Hillel and Shammai are the founding scholars of the period of the great Jewish Diaspora. Before the Romans destroyed the great Temple on the Mount above the wailing wall in Jerusalem, in the Christian year 70, the ruling Jewish organization for nearly two hundred years was the Sanhedrin, a council of the wisest 71 men. The issues that the Sanhedrin debated were the issues that the two brilliant scholars, Hillel and Shammai debated between themselves and in their respective schools.
The Christian Church was built on one phrase from Hillel who said “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do to you.” That was changed into a positive admonition, which changes the meaning into an aggressive proselytizing stance.
Hillel and Shammai laid the groundwork for the next two thousand years during which rabbi’s, local synagogues and Torah study became the fabric of Jewish life. In the second thousand years, Christianity made the Jews of Europe into outcasts and cast them into the world of commerce. When commerce became modern in the 19th Century, that brought the Jews into their current role as world leaders of modern commerce. And was central to creating Israel.
We are at a similar historic junction today. With the creation of Israel some of the worst ideas in the Jewish community came to the fore. Marxism, unionism and state ownership of industry were national Israeli values.
Communism may have played a positive role in the kibbutz movement which created cohesive local centers of power, education and military protection.
That ideology was on net harmful and carried over in Israel until the 1990’s when the leadership of Bibi Netanyahu replaced it with a pro commerce modern state infrastructure. Bibi's pro commerce policies have seen Israel become the second most productive commercial nation on the planet (the U.S. at 50 time the population and 500 times the landmass is #1). This role for Israel is most likely to be the key survival tool for the future.
Bibi also recognized the Haman like Jew hatred of President Obama and very early, he began to re-focus Israeli commerce away from America-Europe to an India-Asia world and more recently to add Africa. This is also a change of direction that will have long run positive benefits.
All in all, with the right commercial decisions, Bibi Netanyahu has been an Israeli leader in the shoes of Solomon and Moses.