Dear ORT Friends and Leaders,
The best thing since sliced bread.
Someone said that to me the other day, and it reminded me of one of my favorite pieces of historical trivia.
In January 1943, the U.S. government banned the sale of pre-sliced bread. Yup. Really. Officials believed the measure would save steel and wax paper for the war effort. On paper, it made perfect sense. But in reality, it solved the wrong problem.
The savings were tiny. The inconvenience was enormous. Bakers struggled. Families complained. Within two months, the ban was gone.
But this isn’t really a story about bread. It’s a story about leadership.
Too often, we become very good at answering the wrong question. We measure what’s easy to measure. We optimize what’s easiest to optimize. We focus on reducing costs when we should be increasing impact.
The better question is usually something like: What problem are we really trying to solve?
That question has defined ORT for 146 years.
From our earliest vocational schools to today’s AI initiatives, ORT has never believed that education is just about classrooms, examinations, or qualifications. The real challenge has always been helping people build lives of dignity, independence, and opportunity. Technical education has never been the end goal; it’s always been the means.
Whether we’re equipping students with digital skills, supporting teachers, strengthening Jewish identity, or helping communities prepare for a rapidly changing world, our question remains the same: what problem are we really trying to solve? Good stewardship matters. Every donation entrusted to ORT deserves to be spent wisely. But wisdom isn’t simply about conserving resources. It’s about making sure we’re investing in the things that truly change lives.
As we approach Shabbat, perhaps that’s a question worth asking ourselves. Not simply What am I doing? but What problem am I really trying to solve?
Shabbat shalom,
Dov
Dov Ben-Shimon
Chief Executive Officer, World ORT
Extra points for fellow history nerds:
- The sliced bread ban lasted just two months, from January to March 1943. Public frustration was so great, and the material savings so small, that the U.S. government quietly abandoned the policy.
- Economists sometimes refer to the “cobra effect”: a reported bounty on cobras in colonial India encouraged people to breed snakes for the reward. When the scheme ended, the snakes were released, making the original problem even worse. I’m not sure every detail of the story is 100% true, but the phrase has become shorthand for policies that create perverse incentives.
- In the late nineteenth century, experts warned that rapidly growing cities would eventually drown in horse manure because they assumed transport would always depend on horses. The real solution turned out not to be better manure management, but an entirely different technology.
- One of the enduring lessons of leadership is that solving problems well begins with defining them correctly. To paraphrase management thinker Peter Drucker: there’s nothing quite so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
Shabbat shalom,
Dov
Dov Ben-Shimon
Chief Executive Officer, World ORT