Maybe this Shabbat morning, rather than being a Rabbi here at Edgware and Hendon Reform Synagogue I might have been a member of the congregation, active and enjoying volunteering within the community but with my day job elsewhere. In my graduating year from University, 1986, I applied to British Airways to join their graduate training scheme called, in very eighties language “the Young Professionals Scheme”.
My application was accepted and I was brought to the Heathrow Hotel for a three day assessment. It was a challenging three days as we were subjected to all kinds of psychological testing and further interviews and then on the final day a practical exercise. For this exercise we were all split into groups of 15 with two or three BA management observers per group and asked to organise some kind of campaign. We had half an hour to do it.
For twenty minutes all the bright eyed would be young professionals tried to spar of each other to impress the observers with this or that buzzy management concept. I stayed pretty much shtum throughout. Ten minutes before the deadline of the exercise, and I think that what was behind this was my years of hadrachah training for Jewish youth leadership, I somehow found myself taking control and saying to everyone “We now have ten minutes to achieve this goal – so lets split it down into the following components and get to it.”
Something about what I said and the way I said it caused the assessors to start writing furiously and for some reason that had been just the right thing to do. The next day I received a letter inviting me to join BA for the coveted job. I actually turned the job down for reasons which might make a good story for another sermon. But somehow one piece of behaviour in a hotel conference centre in London made BA reckon that I would be a good bet to help them to run their airline.
How did Moses get the job of running the entire Jewish people? In the Book of Genesis the next leader of the Jewish people after Abraham’s selection was simply the chosen son of the patriarch preceding – and even during the time when Abraham had many followers the maximum number of people for whom they were to be responsible was just over three hundred. When God was looking for someone to lead the Jews out of Egypt and to Mount Sinai and beyond he needed a potential leader of many hundreds of thousands.
A very popular Midrash in Exodus Rabbah (2:2) speaks of Moses as a Shepherd in Midian before his encounter with the Burning Bush. “Once when Moses was keeping Jethro’s flock in the wilderness, a little kid escaped from him. When it reached a shady place, a pool of water appeared before it, and it stopped to drink. When Moses caught up with it, he said: “I did not know that you ran away because you were thirsty; you must be weary.” So Moses put the kid on his shoulder and carried it back. Then God said: Because you have shown compassion to the flock of a human owner, you shall most surely lead My flock, the people of Israel.”
It is a beautiful Midrash, but Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says that we don’t need to consult Midrash to find what qualified Moses to be the exemplary Jewish leader and example to all Jews. Think of the three vignettes of Moses’ life before he becomes leader. He intervenes for justice first to rescue an Israelite slave from a cruel Egyptian taskmaster. Then he intervenes to save an Israelite from the violence of a fellow Israelite and then whilst on the run from Egypt in the Midian desert he intervenes to protect the non-Israelite daughters of Jethro (including though he does not know it at the time his future wife Zipporah) from the non-Israelite shepherds who are preventing them from watering their flock. “Moses recognises the universal character of injustice and fights against it, regardless of who is perpetrating it and who is the victim” (Diginity of Differnce p 57).
In Leviticus Moses will say “Do not stand idly by while the blood of your neighbour is shed “ (Leviticus 18:16) – his previous actions make Moses saying this credible. Isaiah will learn from the traditions of Moses to be able to say “Learn to do well; seek justice, relieve the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17)
Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch, past Dean of Jews College, teaches that when we read a few moments ago in our Torah that “at the moment when Moses first encountered God at the burning bush “Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God” (Exodus 3:6) Why was he afraid? Because if he were to fully understand God he would have no choice but to be reconciled to the slavery and oppression of the world. From the vantage point of eternity, he would see that the bad is often inevitable on the journey to the good. He would understand God but he would cease to be Moses, the fighter against injustice who intervened whenever he saw wrong being done. (q in Sacks, “To Heal A Fractured World” p.23)
Moses is our ideal leader because he exemplifies the Jewish imperative never to accept injustice – never to be resigned to fate, because Judaism does not believe in fate – does not believe in a static world where everyone has their place and the poor deserve to be poor and the oppressed cannot be helped.
Torah teaches us to “love the stranger as we were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19) and in Talmud our Rabbis teach us to sustain the non-Jewish poor along with the Jewish poor for the sake of peaceful ways of living (Gittin 61a). Doing this in our home community building so that homeless people are treated with the same dignity, respect and level of community hospitality as our Jewish members seems to be the best way to express something approaching love and true sustenance.
How are these values expressed in our communities? A number of Synagogues have opened their doors to the homeless. Every year our Synagogue hosts guests, many of whom are refugees from Afghanistan, The Democratic Republic of Congo and Syria.
We will be doing so again from the end of February up until April for one night a week in rota with our local churches and mosques and we need you to join me and many other EHRS members to volunteer in our Synagogue homeless shelter to help. We provide a square meal lovingly home cooked, a warm and safe place to sleep off the streets and a nourishing breakfast to set our guests on their way. Last year, when I was one of the sleepover hosts a young Afghani refugee said to me that the Synagogue had provided him with the first full night of sleep since he had escaped from Kabul. As a Muslim man he felt truly safe here in our Synagogue community centre. If you would like to offer to join the rota of hosts here for one or more weeks please contact me or e-mail nightshelter@ehrs.uk and we will welcome you.
When did Moses lose his position as leader of the Jewish people? It was when he lost empathy for the people’s struggle – when at Meribah he shouted “hear now you rebels” and hit a rock in anger because they complained about their lack of their most basic needs – water and food. That is when God decides that he cannot be the leader to bring them into the Promised Land – Moses empathy and passion for justice have been ground down too far by the demands of his forty years of leadership.
“Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof” – (Dueternomy 16:20) A Jew is to seek justice actively- more words of Moses in the Book of Deuteronomy. When the Rabbis asked why the word tzedek is repeated in this verse Bachya Ibn Pakuda (C13) answered that it is because we should be just both in what we say as what we do. Simchah Bunem of Przysucha ( C18) answered that the word for justice is repeated because the means that we are to use in the pursuit of justice must themselves be just, but with what we learn from Moses and his early life for us we can learn that the repetition is because there is no group of people who do not deserve justice – Jew and Gentile, Israeli and Palestinian – no one is outside of the empathy that Jews can feel for the stranger, no one does not deserve justice – everyone does deserve justice.
Like Moses we cannot wait only for God to bring justice – we are God’s hands in this respect. When Moses asks God’s name in our portion God says ehyeh asher ehyeh. This does not mean I was what I was, or I am what I am, but I will be what I will be. If Jews will remain at the forefront of demands and application of justice for all then God can be proudly with us into the future.
