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I am happy to announce the fourth book in my Hebrew Tree of Life and Prosperity series: Milk, Honey and Uncertainty.
Life is full of uncertainty. The markets are raining uncertainty. But decades of relative peace and years of benign interest rate environments have caused us to become complacent, unequipped for dealing with the unknown.
Most of humanity would prefer something known and safe, even if it is damaging, rather than having to confront an uncertain future and make decisions. Indexing has become a way of life, from investing to dating to time management. Professors and counselors preach balance.
Except life is neither balanced nor certain. In fact, meaning and opportunity live in the fog of the unknown.
Because we seek the known despite its painful flaws, our institutions have ossified. We are unwilling to understand that we need different leadership for a different time. We need different modes of decision-making to leverage uncertainty and find opportunities in a highly variable future. We must seek different models of bureaucracy, leaders who celebrate the success of the citizenry and are subsequently compensated for it, instead of blocking opportunity.
As parents, we need to raise uncoddled children, equipped to excel and innovate in uncertain times. Optimism, resilience and a bias for action are born in uncertain environments, and they serve children well in succeeding in uncertain times.
Traveling for 40 years in the desert taught the Israelites many of these lessons. Those few that made it through, such as Joshua and Caleb, had the ability to imagine a different future, an exponentially better one. The land of Israel is an uncertain place and breeds children with an ability to excel in uncertain environments. It is the sojourn through the desert that prepared us for that.
The fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Numbers, is more aptly called the book of the commanded — just as the Talmud refers to it. A people commanded for a mission of creating opportunity out of uncertainty, a mission to create leaders, a civil service, policies and human initiative that can drive success in uncertain times.
This book is a sojourn into the attitudes, initiatives, structures and leaders needed to win in uncertainty. I hope you will enjoy it.
Milk, Honey and Uncertainty is now available for purchase in Hebrew across bookstores in Israel and on the Sella Meir website. A 10% discount is available exclusively for the Aleph community via the discount code “HALAV.”