hours: making money. Many Jews who have left the religion (or at least the Yeshivah) still absorbed these lessons through osmosis. That’s our view. What’s yours? The only answer that’s wrong is “Let’s not talk about it, the goyim might be listening.”
themiddle
10/5/2008
I’m curious about the book. I mean, what the heck does torah study have to do with business? I can see how intense gemara study might help in law, but torah and business? Nah.
Joanne
10/8/2008
This book is pandering to a stereotype. Have they no shame!
Actually, the video raises some questions:
1. How many people interviewed disagreed with the premise? These people were presumably left out of the video.
2. Why did they interview people who were mostly from areas of the Midwest (or from Ireland!) where Jews are rare? The only exception was the professor from Chicago. If I remember correctly, the narrator in the video mentioned that he went all over the country, but there were only interviews from Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Chicago area. If he had interviewed people who had much more direct experience of Jews (NYC or LA), would he have gotten the same answers? Why limit interviews to people who knew the least, and so were more dependent on hearsay and stereotypes?
3. If Jewish success in business were due to the wisdom of the Torah, then religious Jews would be much better in business than secular or atheistic Jews–and there are many of them–who have little or no Jewish religious training or culture. Has a study been done to gauge this?