The Habit of Labor

Book excerpt: “There’s no better way to explain the miracle of Israel than to examine the life of Stef Wertheimer . . . A story to be read by everyone” (Warren Buffett). Forced to flee Nazi Germany with his family at age ten, Stef Wertheimer came to British Palestine in the late 1930s. He promptly dropped out of school, learned a trade through apprenticeship, and played a meaningful role in Israel’s War of Independence. He also started a company—ISCAR—that began in a shed and ultimately made him one of the world’s great self-made industrialists. In The Habit of Labor, Wertheimer shares the lessons he learned from a life of hardship and struggle in one of the world’s newest industrial powers. Both a pragmatist and a visionary, Wertheimer has devoted much of his life to promoting Jewish and Arab economic development through innovative educational and vocational programs, along with the establishment of a series of thriving industrial parks in Israel and in Turkey. The future of Israel, he believes, is not in military might or diplomatic alliances but in its growing economic clout.