By Yuval Haberman, JNS
Modern commerce still runs on the most volatile of fuels: human motivation.
If you grew up in Israel, you can probably still smell the smoke. Every spring, children scour empty lots for scrap wood, stack it into towering pyramids and set the night sky ablaze in honor of Lag B’Omer, which we just finished celebrating. Behind those crackling flames lies a sobering tale: The death of 24,000 disciples of Rabbi Akiva nearly two millennia ago; victims, the Talmud tells us, of a plague sparked by their failure to “respect one another.”
Ancient as it is, that lesson speaks powerfully to today’s capital markets. When a corporation treats employees with indifference, or worse, contempt, its share price often ends up smoldering. Conversely, businesses that bake respect, fairness and diversity into their DNA tend to outperform. Lag B’Omer invites us to test that premise: Do the companies in our portfolios honor the people who create their value?
The Talmudic story turns on three Hebrew words, lo nahagu kavod, “they did not behave with honor.” Translate that to 2025, and you get high-staff turnover, whispered lawsuits and a culture of “my way or the highway.” Investors pay dearly for those frictions. Study after study shows that workplaces with ethnic, gender and cultural diversity, where dissenting voices are welcomed rather than silenced, are more innovative, more resilient, and ultimately, more profitable.
Israeli history offers a vivid counter-image. After the tragedy, Rabbi Akiva refused to surrender. He selected five new students and rebuilt his academy on a single principle: mutual respect. That reboot changed Jewish scholarship forever. Without it, the Mishnah and the spine of rabbinic learning might never have been compiled.
Likewise, in business, culture can be rebooted if its leaders choose humility over hubris and place their people front and center.
Modern commerce still runs on the most volatile of fuels: human motivation. When employees sense dignity, fair pay and a real stake in the upside, productivity soars. When they feel diminished, productivity withers. Bonfires may last a single night, but the spark of employee satisfaction lights growth year after year.
For Zionist supporters who view economic success as an act of nation-building, creating respectful workplaces isn’t philanthropy. It is strategic. As Israel’s tech ecosystem matures and competes for global capital, the firms that model equitable leadership across gender, ethnicity and background signal lower risk and higher long-run value.
The inventor Thomas Edison once quipped that he found “10,000 ways that won’t work” before perfecting the light bulb. Rabbi Akiva would have understood. Failure, met with reflection and renewed purpose, is the birthplace of enduring innovation. So, too, a company that missteps can recover if it swaps arrogance for accountability and places kavod, “human dignity,” at the core of its strategy.
Entrepreneurs, take note: Embed an ethical vision from day one, not as window dressing, but as hard-edged governance. Investors, is there transparency on pay gaps, employee-satisfaction scores and board diversity? A firm unwilling to disclose those numbers is telegraphing an unlit bonfire with plenty of smoke and little light.
Lag B’Omer may be an ancient festival, but its message is fiercely modern. In a world chasing quarterly earnings, the holiday reminds us that respect is neither a relic nor a luxury; it is a proven driver of sustainable returns. As the bonfires blaze across Israel this year, let’s remember that the brightest portfolios are built, like Rabbi Akiva’s second academy, on a foundation of honor and shared human worth.
