To Live Is to Serve

What choice would you have made in the circumstances? There are three options. You have the chance to live the life of an adopted son of a princess in the greatest empire of the ancient world at the summit of its achievements. It would have been an existence of almost unimaginable wealth and power. The tomb of Tutankhamun, discovered in 1922 by the English archaeologist Howard Carter, still staggers the imagination by what it contained: the gold, the jewels, the artistry, the veneration to the point of deification. To be part of the inner circle of the court of the pharaohs at around that time would have made you a member of a gilded elite such as has existed only rarely in human history.

Alternatively, you could spend your days as a shepherd in Midian, with a loyal wife, an influential father-in-law, and two sons, tending your flock in the quiet and peace, far from the struggles of the world, alone with the landscape and the wind and the sky, at one with God who lets you lie down in green pastures, leading you by the still waters, restoring your soul. This is not a life of wealth and power but it is one in gentle harmony with the universe, a pastoral symphony.

Or, third, you could take on the leadership of a notoriously fractious nation of slaves, tasked with leading them to freedom. This will force you into repeated confrontations with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, with your own people, and often enough with God Himself. Why would anyone take this third option? Small wonder that, when God called him to undertake the mission, Moses kept saying no until at last God became angry and refused to take no for an answer.

The result was forty tempestuous years in which there was little tranquillity, still less appreciation on the part of those he led, and a succession of moments of frustration, anger, and disappointment. On one occasion Moses fell into a pit of despair so intense that he asked God to kill him rather than force him to continue: “If this is how You are going to treat me, kill me now, if I have found favour in Your sight, and let me not see my misery” (Num. 11:15).

There never was nor ever will be another Moses, but his life overturned all conventional wisdom about leadership. We judge leaders by their success. Moses failed at almost every stage. When he first tried to secure freedom for the Israelites, Pharaoh responded by making their burdens worse. The Israelites complained. They continued to complain through the long years of wandering. They had no food; they had no water; the food was boring; the water was bitter; they wanted to go back. Three days after the miracle of the division of the Red Sea, the people were again complaining. Forty days after the greatest revelation in history, at Mount Sinai, the people made a Golden Calf. On the brink of entry into the land, the spies brought back a demoralising report, delaying their arrival by forty years.

Korah challenged Moses’ leadership. His own brother and sister spoke negatively about him. He himself, for a momentary lapse in striking the rock, was forbidden to enter the Promised Land, and all his prayers to have the decree lifted were refused. His own sons failed to follow in his footsteps; neither became his successor. He was devastated at how little his impact was on the people. Despite all they had experienced, they did not change. Nor did he hold out any great hope for the future. As he told the next generation, “I know how rebellious and stiff-necked you are! See, even while I am still alive with you today, you have rebelled against the Lord. How much more will you do so after my death?” (Deut. 31:27).

Can a life of failures be a success? In worldly terms, no. In spiritual terms, emphatically yes. His obituary in Parashat Vezot Haberakha may begin in an exceptionally low-key way: “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab as the Lord had said” (Deut. 34:5). But the Torah does not leave it that way. It adds, in its closing words:

Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face-to-face, who did all those signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt – to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

Deut. 34:10–12

The sages debated who wrote those words. Was it Moses himself, at God’s dictation, writing with tears in his eyes, or was it his faithful disciple Joshua (Bava Batra 15a)? I like to think it was the second, because it was the verdict of history, and we never get to see the verdict of history in our lifetime, not even Moses. He was one of the first of that long list of people who did not live to see their fame.

Jeremiah was mocked and abused for his prophetic warnings. At one time he was imprisoned, at another he narrowly escaped death. His prophecies were ignored. He lived to see his nation conquered, the Temple destroyed, and the people taken into captivity. R. Akiva believed that Bar Kokhba was a messianic figure destined to restore freedom to his people. Instead the rebellion was suppressed by the Romans and Akiva himself put to an agonising death. In more recent times, the great rabbi and diplomat from Amsterdam, Menasseh ben Israel, petitioned Cromwell in 1655 to readmit Jews to England. In the end, Cromwell issued no formal declaration, having been advised by his own counsellors that none was necessary. Menasseh returned home in 1657, a disappointed man convinced, wrongly, that he had failed. Yet each of these in different ways was a hero of their time, their achievements celebrated by posterity.

This applies not only to religious leaders but to many others. During his lifetime, Johann Sebastian Bach was not considered the greatest composer of his day – not even of his own family. Van Gogh sold only one painting. Emily Dickinson had only ten poems published. Not until many years after his death did people realise the significance of Gregor Mendel’s discovery of the principles of genetics. Not only did Franz Kafka have no idea of the fame he would posthumously achieve, but he had instructed his friend Max Brod to destroy his unpublished manuscripts after he died. Only because Brod decided not to do we have such masterpieces as The Trial and The Castle. We never know what will happen to what we leave behind, including our place in people’s hearts.

But there are certain things we can know. I discovered this as soon as I became a rabbi and had to officiate at funerals. Because I was new to the community, for the first few years I did not always know the deceased, and had to ask family and friends what they most respected and admired about those they had lost. That was when I discovered the difference between what David Brooks calls résumé virtues and eulogy virtues.

Résumé virtues are what we write on job applications: our qualifications, skills, achievements, and worldly successes. Not surprisingly I discovered that these were not the things people were remembered for. They were remembered for their steadfastness as marriage partners, parents, and friends; for the acts of kindness they performed; for the way they supported the community and their favourite charities; for the willingness with which they gave their time when help was needed. These are the quiet virtues but they are our greatest legacy to the future. Comforting mourners, and being comforted, I discovered how deeply acts of kindness engrave themselves in people’s memories and live on as they inspire their recipients to “pay it forward” and do acts of ḥesed to others as a way of acknowledging the ḥesed that was done to them. Good deeds as well as bad are contagious. Live in the company of altruistic people and you will become more altruistic.

In the end what made Moses so compelling a role model is not that he performed wonders nor that he spoke God’s word and taught His laws. The wonders and the words were not his. They were God’s. Moses’ greatness lay in the fact that he was a “servant of the Lord.” That is the accolade the Torah gives him: “And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab.” He is called this eighteen times in Tanakh. The only other person to win this accolade was Joshua, who is called this twice. Moses went where God sent him, never claimed credit for himself, and he, the humblest of men, was never guilty of hubris. He simply served.

Moses defended the people to God even when they were guilty, because he knew that God had appointed him their defender. He thought of himself as an ordinary person through whom extraordinary things happened. Surely, he eventually understood that the things he thought disqualified him from leading turned out to be his most important strengths. For instance, the fact that he could not speak, was not a man of words, and was, as he put it, a man of uncircumcised lips, meant that when the words flowed from his mouth, people knew they were God’s, not his.

What Moses taught us is that we are as big as the space we create within ourselves for people other than us, causes bigger than us, ideals that make the world a more just and gentle place; what makes us great are the principles by which, and the causes for which, we live.

Clever, gifted people sometimes fail to see this. I have known successful business people who ruined their reputation and ended their days in shame for the sake of a deal, a deception, a cover-up, they should not have made, for a financial gain they did not need. I have seen successful people take advantage of their position to perform acts that abused others, thinking that their power made them immune from prosecution. I have seen politicians betray their colleagues out of frustrated ambition or spite or revenge, heedless of the fact that they were thereby ending their careers, because no one with sense would ever respect or trust them again. I have seen people harm others and destroy themselves because they tried to be clever and failed to be wise. Thinking they could deceive others, they forgot that we cannot deceive God, and the only person we ever really deceive is ourselves. Moses is a standing refutation of shallowness in the course of a life.

In one of the more extraordinary moments of modern times, on April 3, 1968, Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a sermon in a church in Memphis, Tennessee. At the end of his address, he turned to the last day of Moses’ life, when the man who had led his people to freedom was taken by God to a mountaintop from which he could see in the distance the land he was not destined to enter. That, said King, was how he felt that night:

I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

That night was the last of his life. The next day he was assassinated. At the end, the still young Christian preacher – he was not yet forty – who had led the civil rights movement in the United States identified not with a Christian figure but with Moses.

He learned from Moses’ life that “it is not for you to complete the task” (Mishna Avot 2:16). He learned something more: “Everybody can be great,” he said, “because anybody can serve. You do not have to have a college degree to serve. You do not have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”

What then does the story of Moses tell us? That it is right to fight for justice even against regimes that seem indestructible. That God is with us when we take our stand against oppression. That we must have faith in those we lead, even if they lack faith in us. That change, though slow, is real. That people are eventually transformed by high ideals even though it may take centuries. That we rarely live to see the full impact of our lives. What matters is to do right because it is right, to be honourable, do our duty, accept responsibility, and blame no one but ourselves for our failures. Nor do we need seek recognition for our success. If we have earned it, it will come, even if we do not live to see it. That is the way of Moses.

In one of its most powerful statements about him, the Torah states that he was “a hundred and twenty years old when he died, yet his eyes were undimmed and his strength unabated” (Deut. 34:7). I used to think that “his eyes were undimmed” and “his strength unabated” were merely two sequential phrases, until I realised that the first was the explanation for the second. Why was Moses’ strength unabated? Because his eyes were undimmed – because he never lost the ideals of his youth. Though he sometimes lost faith in himself and his ability to lead, he never lost faith in the cause: in God, service, freedom, the right, the good, and the holy. His words at the end of his life were as impassioned as they had been at the beginning.

That is Moses, the eternal symbol of how a human being, without ever ceasing to be human, can become a giant of the moral life by being “a servant of God.” Life is the opportunity to serve. The rest is commentary. Go and do. Go and teach. Go and heal. Go and be a blessing. That is Jewish spirituality, standing on one leg.