Shari Arison, the head of Bank HaPoalim and the richest woman in the Mideast, has written a new book Birth-When the Spiritual and the Material Come Together (in Hebrew) about the key to happiness. In an interview with Israel National News, she says that the secret to happiness is to treat others well, regardless of material wealth.



Email readers: click here to see interview with Shari Arison

Arison begins her book, to be released this week by Kinneret Zmora Bitan Dvir Publishing House, with her premise that the world is “collapsing” around us because of broad-based greed, on a personal, community and corporate level. She defines greed as not only financial, but also the mismanagement of the environment and the breakdown of values in society.

“For too long, humanity has acted with an outrageous lack of responsibility. We wanted everything for ourselves, greed really. We failed to look at the overall picture and did not take into consideration those with whom we share the world,” she writes. “As a result, we are facing a new world order, in which conventional divisions between the economic, business, material and spiritual will no longer be valid; a world in which the spirit and the material come together.”

She details her own journeys, both spiritually and in business, that led to the repositioning of the Arison Group as an enterprise focused on balancing profit with a strong commitment to the environment, sustainable practices, and philanthropic giving.

“Change is not in the hands of government, not in the hands of a leader or guru, and not in the hands of the powerful or wealthy. It is in our hands, the hands of each and every one of us,” she says.



 “I believe my model will enable individuals, corporations and perhaps countries to transform the collapse into change, to transform the crisis into an opportunity, and to bring together the spiritual and material, and to deliver the future from a combination of the two,” she adds.

Arison discusses in the video her philosophy, her new book, spirituality, and how Judaism and Israel have shaped her world view.