I have seen too many people stop learning and start working in jobs that are, for me, completely disrespectful to all human beings. You have to remain a ben Torah when you are a ba’al habayit.
Given the enormous social polarization in Israel between religious and secular, and considering that hi-tech innovation is generally the province of the secular camp where there is little overlap with the haredi world, how does your religious identity affect your interactions when dealing with secular Israelis?
Everyone knows they can’t invite me for an outing on Shabbat. They know that while we are brothers, we live in two different worlds. I have no problem working with anyone. Many secular people speak with me about their faith without my initiating such a conversation. I never try to convince someone to become more religious. I just try to be a good example of a person with faith. I have a very good reputation in this market, and ultimately your reputation is what really matters.
I’m French, I’m haredi, I learn Talmud, and I’m a businessman investing in a lot of companies. In the end, I’m part of every world by taking the best part of each one.
Do you think that if you weren’t the one handing out the money but rather looking for funding yourself, your experience in the Israel hi-tech world would be very different; that your yarmulke would serve as a glass ceiling?
Not at all. When I came to Israel, I was a French haredi with outstanding experience and distinguished accomplishments. By then, I had already sold a company and funded another. One short year later, I received many term sheets from the biggest Israeli funds. Google wanted to hire me, along with offering to buy my company, and I would have managed the biggest projects for Google Haifa. The thing haredim are mostly missing in this industry is just experience, expertise. I’m an expert. I can do what I want and still remain haredi, just like when I was a Jewish guy in France who didn’t eat in any non-kosher restaurants. It’s part of the Jewish spirit to be a little different but still do great things with everyone.
At a recent conference in Israel on haredim in hi-tech, the statement was made that “Inclusion of haredim in the Israeli hi-tech industry represents the number one economic opportunity for Israel in the next ten years.” But salaries paid to haredim on the computer programming side of hi-tech, are, on average, half of those paid to secular Israelis. So would haredim be better off on the funding/business management side?
I follow this subject very closely and am involved with a lot of initiatives – KamaTech is one of the best – to help Israeli haredim be accepted in the hi-tech industry. It’s not easy. People are afraid of haredim, and many Israelis hate us more than they hate the Arabs. So we are talking, organizing and attending conferences, and at the end explaining how smart we are and how much more efficient we will be – not spending our days on Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. We just need a few years to prove it and show how it’s true.
Yes, the salary discrepancy is completely crazy, but my advice is to take any good job even if you are paid at a lesser rate if you know it will give you great experience and allow you to develop skills and expertise. After that, you will be able to request a greater salary from someone else once you’re confident that you are an awesome developer.
