About Eran Gefen and what is “half an hour of inspiration”
“Half an hour of inspiration” is a podcast by Eran Gefen: conversations with CEOs from a variety of fields on management issues, innovation, growth trends, and more. Gefen is an innovation expert and the founder of G^Team, a strategic consulting company that helps companies develop new growth engines. He has experience Working with leading companies in Israel and the world, including Coca Cola, Walt, Microsoft Strauss and Kimberly Clark.A previous company he founded was acquired by WIX.
Eran Gefen, CEO of G^Team, a strategic consulting company, in conversation with Rabbi Yitzhak David Grossman
He is a rabbi and winner of the Israel Prize, who invests his life in helping thousands of boys and girls who come from difficult backgrounds. But Yitzhak David Grossman’s story is also a story about the entrepreneurship of a gigantic enterprise, which can certainly be compared to a company with a budget of hundreds of millions, but also to learn from him about seeing and doing good.
“There is only one sentence we say every morning, that we are commanded to engage in Torah matters. To engage. The Sages also understood this. What is a business? Business is, first of all, initiative, consistency, ideas, dedication.”
How do you understand business?
“It is in my life. A person is as active in his business as he is in holy work. The outlook and looking to the future is for success. Sages say, ‘What a wise man sees the unborn.’ That’s what happened to me.”
Grossman was born in Jerusalem, sixth generation in the capital, and grew up in the Mea Shearim neighborhood. “Until 1967, it was impossible to reach the Western Wall, because it was in the hands of the Jordanians. The Six Day War opened up the Old City. Before the war, everyone thought that the country was finished. Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon – they all attacked us. Anyone who had a passport fled Here, after six days, not only have we defeated everyone, but we are at the Western Wall. I said to myself: If you receive a gift like this, even if it is not personal, you have to give something back, say thank you. How? You have to sacrifice yourself. For what? To speak that you are I believe that the most important thing is to save the children of Israel.
“Migdal Ha’Emek was a difficult place then. I read in the newspapers that the city hall was burned, people were murdered, that there were no jobs. There were problems with the youth there. I told myself I would go and volunteer for a year. I came there, naive from Mea Shearim. I got off the bus and asked someone: Sir, where is the yeshiva here? He looked at me as if I had fallen from the moon, and said: There is no yeshiva here. So where are the youth? At the discotheque. I have never heard a discotheque in my life. I thought it was a yeshiva called a discotheque, so I went and saw it.”
Did you like it?
“I not only liked it, I joined them every night. They were shocked. A Jew like me with a beard and wigs, they were sure that someone had passed away and I was looking for Kaddish for the minyan. I told them: I came to live with you, you are my brothers. At that moment there was a click between me and them. The house Mine became a discotheque. There was a film about me in 1970 called ‘The Most Discotheques’. From the discotheques I ended up in prisons.”
What happened?
“One of the guys said that his brother was in prison. I said: Your brother is my brother, let’s go visit him. I arrived at Shata Prison, a hard prison on the way to Beit Shan. I was frightened by what I saw there. I went to the prison director, I told him: Listen, I want twice next week to study with the prisoners chapters of ancestors, beautiful stories. I am not asking for money.
“I started coming twice a week near the prison, and little by little the study turned into a rehabilitation program for these prisoners, who connected with me and began to behave accordingly. I asked for a special wing. These are people who, unfortunately, ended up there, who are mostly good souls, but what, there was no one to take care of them. I wanted to do something for the benefit of the country, to establish a warm home for these children, where they will receive kisses and love.”
“I said to God: You pay”
In 1972, Grossman turned the idea into an institution called Migdal Or. Today it provides educational frameworks for thousands of children and teenagers in the region. “We started with 18 children, today we have more than 25,000 graduates. 900 people work for us and 80% of them grew up with us. With the help of God, we established an educational empire, and this is saving lives every day.”
Did you imagine that’s where it would go?
“No, but what? I believed that if I invested little by little, I would succeed big time. I’ll tell you a curiosity. My father was one of Israel’s greats, he was a dayan, head of a Yeshiva, very well known. In 1972 I laid a cornerstone for institutions. The moderator invited my father to bless, but he didn’t want to come. Father told me: I don’t bless for fantasies. He saw it as a fantasy. He was a true man. He said: If it is built at the dedication of the house, I will bless. You ask what I thought about the future? Father did not believe, I believed.”
Today you have almost 8,000 trainees. How much does it cost to run it per year?
“100 million shekels. We receive 70% from the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Welfare.”
That means another NIS 30 million a year on your shoulders.
“This is apart from the construction of the institutions. We built hundreds of millions, I’m not exaggerating.”
How are you not afraid of the size of the responsibility? People who have one family to support don’t sleep at night.
“I can’t explain how it happens. The reality is that we have been in institutions for 50 years and we have not been one day late in our salaries. I have nothing else, this is my whole life, and I see miracles and wonders.
“A month before I received the Israel Prize, I signed a contract to build Kiryat Habanam (a therapeutic youth village for girls in Migdal Ha’Emek). The first two buildings cost about 6 million dollars, there was barely half a million in the cash register. I signed and said: I sign and you, God bless you, will pay Everyone laughed, including the contractor.
“Two days after the Israel Prize I flew abroad. When I boarded they told me they wanted to upgrade me to first class. I entered and a couple of Americans came up after me. I approached them and told them that I accompany children. I asked if they would like to see a video of the school, what he could do. He and his wife look, then I took it back. When I got up I accidentally pressed the button that reclines the chair all the way. He was scared, I said sorry and gave him a kiss on the forehead.
“After a few minutes he got up with his wife and said toJ: I set aside a fund with a lot of money to help the children you deal with. I am a friend of Bibi’s and I am a friend of Bielski (Zev – AG), who was then the head of the agency and later the mayor of Ra’anana. I was offered all kinds of proposals and they did not appeal to me. I made a sign with the name, if someone comes who messes with these children, And he’ll give me a kiss on the forehead, that’s the man I have to give the money to.”
How did you learn to harness people?
“Our sages say, ‘As water faces the face, so does the heart of man to man.’ In you. I love every human being, with me there is no religious, no secular, no Sephardic, no Ashkenazi.”
Even if there is a normal conversation, will he feel this way?
“Yes, because I transmit in my brain that this man is much better than me and now I want to connect with him. It is written ‘the things that come out of the heart enter the heart’. This is reality. I can meet with the most problematic people, criminals we will call it, when I talk to them suddenly becomes to be their friend.”
Also what you said about the prison, that you saw the good souls. These are people who did terrible things.
“Everyone has a good soul. I have yet to find a person who does not have good in them.”
How do you avoid being judgmental?
“It is written in Hasidism, ‘The mind rules over the heart.’ in thought’.
“We are dealing with difficult children, who can now get up and walk. What keeps them with us? The same thing. The feeling that they are loved, that they are wanted, that they have hope.
“The same thing with business people. If they want to succeed, one of the main things they need is harmony between the employees, for there to be joy in the office. They need to make their employees feel good, not as a boss, but as a friend. Whoever feels that, will do everything for them. He will work In a few more hours, he will activate his brain. Whoever is only a boss, the employee will not make an effort for him. This is part of life, part of success in business.”
You meet people from both ends – those who came from nothing, from hardship – versus those who have everything, the donors. Who is happier, who is better off in life?
“The truth is a question that they are no longer happy with.”
those who do not have
“Those who have – they have the reality of money, but happiness in life, joy in doing, joy in work – they don’t have it. They always think why ‘the other has more? He has a yacht, he has a private plane. He didn’t work for it – and he got it.”
Eran Gefen / Photo: Menachem Reiss
The dream: to establish a fund that will finance
Grossman Ototo is 76 years old, and I wonder with him how the huge body he founded will exist after his days, and how he sleeps at night with the weight of responsibility. “A very difficult and serious question. We have really built an educational empire. The institutions are divided into 18 departments. There are many good people who help us, but I don’t know how to tell you that there is anyone who takes responsibility. The truth is that my dream is to establish a very, very serious foundation which, with God’s help, will bear fruit They will hold the institution.”
They recently established “Zoharim”, a youth village in the south, in Migdal Or, which is intended for ultra-orthodox youth who drop out. “Mature guys, who came from ultra-Orthodox homes, and left, dropped out, wandered the streets for a few years.
“At the same time, in the last three years, I traveled around the world for months and we raised eight million dollars. With them we built 20 apartments, each of which is intended for 12 orphaned children. Now they have a mother and father, who receive a salary to take care of these children. You must come and see it, there is no Such a thing in the world.”
Do they become religious?
“No, every child can choose which path he wants. The main thing is that he be a human being and behave with respect and start a glorious family.”
I will tell you what I learned from you. First of all, look with a good eye and with love on every human being. It is part of your gift that allows you to succeed. It is important to remember to calm the criticizing eye, all the more so in management and business. The second thing is the ability to set a very big vision and then make it happen, even if the path is not entirely clear. Maybe it’s easier for you because you have the faith.
“With the power of faith and dedication you can achieve everything. But you need to know that it won’t be easy, not to give up. Rabbi Nachman of Breslav said: Just as you believe that you can spoil, so believe that you can fix. Don’t give up, again and again and again. And the main point we talked about Alia: To build a harmony of friendship, of love around you, I see it in our institutions. 900 employees feel that I am a friend, a brother, a father, a friend, they are ready to do anything. The same in business, if you make people love you, they will do anything for you , and that is the secret of success.”
Rabbi Yitzhak David Grossman
personal: 76 years old, married + 5 children, 30 grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren, lives in Migdal Hamek
professional: Founder of the network of educational institutions “Migdal Or”
Something else: Appointed Rabbi of Migdal Hamek at the age of 24, the youngest appointment of a rabbi
Eran Gefen is the founder G^Team, A strategic consulting company that helps companies develop new growth engines. He has experience working with CEOs and management of the leading companies in Israel and the world, including Coca Cola, Walt, Microsoft, Strauss and Kimberly Clark. A previous company he founded was purchased by WIX. Geffen runs the podcast “Half an hour of inspiration” and the author of the book “Creating growth – This is how business creativity is turned into a work plan“.