How to do Business: The way of Abraham

From Abraham we learn the act of generosity. He showed to humanity the concept of being generous and kind to people. One of the things we know about him is that he had his place open all the time and people used to come to him asking him for hospitality; they wanted a warm bed to sleep in, fresh water to drink and food to satiate their empty stomachs. And Abraham would never say no to anyone. But right at the end, before they would leave, he told them they had to either pay or give gratitude to God for everything bestowed upon them. Obviously most people decided to give gratitude to God. This was Abraham’s way of teaching and educating.

In the Torah, we see how genuinely he cared about people — even to the people of Sodom, who were known for wickedness. To these people, he even asked God to be merciful, hoping some righteousness could be found in them. This again reveals Abraham’s generosity.

The question is now, what does Abraham’s generosity have to do with our everyday life? The importance of truly caring about people. The first thing he did was shelter them, give them food, water, a bed to sleep and then after, asked them to do the blessing. Why that way? Shouldn’t it be the other way around? In today’s society, if you want to go to a nice hotel for example, easy. First swipe your credit card and a clerk will start smiling at you and say, “Welcome to our beautiful hotel. Now we’ll take care of you.”

Similarly, if we really wanted people to bless God, wouldn’t it be easier to simply make them do it while people are starving, in dire need of water and a bed? Desperation can come a long way in making people do things.

Abraham teaches us that this is the wrong way to proceed. We have to genuinely care about other individuals so that they can care about us. Abraham and Sarah really took interest in the people that were staying with them. They even personally cooked for them, brought them water, and made sure they had a warm bed to sleep.

Once you take care of a person’s physical needs, that’s when you really get them interested in what you have to say. They know you care about them and you’re simply not trying to make them buy something for your own sake — they know you are doing it for their sake. Showing this quality of true generosity, Abraham started a big following, changed the world and made people really listen to his idea of praying to one God. People understood Abraham was genuinely doing it for their own good. That is why we see the belief of one God spreading with him and not with any of the earlier predecessors.

The concept of generosity unfortunately, is not something commonly practiced in today’s business. We see companies spending millions of millions to make people feel unsatisfied and unhappy with their lives. To make them feel as if they are missing something in order to convince them to buy new goods or services. Marketing these days uses concepts to create this state of mind: “Hey! You shouldn’t be happy. You don’t have this and you don’t have that.”

Abraham teaches us that a true sense of care for individuals is more important. It is the key to success. By doing it, you will be able to deliver your point a lot more effectively and people will truly listen to you. They know that what you tell them comes from a place of true care and concern. And that is very important: to succeed in life and business show true care and compassion. When you genuinely do that, people will buy your idea and you might even change the world in the process.

Doing the Impossible Possible

Written by: Rabbi Shmulik Yeshayahu and Eitan Olevsky

In the Torah portion of Lech Lecha, G-d took Abraham outside, and said to him, "Please look heavenward and count the stars, if you are able to count them." And He said to him, "So will be your children."

This portion of the Torah is very symbolic. When G-d takes Abraham outside, what He is really doing is taking man out of himself. As humans, we tend to live in a world where we create our own box for ourselves— and what’s worse, we trap ourselves there, within the confines of society, culture, ideas and presuppositions. That is why we must go “outside”, to be able to think out of the limits of our own box.

G-d then tells Abraham to count the stars, something utterly impossible. Nevertheless, Abraham had the faith, and in doing so, started to count one by one all the stars he could see with his limited eyes. The story goes, that when G-d saw Abraham’s attempt, He promised him that all his children and the generations to follow would be like the stars. Yet, if we analyze how many Jewish people there are around the world, we'll notice there are only a few of us. So what happened? Comparing the coming generations with the stars, was apparently not meant to be understood quantitatively, but more so qualitatively. That is to say, if we believe the impossible to be possible, we can excel in whatever we propose ourselves to do.

So this simple sentence in the Lech Lecha summarizes the secret of our nation: not only are we capable of getting out of the box, but in doing so and with faith, we can also achieve the impossible. That is why Abraham did not doubt when he was told to count the stars. In fact, Abraham embodies the idea of surpassing nature— going beyond it. And that is part of the essence of the Jewish people; being capable of doing the impossible for we don’t feel restrained by the laws of nature. Reason why we have survived in a world where in theory, we shouldn’t have.

This amazing video serves as an example of the impossible taking place. Survival at its best.