Suppose a leader commands you to do something you know to be forbidden in Jewish law. Should you obey? The answer is a categorical No. The Talmud (Kiddushin 42b) puts this in the form of a rhetorical question: “Faced with a choice between obeying the master [God] or the disciple [a human leader], whom should you obey?” The answer is obvious. Obey God. Here in Jewish law is the logic of civil disobedience, the idea that we have a duty to disobey an immoral order.
Then there is the great Jewish idea of active questioning and “argument for the sake of heaven.” Parents are obliged, and teachers encouraged, to train students to ask questions. Traditional Jewish learning is designed to make teacher and disciple alike aware of the fact that more than one view is possible on any question of Jewish law and multiple interpretations (the traditional number is seventy) of any biblical verse. Judaism is unique in that virtually all of its canonical texts – Midrash, Mishnah and Gemara – are anthologies of arguments (Rabbi X said this, Rabbi Y said that) or are surrounded by multiple commentaries, each with its own perspective.
The very act of learning in rabbinic Judaism is conceived as active debate, a kind of gladiatorial contest of the mind: “Even a teacher and disciple, even a father and son, when they sit to study Torah together, become enemies to one another. But they do not move from there until they have become beloved to one another” (Kiddushin 30b).
Hence the Talmudic saying, “Much wisdom I have learned from my teacher, more from my colleagues but most from my students” (Ta’anit 7a). Therefore, despite the reverence we owe our teachers, we also owe them our best efforts at questioning and challenging their ideas. This is essential to the rabbinical ideal of learning as a collaborative pursuit of truth.
The idea of critical followership gave rise in Judaism to the world’s first social critics, the prophets, mandated by God to speak truth to power and to summon even kings to the bar of justice and right conduct. That is what Samuel did to Saul, Elijah to Ahab and Isaiah to Hezekiah. None did so more effectively than the prophet Nathan when, with immense skill, he got King David to appreciate the enormity of his sin in sleeping with another man’s wife. David immediately recognized his wrong and said “chatati – I have sinned.”
Exceptional though the prophets of Israel were, even their achievement takes second place to one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of religion, namely that God Himself chooses as His most beloved disciples the very people who are willing to challenge heaven itself. Abraham says, “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” Moses says, “Why have You done evil to this people?” Jeremiah and Habakkuk challenge God on the apparent injustices of history. Job, who argues with God, is eventually vindicated by God while his comforters, who defended God, are deemed by God to have been in the wrong. In short, God Himself chooses active, critical followers rather than those who silently obey.
Hence the unusual conclusion that in Judaism followership is as active and demanding as leadership. We can put this more strongly: leaders and followers do not sit on opposite sides of the table. They are on the same side, the side of justice and compassion and the common good. No one is above criticism, and no one too junior to administer it – if done with due grace and humility. A disciple may criticize his teacher; a child may challenge a parent; a prophet may challenge a king; and all of us, simply by bearing the name Israel, are summoned to wrestle with God and our fellow humans in the name of the right and the good.
