Leadership
Qualities
He brought down the
wrath of Heaven on Egypt until Pharaoh agreed to let the Jewish people go. He
led them out to freedom. He parted the sea and led them through. He brought
them to the foot of Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. He guided them through
the desert for forty years. But at the last moment, when they stood poised on
the threshold of the Promised Land, his leadership came to an end. Moses passed
away without stepping a foot into the Promised Land.
Why wasn’t Moses granted
the privilege of entering the Promised Land to which he had labored so
diligently to bring the people?
We find the answer in
this week’s Torah portion. After Miriam died, the miraculous well from which
the people had slaked their thirst in the desert vanished, and they were left
without water. They maligned Moses for
taking them from the gardens of Egypt into an arid wasteland. Hashem told Moses
to assemble the people and speak to the rock, which would then give forth
water. Moses called the people together. “Listen, you rebels,” he declared
angrily. “Can water come out of this rock?” Then he struck the rock with his
staff and water flowed. But Moses had erred. Instead of speaking to the rock,
he had struck it. And for this, Hashem decreed that Moses would not enter the
Promised Land.
Let us now look for a
moment at the Torah reading of Devarim, where Moses is reviewing the events of
the previous forty years in his parting words to the Jewish people. He reminds
them of how the people had responded to the slanders spread by the spies upon
their return from the land of Canaan, and how Hashem had decreed that the
entire generation would die in the desert and only their children would enter
the Promised Land. “Hashem was also infuriated with me because of you,” Moses
concluded, “saying, `You too will not arrive there.'” It would seem, therefore,
that Moses was barred from entering the Promised Land because of the sin of the
spies, not because of the sin of striking the rock. How do we account for this
apparent contradiction?
The commentators explain
that Moses had originally been exempt from the decree barring the Jewish people
from entering the Promised Land because of the sins of the spies. As a leader
of the Jewish people, he was in a class by himself. He was not integrated into
the body of the common people. He was not driven by their motivations or
influenced by their social currents. Although he was always sensitive to their
needs, his thoughts, convictions and motivations were never controlled by the
ebb and flow of public opinion. Therefore, since he was not really one of them,
he did not have to share the unfortunate fate of the people when they erred and
sinned.
But at the incident of the
rock, Moses lost his imperviousness to public opinion. No longer aloof and
remote in his decision making, he flared at the Jewish people. “Listen, you
rebels!” he cried in anger. He allowed the people to get to him, and as a
result, he struck the rock instead of speaking to it, in disobedience of
Hashem’s command. Therefore, he no longer deserved to be considered in a class
by himself, and he shared the fate of the people who were barred from the
Promised land because of the sin of the spies.
A man once asked a great
sage for his opinion of some popular political leaders.
“They are like dogs,” he replied.
The man was puzzled. “Like dogs? Why?”
“Very simple,” said the great sage. “When a man
walks down the street with his dog, the dog always runs ahead, yapping
excitedly. But when he gets to the corner, he doesn’t know which way to turn.
So he stands and waits for his master to catch up. Once his master chooses the
new direction, the dogs is off and running once again. These leaders you
mentioned have no opinions or convictions of their own. They sniff the air to
discover in which direction the wind is blowing, and then they are off and
running. Some leaders!”
In our own lives, we are
called upon to act as leaders, whether in the broader community, our immediate
circles or simply in our own families for our children. Everything we do sets
an example for others and influences them at least to some extent. But in order
to be true leaders, we must have the courage and integrity to follow our own
convictions. We must have the fortitude to live spiritually rather than cave in
to the pressure of the fashionable materialistic trends. Despite the decadence
of our society, or perhaps because of it, there is a latent thirst for
spirituality among the people around us. If we live by our convictions, we can
have a part in bringing that thirst into the open and literally change the
world.
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