Lessons In
Leadership: Vayak’hel-Pekudei
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
March 24, 2017
When it came time for me to decide on a topic for my
rabbinic dissertation, the choice was easy.
I recognized it early on, when I was yet a first year student at Hebrew Union
College. It would be about chapters from
the Midrash—the rabbinic teachings of the first millennium—dealing with the
destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
In retrospect, I understand now why that choice was so
clear. My experience as a second generation
Holocaust survivor had prepared me. As a
child growing up in Israel, just about every adult I knew was a Holocaust survivor. Everyone I knew was trying to rebuild his or
her life, starting from scratch.
Later, as I grew older, I realized it wasn’t only true for the
people I knew personally. It was true
for the whole Jewish People—in fact, for the entire world population, Jewish
and Gentile like. World War II and its
horrors changed us forever. We had
witnessed the most terrifying cruelty, the most evil acts ever perpetrated by
humanity, and we were no longer the innocent human race we were before.
Reconstructing humanity, rebuilding civilization from the
ashes, is no simple matter.
In the Midrash, the Rabbis viewed similarly the destruction
of the Jerusalem Temple. Jerusalem was
the heart of world Jewry. Though Jewish
communities existed elsewhere, the Kingdom of Judea was the epicenter of Jewish
sovereignty. With that gone, spiritual renewal
became crucial if Judaism and the Jewish People were to survive.
Perhaps the wise rabbis, authors of the Midrash, looked to
the Exodus from Egypt as their model.
The second book of the Torah, Exodus, actually contains two parts: First comes the story of the redemption from Egyptian
slavery. But the entire second half of
the book takes place afterwards, in the Sinai wilderness. Now its focus is not on
the Hebrews as slaves, but rather as free builders of the Tent of Meeting—the
Tabernacle—the temporary temple that the Israelites carried with them during
their wanderings in the Wilderness. Instructions
and blueprints for the Tabernacle are given and repeated in minute detail. In this week’s double portion, Vayak’hel-Pekudei
(Ex. 35:1—20:38), the story comes to its conclusion with the assembly and
completion of the Tabernacle, replete with the magnificent gold menorah, the Holy
Ark of the Covenant, and the splendid tapestries woven with expensive and
colorful thread and material.
As slaves, the Israelites were not able to build or structure
their own lives. The orders came from
Pharaoh and his taskmasters. Everything was dictated: So many bricks per day,
so many buildings and storehouses every week, month and year. The kingdom of
Egypt was built by slaves, many of whom did not live to see the end of the day
in the harsh desert sun. Added to this
was the genocide we suffered at Pharaoh’s decree: With every newborn male that was thrown into
the Nile, we saw our future swept away by waves of hatred, misery and
oppression.
Rebuilding the nation was not going to be easy, but Moses
had the wisdom that this project required.
First, Moses gave us hope.
Moses reassured us that God had not forgotten us; that the time was
coming when God would fulfill the pledge made long ago, to lead us out of
slavery and take us—on eagles’ wings—to the Promised Land. With hope rekindled, we found new spirit within
us to face the future, no matter how bleak life was at the moment.
Next, Moses gave us faith.
An invisible God is not easy to believe in. All around, people were worshipping idols. Egyptian mythology is filled with fantasy
creatures that people actually believed in, half-animal, half-human creatures
that led their own lives, detached from humanity, all involved in their own
problems and mysteries. These were
images of gods and goddesses who required sacrifice—often enough human lives—to
appease their insatiable lust for power and pleasure. In fact, Pharaoh himself
was a god, which permitted him to do anything he wanted to: he could decree war
or peace; he could issue laws and appoint judges to benefit himself or anyone
else he wished to favor. He was provider
of food and water, shaper of global history. Why, he could even command life
and death!
Moses taught the Israelites a different faith. He taught us to believe in a supreme God characterized
by justice, compassion and fairness; a God before whom all human beings are
equal, and who judges all beings by set rules of what is holy and what is evil.
The God that Moses taught us about is not fickle, like those worshipped by the
Egyptians, but rather a God of consequences: to each according to his or her
own deeds.
Thirdly, along with hope and faith, Moses gave us something
to do, presenting us with a project that each individual, big or small, young
or old, could participate in. He gave us
instructions for a Tabernacle to be built with materials and goods we supplied
of our own free will, with everyone contributing of his or her talent, ability
and means. Response to this was
overwhelming—so much so, the Torah tells us, that the offerings brought forth far
exceeded the actual need.
Similarly, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the
Temple, the rabbis of the first millennium gave us hope again. They taught that the Messiah would restore
Jerusalem to its former glory and reassemble our exiled people from all corners
of the world. The rabbis reinforced our belief
in a God who was supreme to any earthbound ruler, albeit a God whose vision lay
far beyond our mortal grasp and understanding.
Like Moses, the rabbis, too, then presented us with a
building project. They instructed us to
build not one temple, but many tabernacles and temples. They showed us how to
construct houses of worship and study that would accompany us along our
journeys and which would be our spiritual homes during throughout our
wanderings in the Diaspora. They taught
us about tikkun olam, encouraging us
never to give up hope, never to stop believing, to continue offering our
free-will donations and to persist in our endeavors to turn the entire world into
a holy dwelling place for God.
Post-Holocaust, today we find ourselves in a similar
quandary. With our own eyes we have seen
the collapse of mighty empires, with new nations rising and once-oppressed
peoples re-asserting their lost identity.
In the wake of destruction, hope for a new world order, for world peace,
returned.
For the Jews, there is no greater miracle or proof of God’s
power than Israel restored, with its heart still beating in our ancient—now-rebuilt—capital,
Jerusalem.
But problems persist and abound. Waves of anti-Semitism have been cresting
both globally and locally. Israel is
again—or perhaps still—under physical, legal and moral attack by its enemies.
Tensions all over the world are rising. Global alliances are
falling apart. More countries than ever now
possess nuclear power and are intent on developing the means and technology to
use it against others. Our fragile environment
continues to be eroded by greedy corporations. Affected by climate change, entire
regions of the world are reeling from the effects of massive storms, drought
and famine, while new plagues and diseases ravage whole populations. And yet people still worship false, corrupt gods
of money, lust and power, denying responsibility, believing themselves to be beyond
reach, unaccountable for their words or behavior.
Facing enormous problems, it would behoove world leaders today
to review the lessons taught by Moses and the ancient Rabbis. Tweeting insults in the middle of the night;
denying health benefits to the most vulnerable among us; turning against the
stranger, the refugee, the impoverished; returning to past norms of prejudice
and persecution—these are not the markers of the path to the Promised Land, but
rather back to the dank and miserable past we had left behind.
Moses taught us to have faith in a just and loving God. From the rabbis we learned about tikkun olam. Throughout the ages, we
have not lost our hope to see and live in a better world.
These lessons are important to remember especially today, in
an age of uncertainty and change, an age when ethics and morality are
challenged daily by unbridled greed and corruption. The most important lesson our leaders can
internalize today is that a great leader is not recognized by the gold and
ivory with which he surrounds himself, but rather by the hope he inspires, and by
the unity and purpose he brings to his people. These are the signs of true
leadership. These are the signs of a
great civilization. May we all benefit
from these eternal lessons, so that our nation will truly once again shine as a
beacon of hope for the whole world and all its inhabitants.
© 2017 by Boaz D. Heilman
No comments:
Post a Comment