פרשת שמות
This week’s parshah discusses the beginning of the leadership of Moshe Rabenu of the Jewish people. What talents would you think are required to lead the Jewish people? Some might answer that a person would need to be a good politician. Others might say that one needs to be a good speaker. Yet we find that Moshe Rabenu possessed neither of these qualities. Moshe is referred to by the Torah as a “כבד פה וכבד לשון” – One who is heavy of mouth and lips. Parenthetically, the Chidushei Haran brings down that God deliberately chose a person who is not a good speaker so that the nations shouldn’t say that the reason people followed him to receive the torah was because he was a talented orator.
What trait is in fact attributed to Moshe, the Leader of the Jewish people? The passuk says “ויגדל משה, ויצא אל אחיו, וירא בסבלותם” – Moshe was successful in appreciating the difficult situation of his people. Rashi comments that Moshe empathized with his eyes and his heart to what his brothers were going through. The Midrash on this verse says that Moshe would go out to the field to personally witness the work his brothers were doing there and would physically aid them in their work. And if he couldn’t physically aid them, he would cry for their pitiful situation. The Midrash continues to say that specifically because he was empathetic to their plight, he merited to lead them.
I would like to explain why this Midah of empathy is so integral to a leader of the Jewish people. We know that the sole purpose of the creation of the world is that we should succeed in serving God as a nation. We see that this is true by virtue of the fact that the Torah was given to the entire nation with the condition that they would be in a state of “איש אחד ולב אחד” – “one nation and one heart”. Additionally, the verse says, “ויהי בישורון מלך בהתאסף ראשי עם” – God’s dominion is recognized when His nation gathers together. The Rabenu Yonah explains this verse to mean that each and every Jew has a responsibility to ensure that every other Jew is fulfilling God’s will.
Now that we have explained that each and every Jew has a responsibility toward the Nation as a whole, I would like to demonstrate how a Jew does not even have an existence without the rest of the nation. The Meiri proves this by explaining that Queen Esther was in no personal danger of being harmed, yet her husband Mordechai told her to attempt to help the Jewish people by going into the King’s inner chamber without being called to him. It was well known that anyone who entered the king’s chamber without an invitation was instantly put to death unless the king specified otherwise. The simple understanding of these events is that Mordechai was asking Esther to risk her life for the sake of saving the Jewish people. Yet the Meiri understood that Mordechai felt otherwise. Mordechai expressed to Esther the exact opposite! He said to her that the Jewish people themselves are in no danger whatsoever, for God will certainly find a way to save them, however if you choose not to help them, you and your father’s household will be lost forever. Why did Mordechai understand that they be lost? Just as we explained; somebody who has an opportunity to save the nation and demonstrate their concern for the people and chooses not to, ceases to exist completely.
Furthermore, we find that a person who is involved with helping the Jewish people has supernatural abilities bestowed upon him by Heaven. We see this from two places. The Verse in Vayikra says that when the Jews are doing the will of Heaven, 5 Jews will succeed in chasing away 100 of the enemy and 100 Jews will overcome 10,000. Rashi points out the obvious discrepancy in the mathematical ratio. He answers by saying that one cannot compare a few Jews performing the will of God to when many Jews fulfill the will of God simultaneously. The second proof is that when one examines the nature of the prayers in the Siddur, one can’t help but notice that all of the prayers that our sages established are in the plural form and not the singular. The Rishonim explain this phenomenon by saying that a person’s prayers are far more likely to be answered if he prays for the entire Jewish people along with himself, as opposed to only asking God for his needs. From these two points we see that each and every Jew who makes himself part of the Jewish nation as a whole receives great strength from Heaven and I would like to propose that this strength comes to a person because God knows that he needs it for the sake of the people that he is helping.
We find by a Jewish King as well that the primary personality trait which is sought after when choosing a King is his ability to understand and care for His people. The Rambam says in הלכות מלכים that when choosing a Jewish King, “one has to find an individual who is ‘kind and merciful to small and big people alike’ and who ‘is careful to respect even the smallest of people’. The Rambam also says that the King’s heart must “beat” with the rest of the people.
From the Midrash that we quoted about Moshe Rabenu and from the Rambam’s explanation of a King’s traits, we can determine which kind of person is appropriate to lead the Jewish people. Someone who is outstanding in the trait of empathy and concern for his fellow man is the only possible choice for such a grand position as “the leader” of the Jewish people. The reason for this is because just as we explained that someone who helps the Jewish people receives extraordinary strength in order to help those people, so to only one who is outstanding in his feelings for the entire Jewish people will merit having enough strength to help the entire nation.
Rav Volbe adds that one who works on this attribute is really fulfilling the known dictum to “walk in the ways of God”. He brings a verse which says that when the Jews arrived at Sinai to receive the Torah, they witnessed a peculiar vision of God standing next to a brick which Rashi explains looked similar to the ones they had used during their slavery in Egypt. From here we see that God was demonstrating empathy to what His “children” had gone through. But why was it necessary for them to see this vision specifically at Sinai? He answers that the entire concept of the Torah being given by God was an act of complete altruism and empathy for God had His treasured Torah in the Heavens and had no need to “give it away”. Yet God “understandingly” gave us the Torah because He knew that we couldn’t manage without it, and to show us that this was the case, He projected a vision of an Egyptian brick. From here we see that one of God’s main attributes is His understanding of His people and any Jew who is successful in building up this attribute of empathy is really emulating a fundamental trait of God.
I would like to conclude by saying that this Midah of caring for others is not primarily portrayed by what one does for his fellow Jew, but rather what he feels toward his friend. When Moshe Rabenu went out to help the Jews with the bricks in the field, he obviously wasn’t able to offer that much physical support, but he was able to show them that he cared. The students of R’ Avrham Grodonsky, a Mashgiach of a well known Yeshiva in Europe, once saw him get up in the middle of a family gathering, and do a little jig. When they questioned him about this bizarre behavior, he responded that a student of his was getting married in a far away town. While he clearly couldn’t travel to the wedding, he still felt that he had to celebrate his student’s Simcha in some way, so he got up and began dancing.
I found in my father’s diary after he passed away that he had a number of personal obligations which he accepted upon himself for the purposes of spiritual growth. Among them was an acceptance to treat every Jew as his own family and to attempt to help every Jew in whatever way possible and if he couldn’t help in any tangible way, to daven for the person with complete feeling and sincerity.
May we all merit growth in this trait of understanding our fellow Jew and through this, reach great heights!