Shabbat shalom! And Shanah Tovah to all!
Rosh Hashanah is supposedly the “birthday of the world.” If you think of creation as a company launch, then this was God’s big IPO day – the cosmic ribbon cutting. Problem is, the founding product came with flaws baked in. The business plan looked visionary on paper, but the execution has been messy: weak governance, hostile takeovers, endless culture wars. Humanity: the original high-burn-rate startup.
That thought hit me hard this year as I wrapped up the Clean Tech Open 2025 with my cousin Ari. We were in the Big Apple this week pitching his idea for scaling ground-sourced heat pumps, a way to slash HVAC costs and keep the planet from choking on its own exhaust. We didn’t “win” the contest, but as the oldest guys in the Clean Tech 2025 cohort, we were floored by the energy of the younger founders. Twenty- and thirty-somethings building real things, launching real ventures, all with the audacity that they can help save the planet from us. Their optimism was humbling. And contagious.
It made me think: creation itself was God’s startup. Year One: raise the seed round (let there be light). Year Two: expand the total addressable market to new verticals (seas, skies, animals). Day Six: hire humans, (oops) big f-ing mistake. Ever since, we’ve been the problem employees, bickering in Slack channels, sabotaging projects, running smear campaigns against one another in the press. If God were a venture capitalist, She’d have fired the founders centuries ago. Instead, we limp along, pivoting desperately, hoping not to get delisted from existence.
And boy, do we need a pivot now. Antisemitism is back not just with a vengeance, but with a social media strategy. It’s viral, algorithm-boosted, and influencer-approved. Old tropes got a TikTok makeover, and suddenly your kid’s “For You Page” is serving up Protocols of the Elders of Zion clips between cat videos. We wanted “Never Again.” What we got was “Again, But Make It Trendy,” with better SEO and even better marketing.
Israel too has pivoted, though not in ways that make us cheer. From “Start-Up Nation” to Nut-and-Yahoo’s latest vision, “Super Sparta,” admired more for its firepower than for its brainpower. Israel is edging from miracle brand to pariah stock. What was supposed to be the ultimate insurance policy of Jewish history is now a magnet for boycotts, sanctions, and diplomatic isolation. The dream was normalcy; the reality is perpetual crisis management where it’s also become the world’s favorite excuse to cancel Jews all over again.
And then, looming like an orange mushroom cloud, is Trump: the “revenge tour” candidate turned twice-elected chaos muppet. His business model is grievance, and he’s franchising it nationwide. Free speech, political norms, the rule of law: they’re just competitors he wants to drive out of the market. And millions are buying shares.
So yes, Rosh Hashanah feels like a startup anniversary where the champagne has gone flat, the cash burn rate is unsustainable, and the founders are fighting on the boardroom floor. God’s startup is still pivoting, 5,786 years later.
But here’s the stubbornly Jewish part: we keep showing up anyway. That’s what struck me about those Clean Tech kids. They’re not naïve; they’re relentless. They don’t see a doomed startup, they see an opportunity to rebrand, to fix the model, to keep iterating until it works. And isn’t that exactly what Rosh Hashanah is about? Not perfection, not utopia, but the courage to pivot again?
Maybe the apples and honey aren’t just saccharine symbols. They’re seed funding for hope. A way of saying: yes, the world is broken, but we’re reinvesting anyway.
So raise the glass, dip the apple, drizzle the honey. And when you say Shanah Tovah, don’t just wish for sweetness. Insist on a better pivot. Because God may have been the original founder, but it’s on us—the stubborn interns, the late-stage co-founders, the reluctant CEOs of history—to keep the startup alive.
Pivot well everyone. Make good decisions, and be safe out there.
Brad out.
Jew News Review 