This is a weekend designed for us to think about leadership. This is the weekend that we begin to read the book of Exodus, Sh’mot in Hebrew. It is also the weekend we observe Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King jr, we mark the yahrzeit of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and his birthday too, and yes, there is an inauguration as well.
In these first few chapters of the Book of Exodus, we see a lot of models of leadership. We see Miriam who hides Moses and quietly takes matters into her own hands to ensure the baby’s survival. We see Shifra and Puah who speak truth to power and enable the baby boy Israelites to be born. We see Batya, Pharaoh’s daughter who plucks Moses out of the water and takes him into the palace as her own. Perhaps she is the first foster mother. We see Tzipporah circumcising her son in order to protect him and her husband.
And of course we see Pharaoh, Moses and Aaron.
This is a story we know well. Our Haggadah retells the story and begins:
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the L‑rd, our G‑d, took us out from there with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt, then we, our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. Even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing the Torah, we would still be obligated to discuss the exodus from Egypt; and everyone who discusses the exodus from Egypt at length is praiseworthy.
Don’t worry. This is not a Simon seder who always wants to emulate the rabbis of B’nei Brak. We won’t be here until midnight.
But what does it mean for Moses to be called to go to Egypt and deliver what seems to be a simple message. “Shlach et ami. Let my people go.” He didn’t think he could do it. And he has real concerns. He doesn’t speak well. He worries that he will be killed since he himself killed the Egyptian taskmaster. And he likes his life as a shephard in Midian. Why should he go. But go he does. For 15 months we have had people, leaders, demand that Hamas, “Let my people go,” and today we stand on the cusp. Perhaps it will happen this weekend. Perhaps there will be a ceasefire and a cessation of violence. Dare we hope for peace?
G-d sends Aaron to meet Moses. To help him deliver the message to Pharaoh. In what ways are we called to meet Moses and help?
The vast majority of the portion we read today deals with the taskmasters. Our Haggadah text talks about
“. . . My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt few in number and sojourned there; but there he became a great and very populous nation. The Egyptians dealt harshly with us and oppressed us; they imposed hard labor upon us” (Deut. 26:5-6). . . . “And oppressed us,” as it is written: “They set taskmasters over them in order to oppress them with their burdens; the people of Israel built Pithom and Raamses as store cities for Pharaoh” (Ex. 1:11).
Each of us is to see ourselves as though we were slaves in Egypt, that we were brought out of Egypt with a strong hand. What did it mean, then that Pharaoh and the taskmasters oppressed us, to impose hard labor upon us? Those cruel taskmasters made us make bricks but no longer supplied the raw material, the straw and still we had to make bricks at the same rate.
While it might be good for the taskmasters, it was not good for the slaves, the worker bees. The real issue here was the taskmasters didn’t care. There was no compassion. No empathy.
We probably know how Martin Luther King was assassinated in April of 1968. Standing on the balcony of his hotel in Memphis. But why was he in Memphis at all:
On 1 February 1968, two Memphis garbage collectors, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, learn their names, were crushed to death by a malfunctioning garbage truck. Eleven days later, frustrated by the city’s response to the latest event in a long pattern of neglect and abuse of its primarily black employees, 1,300 black men from the Memphis Department of Public Works went on strike. This trike went on and on…and as we know everyone wants garbage collection. Let’s review: Hamas won that election in the Gaza Strip because they promised three things: schools, water and yes, garbage collection. King was there in Memphis to lend his support to the striking workers who were looking for dignity and compassion, safety and better working conditions.
King did not live to see a resolution of that strike, nor many of the goals the Civil Rights movement. We are still not there yet. In a famous speech the night before his death a weary King, preached about his own mortality, telling the group, “Like anybody, I would like to live a long life—longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now … I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land” (King, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop,” 222–223).
His concerns still happen in our modern world. Once when I was working for a sales lead generation firm, the owner, my boss, did not treat his employees well. One winter I got bronchitis, and my physician told me I had to take the rest of the week off. My boss’s response was to cut everyone’s sick time from four days a year to two. When one of my team members needed to go to the hospital because she couldn’t breathe, I sent her and another employee with her. He then yelled at me because I had caused us to lose two people’s productivity. There are more stories like that from there, and I didn’t last much longer, but I think about that when I read stories about Amazon warehouse or delivery workers, organizing at Starbucks, or the Imokelee tomato workers,
Don’t worry, goes the theory. They can just find another worker. They are just cogs in a wheel. Right?
Jewish workers have been at the vanguard of the organized labor movement. Perhaps hearkening all the way back to when we were slaves in Egypt. That ability to organize, Slowly over time, has resulted in things we often take for granted: safety in the workplace. The 40 hour work week, access to health care and day care. Pensions. Sick time. Labor Day itself.
https://jewishcurrents.org/a-short-history-of-jews-in-the-american-labor-movement
As we move into this new book of Exodus this year, and this new world that may not value individual worker, it behooves us to think about the leadership styles of those women of Exodus, and of Abraham Joshua Heschel whose feet were praying with Kind, and of Martin Luther King, and of Moses himeself.
What set Moses apart as a leader:
Moses didn’t want to lead. He wasn’t convinced that he had the skills. He was pretty sure he would fail. With the help of G-d, he surrounded himself with people who could help. Aaron went with him to Pharaoh to be his mouthpiece.
Here’s one description of how Moses’ style influences the business world today:
“The Bible sketches an ambitious list of leadership traits ascribed to Moses, including humility, empathy and heroism, but also patience, self-reflection, charisma and wisdom, among others. Although few can emulate all of these traits, humility is one that stands out. The Book of Numbers stresses that “Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth” (Num. 12:3). Hence, humility was clearly deemed an important trait and one that ought to be emulated by more people aspiring to lead others. After all, what is humility but the opposite of arrogance? Most people have an understandable dislike for arrogant leaders.” https://www.woolf.cam.ac.uk/blog/moses-as-a-model-for-effective-leadership
Moses took care of his frustrating, kvetching, complaining people. With a great deal of what we might call chutzpah, this man with a speech impediment, successfully argued with G-d to preserve them.
But perhaps the most important thing we learn is that Moses was humble.
Now Moses himself was very humble, more so than any other human being on earth. (Numbers 12 : 3)
We are told at the end of Deuteronomy, “Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom יהוה singled out, face to face,” (Deut 34:10)
Our job: Be like Moses and Heschel and King.