You have just been told you are going to die soon. The news is definitive, and presumably unwelcome. What is your immediate response?
I don’t mean to sound macabre, but that is precisely what happens to Moses in this week’s Torah reading, Pinchas. His response is incredibly instructive, although I admit from the outset that I don’t know if I could follow his example were I in his situation. It turns out his wisdom also works in far less dire circumstances.
So, what actually happens in the story? God tells Moses (Numbers 27:12) to go up to a particular mountain pass, look at the land the Israelites are going to inherit, and die after he has done so. Why the seemingly premature exit, before the Israelites actually get to the land of Israel toward which Moses has been guiding them? God says it’s because of a moment when Moses failed to follow God’s directive in the Zin desert: He struck a rock to which he had instead been instructed to speak. (Numbers 20:11)
Frankly, it is pretty hard to fathom that rationale, which is why much ink has been spilled trying to make sense of it. But the truth is, the reason doesn’t seem to matter to Moses, who never questions it. Or perhaps for Moses, it is reason enough simply because God says so, which is also interesting, albeit for another time.
For now, I invite us back to the moment of Moses receiving the bad news, especially because as medical science continues to progress, it is a situation in which more of us will find ourselves—being told of our imminent demise.
Moses immediately responds with the following:
“Let God, the God of the spirits (souls) of all flesh, appoint a person over the community—one who will go before them, and come back after them, lead them out and bring them in, so the community of God will not be like a flock without a shepherd.” (Numbers 27:16)
So what can we apply from his response to other, hopefully less awful, circumstances?
First, his response is not about himself, but about the people he leads and protecting them even after he is gone. He clearly does not presume that he is irreplaceable in his role, which already makes him a rather special leader—knowing that he is both the person for the job, and also knowing that he is not the only person for the job. That may be the perfect balance between confidence and modesty; the perfect blend of feeling called to act boldly even as we feel humbled by the knowledge that we are not the only ones so called. Imagine a nation with political leaders like that. If only.
But wait, as they say in those TV ads, there’s more!
Responding to Moses calling God the God of All Spirits (Souls)—a one-time use in the Torah, which begs for explanation—Rashi, quoting the Midrash Tanhuma, teaches that the phrase conveys Moses’ concern that whoever replaces him should be a leader who can relate to and have empathy for each and every person, according to their own particular consciousness.
According to this interpretation, the best communal leader is the one who appreciates that the community is made up of unique individuals, and that collective success demands attention to each of those individuals as they are. Moses appreciates that there is no successful Jewish (Israelite) peoplehood without honoring the individual Jew’s (Israelite’s) personhood. In a culture, especially our contemporary Jewish culture, that often pits those two categories — peoplehood and personhood — against one another, that is huge.
Moses has devoted his entire adult life to the project of peoplehood, and I love that, especially as someone who fiercely believes in that idea. And yet, when it matters most, he reminds God and us that leading a people can only work when we are attentive to all of the different persons who form it.
In making his request to God, Moses reminds us that he initially risked his life for one person in Egypt, not for an entire people trying to escape Egypt. This is why our Sages teach, Moses merited his role because he went looking for a single lost lamb, not because he was good at managing the entire flock.
Ultimately, I don’t know how I would respond were I to get the news that Moses gets, and I am not even sure that is how I want it all to go down when the time comes. But I do know that a life of responding to calling, appreciating that I am not the only one so called; that I am fundamentally committed to a collective far larger than myself and those I know; and that each and every member of that collective deserves care, compassion, and understanding (even, or perhaps especially, when they make me crazy), is how I want to live. For that example, I am grateful to Moses.