Students from six countries participated in this year’s Golden Leaves Program from the Shehebar Sephardic Center. Now in its fourth year, the young men study in China and learn to be entrepreneurs, all in a Torah-observant Jewish environment. The class of students represented Venezuela, Mexico, Spain, United States, Panama and Brazil.
Based in Guangzhou, the participants explored production ideas in the local wholesale markets. They conducted research about products they found interesting and visited factories to see how items were produced.
After this exploratory phase, students began creating their own business plans. They met with several prominent business leaders, learned Mandarin and studied Torah each day. They also had seminars on time management, how to conduct a job interview, resume writing, and other important workshops.
The Golden Leaves group visited five Jewish communities in different cities—Chabad Yiwu, Chabad Shenzhen, the JCC community in Shanghai, The Kehilat Zion community in Hong Kong, and the Meir Ha Haim community in Guangzhou
While visiting and being part of these communities, the students learned how to be proactive, and the importance of the Jewish community in a place where there are not a lot of Jews—such as in China. They actively participated in the leading and reading of the Torah in each community.
An amazing highlight of the program was listening to Nadav Cohen, the Israeli Consul in Guanzghou, explain about the relationship between China and Israel and the projects they are building together.
Over 100 people attended a business accelerator workshop which aims to develop relationships between Israeli and Chinese start ups. The workshop featured Rafael Genis, founder of Genis & Genius LTD. Three of the students sat on a panel with three Chinese entrepreneurs, who had built companies worth more than $1 billion. Attendees asked general questions. Many of the participants were more interested in the answers from the Golden Leaves participants because they were Jewish.
On that day the young men met a few of the biggest players in the Shenzhen real estate industry and they were very excited to meet the students. In the Chinese culture they observe the Jews and Israel as the smartest people in the world, they really like and enjoy learning from them.
Golden Leaves Institute is the leading Jewish educational institution teaching Torah and training in business.q
