I am very excited for the opportunity to share words of Torah with you. Each week, in this spot, I look to share an idea I've found that speaks to me and that I think will resonate with you as well. This week, I share with you an excerpt from an article by Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Z"L entitled ‘Inspiring Greatness in Others', noting Moshe's greatest strength as a leader - his humility.
[...] Until now we have seen the outer Moses, worker of miracles, mouthpiece of the Divine word, unafraid to confront Pharaoh on the one hand, his own people on the other, the man who shattered the tablets engraved by God himself and who challenged Him to forgive His people, "and if not, blot me out of the book You have written" (Exodus 32:32). This is the public Moses, a figure of heroic strength. [...] Now Moses' own brother and sister, Aaron and Miriam, start disparaging him. The cause of their complaint (the "Ethiopian woman" he had taken as wife) is not clear and there are many interpretations. The point, though, is that for Moses, this is the "Et tu Brute?" moment. He has been betrayed, or at least slandered, by those closest to him. Yet Moses is unaffected. It is here that the Torah makes its great statement: "Now the man Moses was very humble, more so than any other man on the face of the earth" (Numbers 12:3).
This is a novum in history. The idea that a leader's highest virtue is humility must have seemed absurd, almost self-contradictory, in the ancient world. Leaders were proud, magnificent, distinguished by their dress, appearance and regal manner. They built temples in their own honor. They had triumphant inscriptions engraved for posterity. Their role was not to serve but to be served. Everyone else was expected to be humble, not they. Humility and majesty could not coexist. In Judaism, this entire configuration was overturned. Leaders were to serve, not to be served. Moses' highest accolade was to be called eved Hashem, God's servant. Only one other person, Joshua, his successor, earns this title in the Bible. The architectural symbolism of the two great empires of the ancient world, the Mesopotamian ziggurat (the "tower of Babel") and the pyramids of Egypt, visually represented a hierarchical society, broad at the base, narrow at the top. The Jewish symbol, the menorah, was the opposite, broad at the top, narrow at the base, as if to say that in Judaism the leader serves the people, not vice versa. Moses' first response to God's call at the burning bush was one of humility: "Who am I to lead?" (Exodus 3:11). It was precisely this humility that qualified him to lead.
[...] We now understand what humility is. It is not self-abasement. C. S. Lewis put it best: humility, he said, is not thinking less of yourself. It is thinking of yourself less. True humility means silencing the "I." For genuinely humble people, it is God, and other people and principle that matter, not me. As it was once said of a great religious leader, "He was a man who took God so seriously that he didn't have to take himself seriously at all." "Rabbi Yochanan said, Wherever you find the greatness of the Holy One, blessed be He, there you find His humility."[Megillah 31a] Greatness is humility, for God and for those who seek to walk in His ways. It is also the greatest single source of strength, for if we do not think about the "I," we cannot be injured by those who criticize or demean us. They are shooting at a target that no longer exists.
[...] Those who have humility are open to things greater than themselves while those who lack it are not. That is why those who lack it make you feel small while those who have it make you feel enlarged. Their humility inspires greatness in others.
Have a Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Davies
Rabbi@SOICherryHill.org
