Parashat Nasso

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

This weeks Torah portion is called Nasso which means “Elevate” and it’s the longest in the entire Torah, it’s dry, it’s technical, but all of a sudden in the middle there are these three very meaningful verses. In the middle of the portion, G-d says to Moses, “Here is how you should bless your children, and he says these three verses that we repeat in our prayers and we bless our children with these specific words, these three verses loosely translated are “G-d should bless you, and guard you, G-d should shine light on you and G-d should carry you and bless you with peace.”

Like I said we say these verses every single in our prayers, you don’t really pay attention to things that you say routinely, but then I tried to pay attention to those first words those verbs how they’re different. The first verse is to bless and guard. How do you bless someone? You put your hand on top of them and you bless them. Or you guard them, think of an umbrella that shields someone from the sun, it’s top down.

The second one we said is shining light, how do you shine a flashlight? Straight on, if you’re too far up you cant shine light on an object, you have to be straight on.

So what do we say, the blessing and guarding is from the top down. The shining light is straight on, and the third one should lift you up.

“The three blessings are actually not repetitive at all, it is three different types of protection and leadership”

Bottom… up, so while these three blessings seem somewhat repetitive, they are actually not, three different types of protection. Top down, the same level and bottom up. Three different types of leadership.

And while these three blessings might refer to how G-d loves and protects us, I think its actually a super important lesson for leaders and entrepreneurs on how to build a company, three different types of leadership.

The first type of leadership top down, you need to protect, you need to shield, to manage from the top as a leader as a CEO in order to build a successful company.

But as someone smart once said, “When I talk to a manager I feel like they’re important when I talk to a leader, I feel like I am important.” You need to not be condescending and be on the same level as your team at all times, but a good leader. A great leader doesn’t only know how to manage from the top down or even on the same level a great leader knows how to lift up, and inspire when things are a little down.

So the Torah tells us that there are three types of blessings top down, the same level and bottom up. Same thing goes for leadership you need to know as a good leader when to active which direction and lead.