How Systems and Customs in Israel Create Unity with Dan Senor

[1:40]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zibbymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. It was such a thrill for me to interview Dan Senor at the Totally Booked live event at the Witchy last month. I had seen him before, which I think we talk about in the episode at the unpacked event that they did at the 92nd Street Y. And I was just so impressed with him and, of course, watch him on social and see all the great things that he does. So it was a true honor to interview him. Plus, I just learned so much from his book, The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent Time. It is so important to read. It's not just it's not like a history of Israel. It's more how a country and or a company even can create a culture in which community and collaboration thrive. And it's just completely fascinating. Dan is in addition to being coauthor of that book, he's coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Start Up Nation, the story of Israel's economic miracle, which has been translated into 30 languages. He was a senior adviser to former speaker Paul Ryan's campaign for vice president, foreign policy adviser to senator Mitt Romney's presidential campaigns, a former defense department official. Dan was actually based in Iraq and at US Central Command in Qatar in 2003 and 2004 as chief spokesperson for The US led coalition. He has written for the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and many others, and he may be most known for being the host of the podcast Call Me Back. He appears frequently on CNN's Farid Zakaria GPS, CNBC's Squawk Box, and CBS Mornings. Dan was educated at the University of Western Ontario, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and Harvard Business School. He's currently a partner at an investment management firm. He lives in New York City with his wife and two sons. I really hope you enjoy our conversation. Welcome to Totally Booked Live. I'm so excited to be here with Dan Senor today, the author of The Genius of Israel, The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a turbulent world. Welcome. Great to be with you. Thank you. I'm a little, you know, you're such a big deal podcaster yourself,

[4:30]Dan Senor: you know. You know what I've learned about podcasting? It's just having a conversation. I know. It's just, that's what's great about it. It's having an intimate conversation and you forget that there's a room full of people or a big audience of people out there. When I'm doing podcasts, I forget that that's the case, so I get lost in my conversations and then people stop me in airports and reference a conversation. Think that was just a conversation I was having with Zibby. I didn't realize I was having that conversation with like All of you listening Here to we are at Gate 7 C at Newark Airport. We're making everybody professional eavesdroppers. Right. Exactly. This whole medium, that's what's happened.

[5:07]Zibby Owens: Well, I was telling everybody here before you got here how much I loved your book. Thank you. Not that I didn't think I would love it, but I did think it would be more of like a history type non fiction y voice book, but actually, it felt much more to me like a social science book with so many vignettes and everything told from a personal story perspective, which, of course, jives with the importance of story in Israel. Tell

[5:30]Dan Senor: everybody about the book, how you wrote it in this very accessible way, and why you wrote it. Yeah. We wrote the book, so so I think it's important just to set up the timing of it because the timing of is as as both is is actually coincidental but relevant. So the book was released, was published on 11/07/2023. So month our pub date was 11/07/2023. And as you know from your own writing and your own immersion in the book world, the lead time in terms of when you have to submit a manuscript to the publisher and when the book is actually released, or is published, is months and months and months in advance. Which is a long winded way of saying when we wrote the book, we never imagined the context in which the book would be released. We did not realize the book was going be released the month after October 7. So we have an author's note, and I'm going get into the substance of the book, but we have an author's note at the front of the book that actually tries to explain what's happening in Israel purely through the lens of the judicial reform fight, which many of you may remember, that's like ancient history now, but Israel was in the throes of this big judicial reform fight in '20 basically all of 2023, and we tried to, just assumed that's where the book would be received, just like in that context. Now why did we write an author's note about judicial reform? Because the judicial reform fight in Israel, to many outsiders, revealed the country as a Israeli society is very divisive and very polarized. And it seemed odd it would seem odd to us it would be understandable that it would seem odd, let's say, to readers to think, why are they writing a book about Israeli resilience and what we really write about which is Israeli unity, and the strength of Israeli society at a time that they seem to be tearing themselves apart? Well, again, we didn't anticipate that judicial reform would be totally irrelevant, and the real context in which it would arrive is the post October 7 world. So, we wrote the book not thinking about obviously the post October seventh world. Judicial reform fight was in the background, but what we were really writing a book about was what the West could learn from the health and strength of Israeli society. And I just set it up by providing some examples or metrics that we use to define that. And what we had found, my co author Saul Singer and I, Saul lives in Jerusalem, what we had been observing over basically the decade before we wrote the book, we would just, there was the story, one of the central stories of our time in the West was how American society, Western societies were becoming more divided, more polarized. Increasingly people were feeling lonely and isolated. And that was having a real detrimental effect on American society and British society and Canadian society. And there were, like, I don't want to get too technical here, but there connections between that phenomenon and what we call deaths of despair, which is an academic term was coined by some social scientists, some economists, some real public health experts about the staggering rise in the West of deaths from drug overdose, alcohol abuse and suicide. So you had this loneliness epidemic, you had staggering numbers, I mean it eclipses what we went through with COVID. I mean it was interesting that COVID became such a dominant story for understandable reasons, but the real public health crisis in terms of sustained mortality in The United States was these deaths of despair. And just metric after metric, oh, sorry, forgot, I think what is the most revealing statistic, is the fertility rate. So replacement rate is the, again, not to get too technical, but the replacement rate is the rate at which a society has to be reproducing in order to either maintain the current population size or actually increase it. And the average replacement rate is 2.1, that's the reference point. If on average women are having 2.1 children, the academic literature dictates, as long as you're at 2.1 or above 2.1, you don't have a demography crisis because the population of your country will remain the same or continue to grow. And what we were observing over the previous decade was that fertility rates were crashing around the world, not just in the West, also in the East, well below replacement rates. So just to give you a current sense, in 2025, the fertility rate in South Korea is 0.7. The fertility rate in Canada is 1.3. The fertility rate in much of Europe is either slightly below 1.3 or slightly above 1.3. The fertility rate in The United States, 1.6. So by the way, China's numbers are way lower. So what you're seeing around the world is a demographic collapse. Populations as we know it around the world are going to be shrinking and shrinking and shrinking and shrinking. And so you just add all these, and I can keep going, you add all a loneliness epidemic, deaths of despair at a staggering rate, intense polarization, people not reproducing and societies shrinking. It just felt to us like a societal nightmare. And policymakers and social scientists would touch on these issues, but they never kind of try to like sync them all together and understand what's going on. And more importantly, there didn't seem to be a model of, okay, so if there's a society that worked that we could learn from, what would that place be? And what Saul and I increasingly found was Israel was that model. Like that Israel on every one of these metrics, and I can go metric by metric, right? So Israel How many people have spent time in Israel? Just raise your hand. Okay. So if you spent time in Israel, one thing you know they don't experience is the loneliness epidemic, right? They are like, you know, Israelis are in your life for better or for worse, every aspect of your life, and we have actually some extraordinary data that shows, that we cite in the book, that shows just even people's circles of friends. They have like people who they consider close confidants, close friends, close advisors. On average, people have much larger circles of deep contacts with friends, not just family, than those in The US do. The fertility rate, so I cited 0.7 in Korea, 1.6 in The US, somewhere between those in most of Europe and Canada. In Israel it's 2.8 I think. Most recently it's 2.8. So well above replacement rate. So Israel's population is growing. It's also a very young population. Then we start studying other metrics like there's no loneliness crisis in Israel. And I can go through it. There are virtually no deaths of despair. So something was going on in Israel, and I should also mention, which people find really surprising, is according to the international rankings, Israel is one of the happiest places on earth. In fact, we open the book with a story of someone who's not Jewish, who was living in San Francisco. Who's getting a massage. Yeah, yeah. She's, yeah, you really, wow, okay, he got the details. She meets an Israeli guy, moves to Israel with him, is getting her Masters at Tel Aviv University, he works in tech, she goes back with him, and she's never spent time in Israel. And like she keeps finding over and over and over how upbeat and optimistic Israelis are. And she wound up writing a piece for the Daily Beast called Why Are Israelis So Damn Happy? Because she was like, she just, she found it perplexing. Here are these people who live in the middle of a war zone. The country's been at war for most of its history. It's in this constant sense feeling of isolation geopolitically, not societally. And yet there was this and almost every single Israeli, if they have a child, knows that their child is likely going to have to serve in the army, and as we've seen, serve in real serious combat situations. How are these people so upbeat and optimistic? So and this is just this is a UN like this UN sponsors this report. This, like, ranking is probably the nicest thing the UN has ever said about Israel. And but Israel's consistently in the top 10 on these rankings of the happiest countries in the world. And when you look at Israel's ranking, and you look at the other three countries in the top 10, let's just say none of them look like Israel. So it really is perplexing. And so we thought, let's write a book about Israel as the model of a healthy society, and trying to understand why it's so vibrant and so healthy and so dynamic and is working, you know, contra to all these trends we're seeing elsewhere in the world. And then see if, you know, the West can learn from the Israeli experience in terms of seeing what you may wanna copy and cultivate here. Unfortunately,

[14:21]Zibby Owens: it feels like we're not gonna copy any of these six. However, it's so interesting to hear you laid them all out. I mean, you referenced the military. Yeah. It's not just that all Israelis serve in the military. It's the bonds that they form because of doing that. And you interestingly said, you know, in in America, it's like, where did you go to school? Like, education is is a leveler, but in Israel, it's like, where did you serve? What did you do? And so it's a recalibration of what matters to a society. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince. Summer always makes me rethink what I'm reaching for every day. Lighter fabrics, better materials, pieces that just good the moment you put them on and look effortless. That's why I keep coming back to quints. They focus on high quality essentials. Think breathable linen, soft organic cotton, washable silk, but without luxury markup. It's that rare balance where everything feels elevated but still easy. Quince has beautiful everyday pieces like 100% European linen pants, dresses, and tops with styles starting at $32. Their denim is soft and easy to wear. I wear my jean jacket all the time. And their organic cotton sweaters are perfect for layering on cool summer nights. Everything at Quince is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, so you're paying for quality, not brand markup. And it's not just clothing. Quince has really become a destination for elevated essentials across home, kitchen, bedding, and beyond, making it easy to bring a more premium feel into everyday life. In addition to my jean jacket, I recently got a white tank top dress with a beautiful cotton skirt that is absolutely gorgeous, and I can't wait for it to be warm enough so I can wear it every day, but it has been a cool spring. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.com/zippy for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's quince.com/zippy for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns. Quince dot com slash zippy.

[16:32]Dan Senor: Yeah, I think that's a really important insight that status, sure, does Israel have a booming high-tech scene? Yes. We wrote a whole book about it, our first book in Start Up Nation, we talk a little bit, we have a chapter in it in this book, just sort of updating on where it stands. So Israel, to be clear, is a booming tech sector, it has a lot of ambitious people who are making a lot of money, who are building amazing companies, but that's not the status symbol in Israel. Your status and your stature comes largely from how you publicly serve. And the military is primarily the way to do it, is national service. And that is to say that almost every single male in the country does three years plus of military service mandatory. Unless they go on and serve in one of the elite units or they do officer, go to officer training school. And women serve a minimum of two years. And a few things happen in that experience. One, that experience taking an 18 or 19, they do it at graduating high school. I have a son right now who is going through the hellish process of applying to colleges.

[17:35]Zibby Owens: My kids just got in early. Not to brag. Yours did? Yeah. My

[17:40]Dan Senor: son got into one school early so far, but he's not was it early decision or EA? Oh, early decision. Well, I mean, they're binding. They're gone. Oh, you're just binding? Okay. Good. Good. We can talk offline. Muzzle Tov. Thank you very much.

[17:51]Zibby Owens: Was just saying it's the most of everything I've posted in the last, like, eight years on Instagram and all the work I do and everything, it was my post where I said, My kids got into college. It has more views than anything else. I'll tell you, over the holidays,

[18:05]Dan Senor: both our kids and now just one of our kids go to a Jewish day school, and there are a lot of Israeli kids there in the school. So a lot of Israeli families that come to The US for whatever reason, for their parents' work or whatever, for here for a few years, a big part of the student population at the school are these Israeli kids, so our kids are growing up with these Israeli kids. And over the holidays, a few of them came stay with us, came away with us. And listening to the conversations between the American kids who are having these insane conversations about the college application process, and the Israeli kids who are trying to figure out what army unit they're going to serve in. It's like, I've watched these kids grow up together, and they've all kind of been on a similar track, and now their tracks are about to completely diverge, right? They've basically been doing the same thing for the last as long as I've known these kids. These kids have grown up around our like at our home. Like, I see the Israeli kids. And now our kids are about to go into this college process, which we can spend a whole podcast on that. And these Israeli kids are about to get a crucible leadership experience. They're gonna be trained not only life and death survival skills, but life and death leadership. They're going learn what it means to lead people, what it means to have lives on the line, what it means to motivate people, what it means to console people, what it means to be responsible for very massive amounts of equipment and sophisticated technologies and weapons and defense capabilities. Mean, these are kids 18, 19, 20, 21 that are developing these experiences.

[19:41]Zibby Owens: And the American kids are doing beer pong. Exactly, beer pong and

[19:45]Dan Senor: rushing fraternities and sororities. And so I think A, they just mature. The development, the sense of responsibility that they have to take on is mind blowing. And two, to your point, what unit you get into, so right now, after this conversation, Zibby and I are gonna have a conversation, so what school? We're gonna do this, and we're immediately gonna start sizing, like I'm gonna make judgments about her kids without even having met her kids just based on what she says. They're really great kids. Believe it. Stop judging me. I believe it. Okay? And then but in Israel, it's all about what unit you get into. Are you in the intelligence unit, one of the intelligence units? Are you in eight thousand two hundred Shmona Mataim, which is the equivalent of our NSA, our National Security Agency, which is a tech focused intelligence unit, except they let eighteen, nineteen, and 20 year olds in it? It's not that Israel doesn't have its own status system, it does, but the status is all about how you're serving your country. And that tells you what a society rewards and values. That sure there are some people technically that are higher status or lower status just based on the unit they serve, but it's all about the service. It's all about what you're giving of yourself to society. And I think that sends a very important message to young people. It's not all about me, me, me, me, me. It's about I'm measured by how I am serving. And I think the most important part of the experience, and I saw this, this really was crystallized for me after October 7, we wrote about it but I didn't fully appreciate it until after October 7, is because it is a very clinical process in terms of how they, you know, what units people get into and where they serve. It is not based on where you went to school. It's not based on who your family is. It's not based on, you know, what kind of economic resources you have or academic support you have or it's purely, it really is purely based on merit. Now obviously it's purely based on merit because you don't want anyone in one of these frontline life and death situations defending the country and then learn later that they were in that position because like there was somehow some corner cutting. And so you therefore what it means is in these units, you have people from all walks of life. So you would see this, those images after October 7 when the IDF was getting organized to get ready to fight, you would see these incredible images flying across social media where you'd see in the hull of a tank, you know, the son of a taxi driver and the son of a tech billionaire and the son of an Orthodox Jew from a very religiously Zionist part of the community or a settlement. You have I mean, it's just really these people from all walks of life who are forged together in service of the country and in defense of the country. And therefore, as divided as Israel is politically, and it is divided, and it's going to get more divided because we're headed into an election year here in Israel. But at its core, it still has what I call these societal shock absorbers, which is as divided as it gets, it can only get so divided because Israelis, by and large, don't think of one another as the other because they've been in the hull of a tank, they've been in a base together, they've been Like, I have this friend, we quote this public intellectual named Mika Goodman in the book quite a lot, And I remember, we didn't quote this in the book, but I remember once going on a hike with him in Israel many years ago, soon after Trump got elected in 2016. And he's an academic and he was speaking at Harvard, at a conference in Harvard. He came in from Israel he was speaking in Harvard. And he said, you know, I'm at this conference in Harvard, and it's like December 2016 or January 2017, and some of these academics he's meeting with are saying, you know, I met a Trump voter. You know, I like I met a Trump voter, and let me tell you what I learned from that Trump voter. And let me let me tell you what they're like, as though it was like a lab experiment. You know, that this was some and this is not a debate about Trump or his supporters. It's simply to make a point. I'm simply trying to He was so shocked by this because he's like, again, it's not about the issues, it was that these academics he was with at Harvard actually don't interact with people who don't vote like them. That there is this sense of the other. And he said that, like in his unit, he's I would say a pretty centrist, maybe center left here, he's gonna be annoyed when he listens to this, I'm characterizing his politics. But he says in his unit, so he served in this unit in the Army, and then that unit, these are bonds, because of reserve duty, have to serve, you not only do your three years or whatever it is, but then, this is before October 7, but then you go back in reserve duty, what they call miloim, every year, for it could be up to two weeks or up to a month, and you're back with your unit. So you're back with the people you served with every year. So you reunite with these people from all walks of life and you have it for basically the next twenty years. Now this has changed post October 7 because now they have to serve even longer. The point is, he says he gets together with his unit every year. He says some of these people think he's a crazy leftist, and he thinks some of the people in his unit are crazy right wing people, but would never think of but they're all Israelis. They're all like fellow citizens and they have this bond. So I think the public service of the military does something too, is as divided as Israelis get, they can never get too far apart.

[25:30]Zibby Owens: Well, think what the book does such a great job of is not just spelling out why it has worked in Israel, but almost from an organizational standpoint, how we can take the principles of building something, common mission, even your education examples Yeah. The way you teach and having everybody interact. You just take us through so methodically. So it's not just a country. It's really anybody who reads this book and wants the lessons of effective building of an entity that can be successful. Right.

[26:00]Dan Senor: I think a couple of points that really work, and I do think are transferable over here. And again, don't want to get into how to make it transferable here, but just some things that I think are very compelling. One, the sense of national ritual. Yes. There is a sense in Israel that there are real rituals that the overwhelming majority of the country participates in. Now, when I say that here to audiences in The US, I say like, just think about what kind of national rituals there are where you and virtually everybody you know, you are honoring the ritual and that virtually everyone you know, no matter what walk of life they're in, are also honoring the ritual at the same time. So if I think of natural rituals where I feel like the country, The United States has huge buy in, I actually can think of two. Does anyone know what the first one is? Thanksgiving. Not fourth of July. You said fourth of July. So I someone said fourth of July. People often say fourth of July. The problem is fourth of July is I mean, it should be a national ritual, and it is for some, but for many people it's just a long weekend. It's a weekend at the beach. It's, you know, fireworks and barbecue and all that's nice, but there's no real sense that like, oh, we're honoring the country's independence, and we're really thinking about the country's independence. So to give you a sense, in Israel, they do Memorial Day and Independence Day back to back. So Memorial Day is on one day every year, then their Independence Day is literally the next day. So it's the two days back to back because they tie the two together. We don't get the independence without the sacrifice. And the whole country participates in this very somber Memorial Day. When Israelis see our Memorial Day, they're like, what's a Memorial Day sale? They're like really perplexed that there's something called a Memorial Day sale. Because for them, this is a very serious, somber experience. So they go through Memorial Day, and then they go into Independence Day, and it's a very joyful day, and the whole country participates. It's a very serious But even, just look at other dates on the Hebrew calendar. Shabbat. So we have a chapter in the book called Thanksgiving Every Week, right? Which is every single Friday night, basically the country shuts down. And the overwhelming majority of Israelis are either with their family, or with family and friends. If they're with family, they're usually two, three, four generations, like the whole family comes together. Or just friends, know, people in their community. But the point is, and some are more religious and some are more secular, but the idea of gathering with the people closest to you every single week, slow down, unplug, they're not on their devices, they're with each other, they're with human beings, imagine that, human interaction, and this is like a ritual in the country. We cite some studies that shows over 80% of Israelis participate in that ritual. Again, we said Thanksgiving here, I one was gonna ask, I was like, wait, what's the other one? The Super Bowl. I was gonna say that. Super Bowl. The Super Bowl. Now some people here are like, yeah, know, but here's why the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl because, and I'm a huge Because fan of of the heads. No. And it's also, there are fewer and fewer kind of monoculture events in The United States, where events where there's something in the culture that everyone's talking about. There's just a There are fewer and fewer of those. The Super Bowl is one of those things, whereas Monday morning people are at the office people are dropping kids off at school and it's like all they're talking about is out of the game or the ads, but it is a sense of ritual. I mean it sounds kind of silly and it's very commercial, but it is I I don't want to take it away from us because we don't have many. Right? We got Thanksgiving, we got the Super Bowl and that's basically it. And in Israel, they have one every single week. And there are others with other holidays and other civic events, but there's something about that holding the society together that I think we need to get more serious about. I'm not saying we in the West or in The United States should be so ambitious to think about doing something about it every week, but if we could get more serious about Memorial Day and July 4, there are military families, a lot of them, for them Memorial Day is going to Arlington Cemetery in Washington DC. Like that, it's real for them, and why, But that represents a miniscule percentage of our population. Aren't the rest of us in some way also participating in that ritual? So I think there are lessons we can take, and each of those experiences is a reminder to us and the next generation of what's important to us. The sense of, you know, what I think Israel does very well is, as I said earlier, it's a very, you know, individuals there are ambitious, they want to achieve great success, they want to create wealth for themselves, again, take none of that away from them. So they're focused on the pursuit of individual excellence, but there's also this communal mindset. They like to strike a balance between the two. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, a former chief rabbi of The UK, passed away a number of years ago. He was once interviewing, we quote him in the book, he was once interviewing Paul Johnson, the he also passed away, the famous British historian who'd written all these books. He'd written a book about the history of the American people, the history of the English people, the history of Christianity, and a history of the Jews. It's not Jewish, totally secular. And he would approach all these issues from some distance, from an analytical perspective. And he wrote this history of the Jews which is phenomenal. It really is a it's a it's a and he looks at like at that point, you know, the Jewish people's four thousand year history. And so Sacks is interviewing, Rabbi Sacks is interviewing Paul Johnson at some event in The UK. And he says, Sachs says to him, to Johnson, he says, because you've written the history of the American people, history of the Christianity, history of the English people. So of all these peoples, what stands out about the history of the Jewish people? If you had to pick one thing, what is the most distinctive? And he said, in every other of these societies I have studied, most of these studies are either highly individual, societies are either highly individualistic or highly collectivist. So generally speaking, Western societies are more individualistic and Eastern societies, again, for simplicity's sake, Eastern societies, he says, gravitate more towards collectivism. He says the Jewish people, and therefore in its modern incarnation, the state of Israel, the Jewish state, is the only society that strikes a balance, a real balance between the two, which is, yes, there's this commitment to individual excellence and pursuit of individual excellence, but not at the expense of community mindset, in the sense that people are part of something larger than themselves. And I think that balance is very, very healthy for people in a world in which we're all me, me, me, me, me, to have markers all around you in society that is reminding you that you are part of something larger than yourself. And I think that is one of the most important things Israel does. If you ask yourself, why is it on the morning of October 7, Israelis, whether they were called up for reserve duty or not, were showing up at their bases, Israelis who had aged out of military service and were saying, no, I'm going anyways, they're putting on the uniform the heads of the units were like sending them away and they're like, I'm going, I'm going. Massive numbers of Israelis turned out. Israelis who days before were at each other's throats over political debate, as I said, the judicial reform. Where does that come from? It does come in part with all of them realizing they're part of something larger than themselves. And so that to me is the ultimate check on a society that's so focused on me, or a society that is so resentful of the other. Amazing.

[33:41]Zibby Owens: Dan, we've only scratched the surface. Thank you so much for coming Thank you. Thank you for Thank listening to Totally Booked with Sibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.