Over the next decade his pursuit of the deal that would make his fortune took him from Siberia to Nepal, with projects ranging from real estate to green energy. In his first two years, he made nearly $2 million (around £1.5 million). But as time went on, schemes in which he had invested a great deal of time and energy – “You need to kiss ten frogs to get one prince” – failed to fructify. He ran up credit card debts and came to realise his gold rush was to the neglect of his wife and family. If his book is about the ups and downs of entrepreneurial ambition, it is also a confessional, about losing his spiritual balance.
“When I left working for Aish Hatorah and went into business, I’d say I was suffering at that point from a sense of grandiosity and lacking a real understanding of how truly difficult it is to be really successful, to be in the top one per cent,” he reflected in an interview.
"I said I don’t want to raise a million dollars, I want to give away a million dollars a year. I don’t define that as my measuring bar for success any more.
"I think at that point I was caught up in the success treadmill, with a very different definition of what truly defines a successful human being.”
Irwin Katsof with Jerry Seinfeld[Missing Credit]
It might be thought his rabbinic training would have given him the principles to live by. But he was candid in acknowledging, “I had the concepts but it’s a very different thing to integrate the ideas… I had the knowledge, I didn’t have the wisdom.”
In the first flush of success, “I wasn’t responsible. I was spending way over my means… I had all the toys that I thought I wanted but I realised it wasn’t giving me true deep happiness. I was not connected in a deep way to my soul, to my essence, to God, to the Jewish people.”
But the compulsion that for a while drove him to equate success with wealth he believes is indicative of a wider problem. “You are not the measure of your bank account, that does not reflect who you are and your contribution, your success in life. I think that’s become a very deeply rooted illness in our society today. It is more important to be a good person, to show up in the fullness of your humanity in all your relationships, whether you are successful financially or not.
“Unfortunately I’d say the majority of young adults today – and even older adults – feel that a hallmark of their success in life is their net worth.”
And he added: “I’ve never met a person on their deathbed who’d wished they had spent another two hours at the office.”
But he never lost the belief that behind his business vicissitudes lay a guiding providential hand. “The rollercoaster I took has made me much more compassionate, much more giving and generous with my time and my resources,” he said.
The Bible’s repeated reminders to remember our enslavement in Egypt was “so that when you have gone through a very difficult experience… if you come out on the other side, you remember how vulnerable you felt at those times. And ideally that will help you feel compassion for those less fortunate.
“I feel… important lessons that I learned and shared in Living Dangerously gives me much more compassion with people struggling to make a living.”
Irwin Katsof with Bill Clinton[Missing Credit]
Katsof did not grow up Orthodox. From a traditional family in Montreal, he was travelling after university and had been toying with going to India when he instead opted for Israel, where he tried an Aish yeshivah; there he was drawn to its charismatic founder Rabbi Noah Weinberg.
Although the penny may have dropped that he was not destined for riches, he did not leave the business world altogether and for many years has run trade missions for the United States Department of Commerce. An investment in bitcoin also enabled him to buy a second home in Jerusalem.
In his search to recover his mental ballast, over the past 10 years or so he has tried different therapies – “I take the approach there is hochmah, wisdom, in all traditions in the world” – obtained a masters in transpersonal psychology and even tried psychoactive substances such as ayahuasca under expert supervision. He even once inhaled bufo (derived from a desert toad), where he experienced a “state of bliss” and felt “at one with God”.
Now 71, the father of eight and grandfather of 21, who recently celebrated the birth of a great-grandchild, he has learned to find pleasure in “the little moments of life – from a smile, from a sunrise, a sunset, from connection with your wife, your child, your grandchild, those are the real deeper pleasures”.
His daily routine includes mindfulness practice and reading the writings of Lord Sacks.
“I feel I am a better human being for what I have gone through,” he said. “I miss some of those experiences, but I don’t regret the path I took.”
www.irwinkatsof.com
