Parashat Ki Tavoh

This a past #Snapchatorah where Hillel Fuld takes the Torah portion, learns some lessons and apply them to entrepreneurship and startups.

“Ki Tavoh” What happens after you arrive in the land.

The name of this weeks Torah portion “Ki Tavoh” which literally means when you come, as in when you come to the land of Israel. and talks all about building a society, but I want to focus on three words

We know the Torah doesn’t use a single word unless it can teach us a lesson.

The portion talks about agriculture it talks about day to day life, then all of a sudden there are these three words “Vesemacta Bechol Hatov” Rejoice all the good. The obvious question, I should rejoice the good? What else would I rejoice, and besides why do we need Hashem to tell us to rejoice over good? The answer is the emphasis is not on the word Tov-good but rather the word before it, Kol-all. Rejoice all the good even sometimes when it doesn’t appear to be good.

I recently read a book called “The Gift of Stuttering” written by a friend Moe Mernick. In the book, there were many extraordinary stories, but there was one that really stood out. The story goes a couple was walking on the sidewalk one day with there toddler daughter, and the daughter took a sharp left turn and ran toward the street with oncoming traffic coming toward hers.
You could see the state of shock on the parent’s faces, and as the little girl was approaching oncoming traffic, she tripped and fell and began to cry. As the parent realized what had just transpired, they picked her up and expressed gratitude that she fell.

The daughter thought “Don’t you love me? Can’t you tell that I got hurt? Why are you rejoicing?”

The daughter looked at them confused. The daughter thought this is the worst thing that ever happened to me. I fell scraped my knee, and I got hurt, and I’m crying, and my parents here are expressing gratitude, why? Don’t they love me? All things happen for a reason, the little girl wasn’t able to see that. The parents, on the other hand, had that broader perspective and were grateful for the good. Sometimes in life, you are the little girl, and you scrape your knee, and you think its the worst thing in the world, but in reality, it’s actually your biggest gift. As entrepreneurs, we need to fall, we need to fail, its part of the package. The critical thing is to get up and learn from those mistakes. Onward and upward.

And of course, it applies to all aspects of startups. The product bugs, failed marketing campaigns, no traction, the critical thing is to turn failure into opportunity.

The Torah teaches us “Vesamachta Bechol Hatov,” “Rejoice all the good.” Not just the apparent good, but even things that on the surface don’t appear to be good. It’s all about perspective in life, and in startups. It’s all about what we learn and how you leverage your failures
This weeks Torah portion teaches up so many valuable lessons, but these three words teach the importance of gratitude and perspective, two things that can help sperate between the winners and losers.

ℵ

Hillel is a Co-Founder at ZCastApp, mentor at Google, Microsoft, and many other accelerators across Israel. Add Hillel on Twitter