Entrepreneurship Nature Vs. Nurture
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Can entrepreneurs be made? Vivek Wadhwa, an entrepreneur who turned academic, has just written a piece on TechCrunch that proves that indeed entrepreneurship can be taught.
Washwa's team surveyed 549 successful entrepreneurs and found that the majority didn’t have entrepreneurial parents or even have entrepreneurial aspirations while going to school.
So why did they become entrepreneurs? They took this big leap because "they were tired of working for others, had a great idea they wanted to commercialize, or woke up one day with an urgent desire to build wealth before they retired."
Transition into the Jewish Professional World
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A few weeks ago I asked Aharon to give me a "crash course" on the Jewish world. Said in jest, he and I laughed - but as a new Jewish professional, I was kind of serious.
I am Jewish. I am a professional. But I am a novice in regards to the major organizations, Jewish philanthropists, and notable players in the Jewish market place that I am expected to know in this new role. Coming from a professional path where there was clear separation of religion and work - the only way I was marked as "Jewish" was by my time sheet - I have thought a lot about what it means to merge these two identities. And joining the PresenTense staff has given me a new appreciation and greater understanding of what it means to dedicate your working-hours to the Jewish people.
The Jewish People's Hospitality Stream
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What does membership in the "Jewish Community" mean in the practical sense?
Happy Purim!
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By Hila Lipnick
I have been doing some thinking about the Purim story and the roots of anti-Semitism. In the megillah Haman famously says to King Ahashverosh:
Building Teams with your staff, volunteers, and other affiliates
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PT10: The Digital Issue is LIVE on Google Wave!
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PT10: The Digital Issue is now live on Google Wave!
Be a part of digital history and "Wave" into the conversation (and if you don't have Wave, let us know in the comments so we can get you an invite to participate!).
Google Wave in Review
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An all-volunteer magazine put together by a geographically diverse, online community of young adults 22-40, PresenTense Magazine has always been a collaborative enterprise. As such, we’ve made ample use of many Google products, storing and sharing articles in Docs, communicating in Chat, and organizing and tracking article progress in Sites. Yet the lack of integration has made using all these tools in concert a challenge, and we are always interested in exploring better ways to perform these tasks.
For our tenth issue, PresenTense Magazine launched the Digital Issue – the first-ever print magazine to be published entirely in Google's new tool for collaboration, Google Wave. The platform allowed us to pioneer new horizons for journalism by seeking to address a key challenge for journalists today: how to collaborate in a digital age.
Talking about a generation
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When the people came to the prophet Shmuel and begged him for a king, he thought they were crazy. “A King you want? But he’ll ruin your lives,” he told them, and insisted that the system of Judges that the people lived under for centuries was better suited for their lives. The judges gave them freedom. Unlike a king, who ruled them all, Judges would only arise when external threat created a need. The rest of the time the people would live in their tribes, each to their own, handling their internal affairs and going about their daily lives. No taxation for projects far from their own, and beyond the upkeep of the tribe of Levi who did not have land of their own but instead served as priests among the People, they kept what they grew and the flocks they tended. But we want a king, like all the other nations, they demanded. And Shmuel, unable to hold back their interest any longer, gave in. A king they wanted, a king they’d have.
In the course of human history, our societies change in accordance with the opportunity horizon afforded to them. Mainly, our purpose is to protect those close to us, and provide for them as much as possible the creature comforts in life. As the range of possibilities for such comforts increases, our trade routes expand. As our trade routes expand, we need to secure the merchants who bring us our comforts from across the world. And as our need to secure our trade grows, so too grows the reach of our government. As Robert Wright shows in Nonzero, societies and their governments are limited by the communication and commerce technologies afforded to them. Genghis Khan, whose empire stretched half way across the world, developed the passport in order to provide some sense of coordination between his provinces, developed a rapid communication system consisting of men ready on fast horses, and appointed family members who ruled rather autonomously because passing orders across the empire was a month by month affair. The Inca Empire stretched almost as long, and set up a series of base stations and roads across it so runners could pass messages one to the other in a country-wide relay race as power was extended. In the fifteenth century, as ships came unto their own, the local kingdoms of Europe became vast empires, projecting strength as far as they could transport troops and commands to those troops.
Click below to read more
How Israel Became Passé
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I looked sheepishly at the speaker who dragged out to Waltham to speak to our Israel advocacy group. We felt rather awkward when only six people showed up to the training session, the latest in a series of pro-Israel educational events on campus. Five of the six people were on my club’s board.
In my freshman year of college, I became president of an Israel advocacy club. I was excited to lead a group of people in a cause that I believed in. I learned quickly how to plan events, and advertise them so hundreds of people would show up. But I also learned quickly that our club was not really serving our campus community, or the Jewish people, or Israel. We were just a bunch of tools for large Jewish organizations that wanted to push their ideas on our campus.
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