Leadership - Rwanda

Seven Principles of Jewish Leadership in the sources - Based on Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks zt"l book Lessons in Leadership:

1. Leadership is Service
2. Leadership begins by taking responsibility
3. Leadership is vision-driven
4. The Highest Form of Leadership is Teaching
5. A Leader Must Have Faith in the People they Lead
6. Leaders Need a Sense of Timing and Pace
7. We are all summoned to the task

1. Leadership is Service

2. Leadership begins by taking responsibility

The most famous buildings in the ancient world were the Mesopotamian ziggurats and Egyptian pyramids. These were more than just buildings. They were statements in stone of a hierarchical social order. They were wide at the base and narrow at the top. At the top was the king or pharaoh – at the point, so it was believed, where heaven and earth met. Beneath was a series of elites, and beneath them the labouring masses…

Judaism is a protest against this kind of hierarchy. Every human being, not just the king, is in the image and likeness of God. Therefore no one is entitled to rule over any other without his or her assent…

In a social order in which everyone has equal dignity in the eyes of Heaven, a leader does not stand above the people. He serves the people, and he serves God. The great symbol of biblical Israel, the Menorah, is an inverted pyramid or ziggurat, broad at the top, narrow at the base. The greatest leader is therefore the most humble. “Moses was very humble, more so than anyone else on earth” (Num. 12:3). The name given to this is servant leadership and its origin is in the Torah.

1. During which part of Moses’ career can we find these key verses describing his leadership style (clue – which books from Tanach are they from)?
2. Were there any earlier clues to his leadership approach during the process of his election to leadership? Are these more impressive sources? Why?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership as service?

It took a Moses to act. But that is what makes a leader. A leader is one who takes responsibility. Leadership is born when we become active rather than passive, when we do not wait for someone else to act because perhaps there is no one else – at least not here, not now. When bad things happen, some avert their eyes. Some wait for others to act. Some blame others for failing to act. Some simply complain. But there are people who say, “If something is wrong, let me be among the first to put it right.” They are the leaders. They are the ones who make a difference in their lifetimes. They are the ones who make ours a better world.

Many of the great religions and civilisations are based on acceptance. If there is violence, suffering, poverty, and pain in the world, then that is the way the world is. Or that is the will of God. Or that is the nature of nature itself. All will be well in the World to Come.

Judaism was and remains the world’s great religion of protest. The heroes of faith did not accept; they protested. They were willing to confront God Himself. Abraham said, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” (Gen. 18:25). Moses said, “Why have You done evil to this people?” (Ex. 5:22). Jeremiah said, “Why are the wicked at ease?” (Jer. 12:1). That is how God wants us to respond. Judaism is God’s call to human responsibility. The highest achievement is to become God’s partner in the work of creation.

1. What leadership failures can you see in the stories of Adam and Chava, Kain and Hevel, and Noach?
2. What are the differences in leadership style between Noach and Avraham? Which model does Moses fit in to?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?

3. Leadership is vision-driven

Great leaders, be they CEOs or simply parents, have the ability to connect a large vision with highly specific details. Without the vision, the details are merely tiresome… Great leaders communicate a vision. But they are also painstaking, even perfectionists, when it comes to the details… So the Torah is a unique combination of nomos and narrative, history and law, the formative experiences of a nation and the way that nation sought to live its collective life so as never to forget the lessons it learned along the way. It brings together vision and detail in a way that has never been surpassed.

That is how we must lead if we want people to come with us, giving of their best. There must be a vision to inspire us, telling us why we should do what we are asked to do. There must be a narrative: this is what happened, this is who we are, and this is why the vision is so important to us. Then there must be the law, the code, the fastidious attention to detail, that allow us to translate vision into reality and turn the pain of the past into the blessings of the future. That extraordinary combination, to be found in almost no other law code, is what gives Torah its enduring power. It is a model for all who seek to lead people to greatness.

1. What specific vision was Moses given when he was chosen to lead? How was this vision expanded upon for the people at Sinai?
2. What do you think is more important to leadership, the grand vision or the small details?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?

4. The Highest Form of Leadership is Teaching

It was one of the great moments of personal transformation, and it changed not only Moses but our very conception of leadership itself.

By the end of the book of Numbers, Moses’ career as a leader seemed to have come to its end. He had appointed his successor, Joshua, and it would be Joshua, not Moses, who would lead the people across the Jordan into the Promised Land. Moses seemed to have achieved everything he was destined to achieve. For him there would be no more battles to fight, no more miracles to perform, no more prayers to say on behalf of the people.

It is what Moses did next that bears the mark of greatness. For the last month of his life he assembled the people and delivered the series of addresses we know as the book of Deuteronomy or Devarim, literally “words.” In them, he reviewed the people’s past and foresaw their future. He gave them laws. Some he had given them before but in a different form. Others were new; he had waited to announce them until the people were about to enter the land. Linking all these details of law and history into a single overarching vision, he taught the people to see themselves as an am kadosh, a holy people, the only people whose sovereign and lawgiver was God Himself…

In the last month of his life Moses ceased to be the liberator, the miracle-worker, and redeemer, and became instead Moshe Rabbenu, “Moses, our teacher.” He was the first example in history of a leadership type in which Jews have excelled: the leader as teacher…

Teachers are the unacknowledged builders of the future, and if a leader seeks to make lasting change, they must follow in the footsteps of Moses and become an educator. The leader as teacher – using influence rather than power, spiritual and intellectual authority rather than coercive force – was one of the greatest contributions Judaism ever made to the moral horizons of humankind. This can be seen most clearly in the book of Deuteronomy, when Moses, for the last month of his life, summoned the next generation and taught it laws and lessons that would survive, and inspire, as long as there are human beings on earth.

1. Which three leadership models are found in these verses and what is the common theme running through them?
2. Are all leaders teachers? Are all teachers leaders?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?

5. A Leader Must Have Faith in the People they Lead

One of the fundamental tasks of any leader from President to parent is to give people a sense of confidence – in themselves, in the group of which they are a part, and in the mission itself. A leader must have faith in the people they lead, and they must inspire that faith in them. As Rosabeth Moss Kanter of the Harvard Business School writes in her book Confidence, “Leadership is not about the leader, it is about how they build the confidence of everyone else.” Confidence, by the way, is

Latin for “having faith together.”

The truth is that in no small measure, a law of self-fulfilling prophecy applies in the human arena. Those who say, “We cannot do it” are probably right, as are those who say, “We can.” If you lack confidence you will lose. If you have it – solid, justified confidence based on preparation and past performance – you will win. Not always, but often enough to triumph over setbacks and failures.

1. Why is it important for a leader to have faith in her/his followers?
2. Can you think of other times Moses displayed a lack of faith in the people?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?

6. Leaders Need a Sense of Timing and Pace

There is an interpretation – one I only discovered through the life of leadership itself. A leader must indeed lead from the front. But they must also understand the pace at which people can go. Leadership is not effective if leaders are so far ahead of those they lead that when they turn their heads round, they discover that there is no one following. Leaders must go out in front and come back in front. But they must also “lead the people out and bring them back,” meaning, they must take people with them. They must make sure that the people are keeping up with them. They must pace the challenge.

Moses discovered this through the episode of the spies. He was ready to enter the Promised Land. So were two of the spies, Joshua and Caleb. But the rest of the people were not, including ten of the spies. For them it was too much, too soon. The spies raised doubts. The people despaired. Some regretted the fact that they had ever left Egypt. We recall Maimonides’ explanation in The Guide for the Perplexed that human nature changes at best gradually, never suddenly. It proved too much to expect that a generation born in slavery would be able to fight the battle of freedom. It would take forty years – an entire generation. Their children, born in freedom and toughened by the experience of the desert, would have the strength their parents lacked.

Recall, though, what happened next. No sooner had Moses told the people of the forty-year delay than they regretted their reaction and wanted to begin the conquest of the land immediately. Moses warned them it would end in disaster, but they refused to listen:

Early the next morning, [the people] began climbing towards the top of the hill, declaring, “We are now ready! We shall go forwards to the place that God described. We [admit that] we were mistaken.” “Why are you going against God’s word?” said Moses. “It will not work! Do not proceed; God is not with you. Do not be killed by your enemies!”…[But the people] defiantly climbed towards the top of the hill, though neither the Ark of God’s covenant nor Moses moved from the camp. The Amalekites and Canaanites who lived in that hill country came down and defeated [the Israelites], pursuing them with crushing force all the way to Hormah. (Num. 14:40–45)

First the people thought the conquest could not be done at all, then they thought it could be done immediately. What they lacked was a sense of pace and timing. They failed to understand how much preparation, mental and physical, would be needed. It was this experience, I suspect, that lay behind Moses’ twofold request. He asked God to appoint a successor who would lead from the front, but who would also understand that he had to go at a speed at which the people could keep up with him.

1. What happens if a leader is too far ahead of his time?
2. Why do people need time?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?

7. We are all summoned to the task

Prior to the Revelation at Mount Sinai, God commands Moses to propose a covenant with the Israelites. In the course of this, God articulates what is in effect the mission statement of the Jewish people (Ex. 19:4–6). This is a very striking statement. Every nation had its priests. In the book of Genesis, we encounter Melchizedek, Abraham’s contemporary, described as “a priest of the most high God” (Gen. 14:18). The story of Joseph mentions the Egyptian priests, whose land was not nationalised during the famine (47:22). Yitro was a Midianite priest. In the ancient world there was nothing distinctive about priesthood. Every nation had its priests and holy men. What was distinctive about Israel was that every one of its members was to be a priest; each of its citizens was called on to be holy…

Yet in what sense were Jews ever “a kingdom of priests” (Ex. 19:6)? The priests were an elite within the nation, members of the tribe of Levi, descendants of Aaron, the first High Priest. There never was a full democratisation of keter kehuna, the crown of priesthood.

Faced with this problem, the commentators offer two solutions. The word kohanim, “priests,” may mean “princes” or “leaders” (Rashi, Rashbam). Or it may mean “servants” (Ibn Ezra, Ramban). But this is precisely the point. The Israelites were called on to be a nation of servant-leaders. They were the people called on, by virtue of the covenant, to accept responsibility not only for themselves and their families, but for the moral-spiritual state of the nation as a whole. This is the principle that later became known as kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh, “All Israelites are responsible for one another” (Shevuot 39a). Jews were the people who did not leave leadership to a single individual, however holy or exalted, or to an elite. Instead, every one of them was expected to be both a prince and a servant; that is to say, every one of them was called on to be a leader. Never was leadership more profoundly democratised.

1. Why is delegation important? Why is it difficult for leaders to delegate?
2. If the entire nation is made up of holy priests, why do we need a system of leadership?
3. What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership?