20141025, Article, Taichung

[Jasmine0316]

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Time：第 288會，2014年10月25日（週六）下午2:30~5:30點
Place：
viewtopic.php?t=15

Agenda
14:30~15:30 Session One
15:30~15:50 Speech Session
15:50~16:00 Change Group and then Break Time
16:00~17:15 Session Two
17:15~17:30 Happy Time

Host: Kevin
Assistant Host:

Topic:
10 business principles from the Talmud
Source:
http://dariogalvis.com/post/24419020007/10-business-principles-from-the-talmud

Please Note:
Venue:台中市南屯區大業路182號 Mos Burger
Thanks a lot for your attention.

Questions:
1. The Talmud illustrates the traditional Jewish law and shapes the way the Jews think. Therefore, The Talmud is regarded as The Analects of Confucius (論語) of the Jews. Statistics show that twenty percent of Forbes top 400 richest and twenty-five percent of Nobel laureates are Jewish. From your point of view, what are the secrets of the Jews’ success in businesses or academic career? Who left the biggest impression on you, when it comes to Jewish celebrities? What have they done to impress you? Why can the Jewish people win more Nobel prizes or make more money?

2. The Jews had been in exile for two thousand years. Without any main place, they cannot develop agriculture and manufacturing industry. Therefore, to be a businessman is an only option. However, Chinese people have different attitudes toward making a big fortune. What do you think about being a businessman and making a big fortune? Can money affect morality? Why or why not?

3. There is a widely circulated story of a profitable gas station run by a Chinese or a Jewish owner in a remote area. Chinese neighbors will open the same gas station next door, compete with each other, and even launch a price war. Jewish neighbors will try to complement each other’s advantages to open a convenient store or a garage. What will you do, if you encounter the similar scenario? Making a difference or following others’ footsteps – which one is better? Why? Will you compete or cooperate with others in business?

4. Learning is a lifelong process for the Jews. Kids are encouraged to raise a hand to ask questions when they get confused by something. Are you afraid of asking questions when you encounter something unfamiliar to you? What makes you willing to or not willing to raise your hand? Jewish parents encourage their children to do part-time jobs to earn some pocket money and learn how to manage disposable income. Have you ever done part-time jobs when you were a student? How did it change your way of thinking?

例會須知
時間地點須知：
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15
協會章程：
http://www.happyforum.org/Association_Principle.htm
各分會章程：
http://www.happyforum.org/Club_Principle.htm
協會會員會費及各分會會員會費及入場費：
http://www.happyforum.org/15.htm
參與例會，請自行列印當週的討論文章，並帶至現場
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewforum.php?f=33
參與例會，請勿討論政治/種族/宗教/性，經勸導無效者，不得參加本會任何活動
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=1766
週六晚餐(Saturday Dinner)
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewforum.php?f=76
戶外活動(Club Outing)
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewforum.php?f=72
所有行程(All Schedule)
http://www.happyforum.org/happy/viewtopic.php?t=883

[Jasmine0316]

Dear Taichung Happiers,

Guess who has just become a new Dad? Yes, Kevin! Special thanks to Kevin for the hosting job on such a weekend.

The French author Patrick Modiano, the laureate of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2014, recurrently stressed the Jewishness theme in his novels. Yes. His father was of Jewish origin. Now, is there anything tickling your curiosity? No politics. No religion. Yet with the statistics showing that twenty percent of Forbes top 400 richest and twenty-five percent of Nobel laureates are Jewish, our host Kevin is inviting Happiers to track how the Jews earn these higher percentages.

Check out “The Story of Success” told by Malcolm Gladwell, who has been a staff writer for The New Yorker since 1996, to see if it can satisfy our curiosity. “The conventional explanation for Jewish success, of course, is that Jews come from a literate, intellectual culture. They are famously ‘the people of the book.’ There is surely something to that. But it wasn't just the children of rabbis who went to law school. It was the children of garment workers. And their critical advantage in climbing the professional ladder wasn't the intellectual rigor you get from studying the Talmud. It was the practical intelligence and savvy you get from watching your father sell aprons on Hester Street.”

The recent gutter oil scandal in Taiwan has stirred up our confusion over how money can affect morality. Previously, Harvard Professor Michael Sandel has further investigated The Moral Limits of Markets, and we believe it’s not just a debate theme in the classroom. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvDpYHyBlgc For the processes of awareness and confidence don’t happen by themselves, let us chew on this again and bear it in mind:

The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost (March 26, 1874 – January 29, 1963)

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Shlomo Sand, a professor of history at Tel Aviv University, put this in his controversial book The Invention of the Jewish People: “If certain Jewish communities had distinctive qualities, they were due to history, not biology.” All right! And, we have The Analects of Confucius; sometimes, we have confusion, too—not to mention our curiosity. Money? Money! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9UM8sljM-c

Come join us to congratulate Kevin, tell us which road not taken by you, and see what our eyes can be fixed on.





Best Wishes,
Jasmine

[longbow]

20141025, Gathering, Taichung