Sitting in a coffee shop in London with my wife and sister, we were trying to translate one of the ruder Hebrew sayings in a way that will rhyme in English. The one about the elephant and the chicken.

Following the sale of the care homes’ business that I founded in the UK, my team had asked me to prepare a list of my favourite Israeli and Jewish proverbs as they loved how well these had always hit the mark.

After a few tries, my wife, who is a natural copywriter, cracked it. We laughed and at that moment I realised that I had the perfect narrative for this proverb.

It took me a few more minutes to realise that using proverbs, as titles to essays is an amazing idea for a book and by the end of the sitting, I declared that I am going to write it.

This is how the book that wrote itself was born.

My career as an Israeli expert-observer began when I was hired as the first equity analyst to cover the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange by an international investment bank after I graduated from London Business School with a full time MBA degree. I was involved in writing a prospectus for a fund specialising in Israel, it read like a business plan for the country in the early 1990s. We described the country’s huge potential based on the high level of education, the large-scale wave of high-quality immigration from the former Soviet Union and, of course, the army as a hotbed for state-of-the-art technologies. In short, we portrayed the potential of the ‘Start-up Nation’ (as depicted in the 2009 book) years before it materialised. Since leaving the City, I have gained significant life experience by founding and managing the Future Care Group, a UK care homes’ operator.

As I was writing during 2025, dramatic events in Israel and around the world were unfolding and the narratives arrived quickly. My surprise was how easy it was to find punchy proverbs to serve as titles for the unfolding global events and vice versa, for the long list of proverbs that I wanted to cover, the stories just kept coming.

While the book was being written another light-bulb moment had accrued. The book is an Israeli DNA, the operating system behind the country and its people. Read it and learn everything about what makes Israel tick, the good the bad and the ugly. But most importantly, there is a lot to be proud of. There are significant achievements and human stories to remind the world and the Israelis themselves why this is an amazing, miracle country that is going through a traumatic period accompanied by a PR disaster.

I’ll provide you with several examples to illustrating the development and logic of the book. The first saying about the elephant and the chicken, you’ll have to read the book to get it, is a surreal allegory about achieving the impossible. I knew immediately that the best narrative to illustrate it would be to write about the epic achievement behind the exploding pagers in Lebanon. I refer to the extraordinary deception scheme, which was a least 10 years in the making. It’s a fascinating story which ended on 17 and 18 September 2024, almost a year after the beginning of the regional war, when hundreds of walkie-talkies and thousands of handheld pagers, used by the Lebanese Hezbollah operatives, exploded simultaneously across Lebanon and Syria in an Israeli attack that caused chaos within their ranks and started a chain of events that contributed to the toppling of the regime in Syria. Therefore, I decided to go into fine detail to explain how it all came about.

The first narrative in the book was also straight forward: ‘All the beginnings are difficult’, as I was just starting, I could relate to the challenges ahead. I wrote’ ‘the process began with compiling an extensive list of proverbs and expressions. The subsequent step involved carefully selecting those best suited for inclusion; specifically, those that could be illustrated through compelling narratives reflecting Israeli culture and history, as well as the broader human experience. Given the profound insights contained within the material, I was facing a stimulating intellectual challenge. Additionally, I knew it would be essential to ensure that all information remained accurate and faithful to its original sources. But ‘all the beginnings are difficult’…’

I could also comment on the difficulties that the first Jewish agricultural immigrants were facing as of the early 1880s. They could not survive without donations from their benefactors but effectively they started the movement of returning to the land of Zion by buying land and establishing settlements.

It was also a learning process for me, for the statement ‘If you will it – it is no dream’ which I translated to ‘A strong will makes a fairy tale real’, I researched about Herzl and the background to his fictional book Altneuland’ (the Old New Land), published in 1902, about how a Jewish state would look like and from which this phrase is taken. I concluded that ‘the State of Israel has demonstrated a level of success that has exceeded even his most ambitious expectations’.

I have also discovered the remarkable life story of Israel’s first president Dr Chaim Weizmann via the proverb ‘He who invalidates another, invalidates himself’ and the decapitation of Weizmann’s statue at Manchester University by a group called Palestinian Action. They had no clue about the fact that he saved the UK during the first world war. I summarised: ‘whoever invalidates Weizmann invalidates themselves and validates their complete ignorance and lack of respect for anything which is sacred to the Western world. By invalidating a person or a system of proven value, you validate yourself as worthless’.

I also covered ‘The words of the wise are heard in tranquillity’, as driven by social and global media outlets; it often seems that the loudest shouters are the ones who are winning the argument. Thus, the social media era seemingly contradicts a generations’ old axiom due to the flood of uncensored propaganda. My conclusion was that this is not the case as the wisdom is hidden withing the silent majority.

Some clear themes started to develop, and different narratives were grouped together. The first group, in which I accumulated no less than seven proverbs, was titled True Grit, one of the most dominating characteristics of Israelis and the Jewish nation. The second chapter became Inspiration, without which Israel will not survive and prosper. Given the high intensity of some of the issues covered, e.g. I have had to relate to the antizionist movement, lighter chapters about Humour and Satire and Spontaneity and lack of Formality were added , both typical Israeli characteristics.

Thus, with about 50 proverbs wrapped in 10 chapters, Israeli secrets were being exposed through the language, the everyday sayings people use. An amazing human tapestry of perseverance, bravery, entrepreneurship, success, failure but also a thirst for joy was being revealed. The story of life’s winners whom the world can learn from.

It became apparent why despite being surrounded by enemies, Israel has been rated top ten happiest places to live in for decades. Questioning how this has been achieved became the opening line for the book. The name of the book also became apparent ‘Revealing Israeli secrets’, what began as a personal chronicle has materialised into a national as well as a universal book.

The book is now in the pre-orders phase on publishizer.com until the end of March. https://publishizer.com/revealing-israeli-secrets/

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)