Mar 18/06 - Shabbat Ki Tisa/Shabbat Parah: Moses Learns a Lesson in Leadership

Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker

Sacred texts and mythologies all over the world testify to certain universal themes regarding the nature of family life. All families are to some extent dysfunctional, and favouritism, neglect, jealousy, competition seem to be part of every conceivable constellation of humans living or working together.

Moses and Aaron represent an example of how siblings—brothers, in this case—can have complex, difficult relationships. Aaron was raised in slavery. Moses, having been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, grew up in a palace.

God introduces them as having an important partnership. Aaron is presented to Moses as the one whose skills will harmonize with his own, so that Moses will not be held back by his own deficiencies, the most important of which is that he, having been raised by royalty, is essentially a stranger to his own people. No matter how much he may have observed them, he has neither lived with them nor allowed himself to be identified with their cause publicly. Moses’ difficulty with speaking is neither a physical disability nor an organic disorder: he is simply unable to know how to speak with them because he lacks a history with them so that he can communicate and connect with them. Moses lacks the ability to establish contact with his people and to speak comfortably with them. That becomes his brother Aaron’s job: to link the Israelites to their leader. And because Moses is an outsider, he will bring new insight, new passion, and new inspiration to the despairing and hopeless Israelites.

The tension between the two brothers plays a role in today’s Torah portion. They are tripped up by a lack of communication between their separate spheres of activity. Moses descends Mt. Sinai and is shocked by the Israelites in the midst of a ceremony declaring that they have a new god to lead them instead of Moses. Worse still is the discovery that his brother Aaron has had a central role in this catastrophe, undermining Moses’ leadership.

Fearing Moses was dead, the Israelites had asked for “a god who will go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has become of him.” (Exodus 32:1) With their leader gone, they make an understandable request for new leadership. In Moses’ absence, the Israelites simply turned to Aaron who would be a logical successor to Moses. Aaron was put in a particularly difficult position: with his brother absent and no information available as to his fate, Aaron doesn’t know when Moses will return, if indeed at all. On the other hand, the people have a legitimate need.

The outcome of the episode is well known: Aaron casts the Golden Calf with his own hands, a point emphasized in the Torah itself: “He took [the collected golden artifacts] from [the people’s] hands, fashioned it with a graving-tool, and made it into a molten calf.” (32:4)

On descending from Mt. Sinai, Moses demands an explanation. Aaron offers a version of events:

Aaron said: “Let not my lord’s anger flare up! You yourself know that this people, how set on evil it is. They said to me: Make us a god who will go before us, for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him! So I said to them: Who has gold? They broke it off and gave it to me, I threw it into the fire, but out came this calf.” (32:22-24)

With these words, Aaron dismisses his own responsibility. The calf “just happened all by itself”: he threw the gold into the fire and “out came this calf.” Isaac Abravanel, a commentator from Spain, asks some tough questions about this. Abravanel says:

What he said—“and I threw it into the fire and out came this calf”—is a lie, since it wasn’t made by itself and didn’t come out of the fire.

How can one brother lie to another? Isaac Abravanel explains Aaron’s words are an attempt to justify his actions to his brother. He was only stalling for time—that is why he asked them to give him their gold, a suggestion Aaron had assumed would be greeted with rejection or at least second thoughts. When this delaying tactic was exhausted and Moses was still away, he had no choice but to go ahead.

In other words, according to Abravanel, Aaron’s effort to rationalize and avoid responsibility for making the calf was his way of saying: “I made a mistake, but I didn’t do it on purpose.” Aaron suffered from a lack of confidence, which is expressed in his attempt to explain away his behaviour to his brother. In Abravanel’s view, of course Aaron could have said to Moses, “What did you expect to happen? You disappeared without leaving me clear instructions.”

Abravanel traces Aaron’s insecurity all the way back to the start of the Golden Calf incident, where the Israelites say, “This is your God, O Israel” (32:4), but Aaron does not reprimand them. Instead, he merely suggests, “Tomorrow is a festival to the LORD.” (32:5)

In this fashion Aaron demonstrates that he lacks the ability to be a true leader—and Moses shouldn’t have left him in charge for so long, because Aaron was incapable of coping with possible crises.

The possibility exists that Moses was simply unaware of this vulnerability or limitation in Aaron’s character. After all, as brothers they had known each other for only a short time, with no previous opportunity for Moses to observe Aaron in action.

The Golden Calf episode exercises enormous influence over the course of future events. Moses concludes that he needed to implement another leadership model—to become more involved in the ongoing life of the Israelites. He orders a devastating purification of the camp and subsequently must study the abilities of those expected to administer ritual, justice, and governance. Even the person closest to him in fulfilling God’s plans lacked the skills necessary to face the challenges of leadership.

Peter Drucker, arguably one of the greatest authorities of the 20th century in the field of management, once said, “Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” The learning curve is difficult—even brutal, for Moses, Aaron, and the entire Israelite nation.

Shabbat Shalom.