Plus, some stats on the country that turn accepted wisdom on its head.
It’s a difficult time to release a book called The Genius of Israel, but author Dan Senor and his co-author Saul Singer have done just that. Still, you could argue that this might be one of the best moments to analyze the country in-depth, and to explore how it has risen to global prominence.
Despite being plagued by turmoil, the people of Israel have consistently been shown to have low levels of depression and alcoholism, and record levels of happiness — as well as a higher life expectancy than many wealthy nations, including the U.S. The Genius of Israel aims to uncover the myriad factors that contribute to this striking phenomenon, revealing insights that promise to improve our understanding of how to lead a fulfilling and joyful life.
This isn’t Senor’s first time exploring this small country and its global impact: His 2009 book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle focused on the technological and scientific advances that have made Israel one of the wealthiest countries on Earth. But his latest work observes Israeli life through a lens of health — both mental and physical. With meticulous research, thoughtful anecdotes, and a wealth of expert interviews, The Genius of Israel offers a look at the factors that converge to create overall contentment. The book provides an illuminating perspective on the principles that underpin the vitality of the Israeli people, alongside lessons that can help us all lead healthier, happier lives. I asked Senor to walk me through some of the most fascinating discoveries, below.
Dan, you’ve got a new book out called The Genius of Israel. We’ll talk about the current situation in Israel and Gaza in a moment, but because you wrote this book with your co-author Saul Singer long before October 7th, let’s focus on what you wanted to share with readers. As the title indicates, you set out to describe why Israel is thriving in many ways. I was surprised to read that Israel is the fourth happiest nation in the world. Why?
Our book started as a voyage of discovery to understand something that surprised us, even as close Israel watchers: Why, by objective metrics, is Israel’s population young and growing while most other affluent democracies are shrinking and aging? Why are Israelis living longer and are not experiencing any kind of loneliness epidemic compared to the U.S. and Europe? Why doesn’t Israel have a teen mental health crisis or “deaths of despair,” while these crises are on the rise in the U.S.? In short, why is Israeli society so successful while Western societies often seem to be in decline?
Just to be specific, “deaths of despair” — deaths from suicide and substance abuse — are at historic levels in the U.S.. Most troublesome, the CDC has warned of a surge of teen suicides and hospitalizations for suicidal behavior that began well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Surprisingly, when you compare the data across the OECD — the club of wealthy democracies — Israel has the lowest in both categories. And while people in the West are having fewer and fewer children, leading to forecasts of shrinking populations — Japan, for example, has more customers for adult diapers than baby diapers — Israelis are moving in the opposite direction. They’re having children at way above the replacement rate. Even secular Israeli families are having three, four or five children each.
Life expectancy is another important measure of societal health, and Israel’s is ninth highest in the world: slightly above France, Sweden, and Canada; a full year above the UK, Germany, and Denmark; and four years higher than in the U.S.
This goes to why Israel scores so high in the UN’s World Happiness Report. Harvard’s Robert Waldinger, the director of the longest lasting study of human flourishing, summed up the key to happiness in word: relationships. Humans are social animals, without relationships — whether families, friends, community or country — they literally get sick. Another famous study shows that loneliness can be as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And Israel is a place where you are not alone. There is a strong sense of belonging, of purpose, and of human connection at all levels.
Certain leaders in the U.S., like General Stanley McCrystal, have long advocated for national service requirements. Tell us about the role of national service and its impact on Israeli society.
The U.S and other democracies are meritocracies — meaning advancement and status is supposed to be based on merit. So is Israel. But the criteria for merit are completely different.
In the U.S., “Where did you go to college?” is a question people ask to place each other in their mental status hierarchy. It has become the job of education systems, particularly those who guard the gates of higher education, to determine who has merit and who doesn’t. In Israel, the equivalent question is, “Where did you serve?” The pilots, commandos, and top intelligence units are Israel’s Ivy League. And in contrast to the one-against-slog to get into prestigious universities, individual talents are not the key criteria for top military units. It’s all about being able to work in a team.
This distinction changes everything. It means merit is determined by something that is not about you, but about how you can contribute to your society and country. It is a collective value that builds solidarity, rather an individualistic value that contributes to a materialistic and divisive definition of success.
In the U.S. and elsewhere, national service may be the most powerful antidote to polarization. Humans need to be part of something greater than themselves. Healthy societies must be built on something in common. Israelis have a sense of shared history, destiny, and purpose. It wouldn’t be easy, but Americans can build this, too.
Another thing you discuss is the importance of “Thanksgiving every week” and national civic holidays…
Gathering the family on Thanksgiving is a much beloved American tradition. The problem is, partly because the U.S. is a big country, that those holiday gatherings only happen a few times a year, at most.
In Israel, parents with young children join the grandparents for Friday night dinner nearly every week. This too helps explain Israeli happiness because close, multi-generational family relationships are, according to many polls and studies, a key source of purpose, belonging, and connection. On the national level, holidays infused with real meaning — in Israel, Memorial Day is not a shopping day — also have a unifying effect. On Memorial Day, the entire country stops what it’s doing for a national moment of silence to honor the fallen. It’s the same with Holocaust Remembrance Day.
On each of those holidays, Israel’s national air-raid siren system fills the air with a loud, plaintive note — a blaring high-pitched sound that can be heard everywhere. For two minutes in Israel on each of those days, the world stops, almost like a sci-fi movie. Cars stop on the highways, their drivers standing like sentries next to them. In restaurants and hotels, schools and offices, stadiums and homes, everyone stands in silence.
The entire population is not just doing the same thing – they’re tuned to the same channel. The channel is at once collective and personal, as Israelis focus on someone they lost: a brother, a son, a girlfriend, a parent, a childhood friend, a teacher, a student, a nearby shopkeeper, a soldier from their unit. Israel’s Memorial Day is always hard, but we can’t imagine how brutal the next one will be.
This is a tough time for a book to come out that celebrates “the genius of Israel” — especially as a backlash against the retaliation for the heinous attacks of October 7th grows. The number of civilian deaths in Gaza is growing every day and it seems Israel is losing the global PR war right now. Can you give us some perspective on that?
The genius of Israel is its people and society, full stop. Israel’s political class has failed its people catastrophically. The war has convinced Israelis that tolerating dysfunctional politics is a “luxury” they cannot afford. The fact that the world is blaming Israel for defending itself is not the government’s fault, even if Israel could do a better job explaining itself. Israel’s isolation will not stop until the world starts putting blame for civilian casualties — on both sides — where it morally and legally belongs: on Hamas.
Imagine if Vladimir Putin were bombarding Ukraine from the middle of Russian city and Ukraine returned fire at the Russian launchers. Nobody would think of blaming Ukraine, correctly, for the resultant civilian casualties. With Hamas it is worse. The centerpiece of Hamas’s strategy is to turn Israel into a pariah state by deliberately maximizing Palestinian civilian casualties. By playing into Hamas’s grisly strategy and blaming Israel, the world is actually creating an incentive to multiply the tragic Palestinian deaths that it’s trying to prevent. It is Hamas, not Israel, that is committing war crimes. As President Biden himself said, Israel makes every effort to avoid civilian casualties. This is the standard that Israel, at great cost to the lives to its own soldiers, holds itself to. Israel should not be excoriated for doing so.
You concede that Israel has had its share of domestic problems: Prior to October 7th, there have been major protests on a regular basis as Benjamin Netanyahu tries to decrease the power of the judiciary and bring in far right individuals into the government. Has October 7th brought Israelis closer together? What is the future for Netanyahu? How do you see the turbulent state of affairs sorting themselves out?
Israel has a history of robust commissions of inquiry to understand when and why wars went badly. There were commissions of inquiry following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and 2006 Lebanon War. Both commissions proved to be very tough on Prime Ministers Golda Meir and Ehud Olmert. We expect a commission of inquiry following this war, which will likely be very tough on Prime Minister Netananyahu and others in leadership.
But October 7, as horrendous as it was, has also reminded Israelis that they are part of one big family. It’s often a noisy, argumentative and divided family. Israel has a reservoir of social solidarity that it can draw upon, even during polarizing political debates.
There is an ideal of solidarity that, even if sometimes honored in the breach, is a powerful aspiration across the political spectrum. People with starkly opposing views live not just in the same neighborhood but also in the same apartment buildings, and often sit around the same Shabbat dinner table. And many of them are serving in the hull of the same tank right now in this war. In other polarized countries, the yearning for unity that cuts across deep political divides is not as strong. In Israel, the solidarity is just beneath the surface, like a frame holding together a mosaic.
Dan Senor’s new book, The Genius of Israel, is available now.
