10 Israelis Who Perfectly Personify the Art of 'Chutzpah'

From academia to culinary arts, film & TV to fashion, these Israelis will teach you a thing or two about "spiritual audacity."

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Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis distinguished the meaning of chutzpah as stubbornness and contrariness from what he calls a tradition of “spiritual audacity” or in Hebrew, chutzpah klapei shmaya.

“We are conventionally raised to believe that Jewish faith demands unwavering obedience to the law and the law-giver,” Schulweis, of blessed memory, said. “That attitude tends to cultivate a temperament of compliance and passivity; for conventional thinking, ‘talking back to God’ smacks of heresy. But a significant genre of religious, moral, and spiritual audacity toward the divine authority finds a place of honor in Jewish religious thought.”

This “spiritual audacity” is ever-present in Israel, a society embedded with Jewish cultures and their history. In fact, it’s the reason why many Israelis have found success, both in Israel and across the world.

Here are 10 of these Israelis and their stories of success: