Rabbi Avraham Edelstein

Olami Resources is happy to present the second essay in a series of free installments featuring Rabbi Avraham Edelstein’s important new book, The Human Challenge. Rabbi Avraham Edelstein serves as the Education Director of Neve Yerushalayim College for Women and a senior advisor to Olami. Many of Rabbi Edelstein’s foundational publications addressing the world of... Read more »

Any tragedy that happens to the Jewish people – or to the world in general – requires us to pause, check ourselves and do Teshuva on everything that needs it. The tragedy that just happened in Meron is no different. But there was surely something deeper going on. The period between Pesach and Shavuos was... Read more »

The petira of Rabbi Yitzchok Lowenbraun, Reb Itche, as we all fondly called him, is a sad moment. He was one of the most easily lovable, huggable people on this earth. He combined this with enormous dedication and productivity to the Klal. Reb Itche spent his early adult years on the front-lines through NCSY. In the... Read more »

This blog draws on Antony Jay, How To Run a Meeting, Harvard Business Magazine (March 1976), except where otherwise stated. Don’t Have Meetings at All: Meetings should not be your default option. Resolve what you can through one-on-ones or twos, or phone calls rather than group meetings. Sometimes five minutes spent with six people separately... Read more »

Most meetings that organizations run either waste enormous amounts of time, or are a waste in their entirety. People come late, there often isn’t a clear goal to the meeting (even if there is an agenda), individuals are more or less allowed to speak freely, including off-topic and without limits, and as a result, other... Read more »

The American system does not have an entry bar – a character or wisdom test or an ethics bar that has to be passed to be eligible for President. There is a strong feeling that you can have a bad character and still be a good President. In our previous post, we contrasted this with... Read more »

President Trump’s deeply flawed character resulted in a massive failure this week, the failure of the President of the United States to take timely and vigorous steps to prevent the taking of five lives and many more injured.

(For this blog I am drawing on Michael Lewis, in the Undoing Project, his book on Daniel Kahneman – pp. 181-211). Last week, I dealt with cognitive biases and hence the need to follow a methodical approach in decision making. This week, I want to discuss another aspect of Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s research:... Read more »

One of the books that made an enormous impact on me is Thinking Fast and Slow, by former Israeli Nobel prize winner, Daniel Kahneman (I am on my fourth reading). Kahneman shows how most of our decisions are made intuitively or with little or no processing, relying on experience and presumptions we have built up... Read more »

In the kiruv world, we have so misused and dumbed down the “leadership” word that it is now virtually meaningless. It is an extra adjective that we slap onto programs when we want them to sound good. We call students who are recruiters “leaders.” We call Israel trips, summits and other events as leadership events,... Read more »

Pages By: Rabbi Avraham Edelstein

Belief as a Relationship

The Lag B’Omer Tragedy

Hesped for Itchiel Lowenbraun

The Science of Successful Team Meetings, Part 2

The Science of Successful Team Meetings, Part I

A Jewish Ethic of Protest

A Jewish View of the Recent Events in Washington

Do We Continuously Fool Ourselves?

Decision Making Theory

Leadership – Making a Hackneyed Word Meaningful Again

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