08 Jul Unlocking Greatness, Inspiring Action: An Exclusive Interview with Charlie Harary
Charlie Harary is driven by the belief that the potential for greatness resides within every person. By integrating wisdom found in science, psychology, and spirituality, each person can live a more fulfilling life and, in turn, impact the world.
Leveraging his unique expertise on personal success and social impact, Charlie has become a sought after speaker featured each year by almost 100 different organizations, businesses, conventions, and academic institutions. He has created TV media and online video campaigns that have inspired hundreds of thousands of people across the globe.
The principles Charlie shares are not simply theory. They are the same principles he has used to successfully pursue his own impact in the world. He is recognized as a leading social entrepreneur and shares strategies for personal achievement and organizational excellence as a Clinical Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship at the Syms School of Business in Yeshiva University.
As Charlie has expanded his message of personal success to radio, television, web, and print media, his one goal remains the same: to reinvigorate his audience with a bold vision of their potential and lay out a clear path to achieve it. With his rare blend of passion, professional expertise, academic rigor, and spiritual wisdom, Charlie has a proven track record of inspiring people from every background.
Charlie co-founded H3 & Company, a multimillion dollar venture capital and advisory firm. Previously, he was the First Vice President and legal counsel at RXR Realty, a billion dollar real estate firm in New York. Prior to that, Charlie worked as an associate at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Davis Polk & Wardwell. Charlie received his law degree from Columbia University where he was awarded the James Kent Scholar and the Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar.
Before the summer, Charlie sat down with Ari Hirsch of The Country Vues to discuss numerous hot topics within the Jewish community at large. This week we will feature Charlie’s responses to the topics about common problems within Judaism, Jewish marriage, and children & technology. Next week’s article will feature his thoughts on “sinas chinam” (baseless hatred), happiness, and what we all want most. We hope that you will enjoy the articles both philosophically and practically.
COMMON PROBLEMS
The Country Vues (TCV): What is the most common problem people approach you about?
Charlie Harary (CH): The most common problem people approach me about is the lack of meaning. People want meaning in their lives. This is in regard to Judaism, life, social interactions, friendships. I think that what is happening in today’s day and age is that we are so overwhelmed with the amount of things that have to get done, that it leaves us asking ourselves, “Why?” There’s a general lack of understanding of why one does the things that he/she does, which leads to a lack of enjoying life. As the world becomes more interconnected and everyone seems to be growing and accomplishing and doing and having, the media tells us about all these things “we need.” The bar continues to be raised in terms of what will make me happy, and we are still struggling with the basic meaning of what it’s worth. What am I doing this for? I think that’s the biggest issue: We don’t have enough time to go deeper. And as a result, everything starts to lose its “ta’am” (meaning).
GOALS IN LIFE
TCV: What is everyone’s goal in life?
CH: The goal in life is to try to see past the surface. With everything you do in life, you have to ask yourself, “How? and Why?” The “why” often gets dropped and our goal should be to understand one layer beneath the surface.
CHILDREN &
TECHNOLOGY
TCV: Children and Technology: Embrace it or hide it?
CH: Children and technology is like children and viruses. Technology is a very complex topic in the Jewish community, but it is part of who we are. It isn’t a subject; it’s a medium and that medium is going to change, and has already changed, society. We are not going to be able to survive without technology. The only question is how to teach your children to deal with it. The way I approach it is to approach it like anything that has potential dangers. You vaccinate it- meaning you give a little bit of it in the right environment and in the right time. You slowly allow the person to adapt to the use of something in a proper environment. So if a child has no access to anything, unless he’s living in another part of the world, he is going to access it at some point and then he’s not going to have any tools on how to access it properly. And if a child is given unfettered access too young, then he’s going to go crazy. So the real challenge as the parent is to understand each child and figure out “How do I introduce my child to technology and at what level and at what age and at what form? How do I train my child to navigate through this amazing resource?” It can bring me in contact with amazing information, but at the same time it can bring me in contact with the lowest forms of humanity. So how do I navigate that? What can I do to make sure that when my children go out into the world, they’ll go out as strong, proud Jews? Technology makes the world bigger in a click, so it accelerates the process, but it’s the same level of thinking that it’s always been. What can I do now so that when my child goes out into the world he will want what I want? Slowly introduce the areas they need in a way that will make them feel comfortable and then explain to them the dangers so they can make good choices on their own.
Social media is the same thing. It can be something where great things happen: People connect with it to say tehilim, to learn with it. But it can also be a horrible disaster. People are losing their self –images on it. There are people who don’t have pride in life anymore. There are people who cannot exist without documenting their lives and posting it on social media. They can’t see their children dressed for Shabbos and just enjoy their children and how they look without posting it and having their friends say “so cute, so cute- smiley face, smiley face.” So on the one hand, it’s great that mom can see her children and grandchildren look beautiful on Shabbos and Yom Tov. On the other hand, if the reason you’re doing it is because you need everyones opinion on how beautiful your children are, then there’s a little bit of a problem. Like everything in life, it’s balance. It’s about being able to use a tool that will build you and not knock you down. Any real thing that Hashem gives us has to be used in a smart way and not let it ruin you. The ability to have parents who can navigate their children through that is what parenting is really all about. THE JEWISH MARRIAGE
TCV: What is the number one problem in the Jewish marriage?
CH: Marriage is all about giving and we live in a world that trains us to take. The ability to break that is very difficult and is getting even more difficult. All the messages you are getting from around the world is: Take, have, go, accomplish. The whole essence of marriage is: Give. Give. Give. There’s a huge tension there. Many times that tension is from within the Jewish community. We expect someone else to support us and be behind us. As a result, it’s much harder today to totally give over yourself and just try to understand another person and take care of that person. There’s a real interest in trying to make sure that I’m okay, that I’m being taken care of. Marriage is the exact opposite of that. It is a necessity for both parties not to expect from each other but to give to each other. There’s a lot of pressure in all areas of life: learning, working, children. Life is getting more complex, or at least seemingly more complex. A lot of marriages need to re-shift and refocus, which is difficult because the world is telling us something else.
”SINAS CHINAM”
The Country Vues (TCV): How do we attack “sinas chinam”, obviously a major problem since the beginning of time?
Charlie Harary (CH): “Sinas chinam” is a process of consciousness. We are all self-conscious in terms of our relationship to G-d. We don’t fully appreciate two things: 1) That Hkb’h loves us unconditionally. We don’t do mitzvos to get His love. We have G-d’s love. We do mitzvos because He knows a little bit more than we do about how to run the world and what’s good for us and we trust and we believe in Him. When we engage in Torah and mitzvos in Judaism and we don’t know what we’re doing and we think, If I do enough stuff He’s going to love me, or be mad at me or be happy with me instead of thinking: This is a way for me to connect to my true essence, then we start to gauge success and failure based upon the things that we see people are doing. So “sinas chinam” comes from my inability to understand who you are because I’m trying to judge you and I don’t know where I am. I’m trying to figure myself out based on you; I’m comparing myself, Jewishly, to you, to figure out where I stand. The biggest mistake is feeling like we’re separate people. But that’s not true. We are NOT separate. The core of our soul is one people. We don’t define our Judaism based upon how much more I do than you because I don’t know you. The challenge we have is to feel like a good Jew without anything to compare myself. Most of what we’re doing in life is comparative analysis. How much money do you have? It depends. If you’re living in one neighborhood and make a certain amount of money, you’re rich. If you live in another neighborhood and make that same amount, you have nothing. So everything we’re doing in life is gearing us towards this comparative analysis. It stems from this sense that I don’t know my connection to G-d. It’s a comparison, but really there is no comparison. All we really have is to try to grow better every day. So if we stop trying to judge people and compare ourselves to what’s around us, then we’ll be able to accept people for who they are. Then I won’t be threatened by you and I can accept you for who you are. I can’t tell if your one mitzvah is bigger because I’m not in your background and I have no clue what’s going on inside you. That level of acceptance and stopping to judge is the first step to stopping “sinas chinam”. If we would just stop comparing ourselves to other people and accept people for who they are, that is a major deal. That requires us to feel confident that HKB”H loves us. So first and foremost “sinas chinam” comes from our own self-consciousness and our ability to compare.
Secondly, we don’t fully appreciate just how much HKB”H hates “sinas chinam”. Somehow during our evolution as a Jewish people, “achdus” didn’t carry the weight of other mitzvos and still doesn’t carry as much weight in our lives as it should. That’s a huge mistake. I don’t know what happened along the way, but somehow “sinas chinam” just didn’t make it in terms of the line-up of important mitzvos. I wouldn’t eat a cheeseburger, but somehow screaming at someone in public or talking about them behind their back, that’s okay. If people understood what achdus and the lack of achdus is doing, they would tremble more about anger, and yelling, and speaking lashon hara than from eating a cheeseburger. I think there’s a lack of appreciation because it’s not as tangible; it’s emotional. You need to sit back and fully appreciate the damage that is done with “sinas chinam”.
TCV: Eizehu ashir hasmeach b’chelko- How does one become happy with what they have?
CH: It’s about training yourself to live in the present. That’s the most important thing in the world. The ability to have happiness is to enjoy what’s in front of you. Whether or not you’re in the greatest place or an average place, all you really have is what’s right in front of you. All anyone really has is six inches in front of your face. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. Yesterday, yesterday, yesterday is mostly the workings of the yetzer hara to pull us away from the moment we’re in now so that we don’t fully enjoy and don’t fully act properly in it. Simcha is a choice. The world tries to make us believe that it’s an outcome. All the messages we get from the world, even from our own community, is that happiness is the outcome of something. Happiness is a perspective on how you see the world and how you see things in it. When you are engaged in any particular moment, what’s in that moment is a tremendous amount of good, even if it’s a hard moment, but especially if it’s not a hard moment. But the only way you can enjoy that good is if you’re there, fully there. Kids eat their dessert the way we should live our lives. Kids are fully focused on that ice cream. There is nothing else going on when they are eating that ice cream. Hashem gives us this complex, beautiful, awesome, not normal world. There are so many parts of our lives that are amazing, but because we are conditioned to want more and because we are conditioned to consume, we can’t slow down and actually be in any moment. And as a result, we can’t fully enjoy it. It’s a choice, it’s a skill. Wealth isn’t anything. Money doesn’t have any real value; it has relative value. During the times of the churban, very rich people couldn’t even buy bread because money itself isn’t worth anything. All money can do is buy you something that will make you happy. But what if you don’t know how to be happy? What if it’s always the next thing? Then you’ll never be happy. Studies show that children who are born to privilege are of the most depressed demographics in the world. People born to privilege actually have the hardest time being happy because they’re conditioned to always have, have, have and can never fully appreciate what they actually do have. So simcha is a choice and the ability to be happy is to be able to understand that choice. It’s the simcha b’chelko- It’s in this moment of where I am and what I have. That sort of happiness allows a person to be just as happy in this moment as any other moment. It’s one of the most important things as a yid, which has been forgotten. The ability to have simcha is to connect to who you are. We have sort of lost that a little bit, but we need to get back to it.
WHAT DO WE WANT?
TCV: What do we all want most in life?
CH: I think we want to feel like our lives are great and we’re great. That we’re achieving our potential and that we are accomplishing what we are here to accomplish. Our soul is cut from G-d’s image, meaning that it is beyond this world. Any time that we define success based on something in this world, it feels like it’s empty. What we really all want is to know deep down that we are connected to something more and something bigger in our lives than just daily living. That’s what greatness is. Greatness is transcending your life into your spirituality. That’s why it’s possible for people who have everything physical to still be depressed. We are all on this earth because we are given a choice: Physical or spiritual. The whole goal of man from the beginning of time, from Adam Harishon, is to choose ruchnius over gashmius. We’re all doing the same thing, which is facing two choices at every moment. The first choice is spirituality, which is “us,” “we,” G-d,” “depth,” “meaning,” “purposefulness.” The second choice is physical, which is “me,” “body,” and all that stuff. Every time we choose spiritual, and I don’t just mean G-d, I mean doing the right thing, being a good person, we feel closer to who we are deep down. And what we all want is to get closer to that place and to feel like we are living with our soul.
Charlie Harary will be speaking live this summer at Regency Estates and Camp Kaylie on July 15th. Pick up a copy of last week’s Country Vues for the first part of Ari Hirsch’s exclusive interview with Charlie Harary.