Is Israeli Chutzpah Exportable?

Jews around the world celebrate the spring holiday of Lag ba’Omer with bonfires, barbeques, and music. In the Jewish state, bonfire-building assumes a unique form: children are given permission to trespass on construction sites and scavenge among the debris for combustible wood and other scrap materials—activities that middle-class American parents would likely regard as grossly hazardous and a sure sign of parental irresponsibility.

Quite the contrary, argues the Israeli author Inbal Arieli in a new book: such creativity and independence in childhood have contributed significantly to the Jewish state’s success as an innovative powerhouse.

By now, studies of Israel’s stunning emergence as a hub of high-tech initiative—Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s Start-Up Nation (2009) being possibly the first such study and still the best known—are fairly common. And Israel is indeed home to the highest density of start-ups in the world, with more companies listed on the Nasdaq exchange than anywhere else but the United States. Senor and Singer offer detailed cultural reasons for that success, from the influence of an education infused with Jewish values to the habits of cooperation-plus-improvisation inculcated by almost universal service in the IDF.