February 3, 2006
by Andrew Silow-Carroll
I met Gidi Grinstein at LimmudNY, and write about him this week. He's CEO and founder of the Re’ut (“Vision”) Institute, a two-year-old Israeli think-tank that is helping a growing list of government agencies question their basic premises, list the long-term implications of various courses of action, and then move quickly toward decisions that are informed and relevant.
Grinstein’s ability to frame Israel’s challenges in the language of policy consulting — “analysis-base,” “infrastructure mode,” “systemic overview” — is both comforting and disarming. Grinstein wows audiences and attracts American donors by offering the hope that there is no problem that cannot be broken down into a series of policy options. Critics may find the approach naïve, even delusional.
But I can't give up the hope that eventually, cool minds like Grinstein's will prevail in the Wild, Wild Mid East:
And yet, even if Re’ut’s is a language and approach learned at Harvard, it speaks to a certain Jewish capacity for finding hope in reason, and against awful odds.TrackBack