What are the essential characteristics of effective leadership? Mosheh Rabbeinu gives a succinct answer in Bamidbar 27:17. A leader is someone
“who will go out before them, and
who will go in before them, and
who will bring them out, and
who will bring them in”.
What do these terms mean, and why do they define leadership?
Let us set the scene. Hashem has just reminded Mosheh that he will not be leading the Jews into their Land. Mosheh’s response is astonishingly assertive – this is the only time that he addresses Him using the hierarchical vayidaber. He demands that Hashem replace him with someone who has these specific competencies so that “the community of Hashem not be like flocks that have no shepherd”. But why wouldn’t he trust Hashem to make His own personnel decisions?
Malbim suggests that Mosheh was worried that G-d would give the Jews the leader they deserved – a bellwether – rather than the genuine leader they need. After all, in Mosheh’s last absence they replaced him with a calf! Malbim’s Mosheh – and presumably Malbim – holds that leaders have to be as far above the led as shepherds are above sheep.
Rashi (first interpretation) offer a similar explanation, focused on leadership in war. The leader must be at the head of battle, and it is the leader’s merits that bring soldiers in to victory and safety.
R. Chaim Paltiel offers a very different perspective. A leader must begin by subordinating himself to the people – go out before them and go in before them – in order to gain the capacity to dominate them – bring them out and bring them in. R. Paltiel’s intertext is 1Kings 12:7, where the elders tell Rechav’am ben Shlomoh that if he will be the eved of the people, the people will become his avadim. Rechav’am of course rejects their advice, and the Ten Tribes secede. Moshe was afraid that G-d would choose someone who would make Rechav’am’s error of assuming that Divine appointment is a sufficient basis for human authority.
We can explain Mosheh’s concerns in many other ways, reflecting our own convictions about leadership. Perhaps Mosheh feared that he would be replaced by a committee, remembering that Hashem (and Yitro) had previously argued for decentralizing responsibility. Mosheh had little faith in committees. Nonetheless, the next thing G-d tells him is to find seventy men to share the burdens of leadership with.
Or perhaps Mosheh was afraid that Hashem would choose to lead them Himself, despite the risk that their inevitable spiritual failures would cause Him to destroy them.
I suggest that Mosheh’s basis for suspecting that Hashem would give the Jews inadequate leadership was his own appointment. He is not asking Hashem to appoint a leader like him, but rather a leader better than him.
My preferred intertext is Devarim 31:2, where Mosheh explains that he is no longer able “to go in and go out’, so that
“Hashem your G-d – He will pass in front of you;
He will smash those nations from in front of you;
Yehoshua – he will pass in front of you
as Hashem stated”.
This text is missing is any mention of causing others to go out, or in. Mosheh’s quite biting self-critique is that he was often out in front of the people, but never quite got them to follow.
It should be clear that Mosheh was not being entirely fair to himself. Leaders cannot make anyone decide to follow their example, whether in war or in peace. Ultimately the people themselves have to take responsibility for that. Ultimately each individual, leader or otherwise, must take responsibility for his or her own decisions.
And yet – with apologies to Tolstoy, who argued that battles are decided by privates as much as generals, Mosheh was not wholly unfair to himself. Leaders do matter, and influence is real. In the end Mosheh taught Yehoshua, and according to Yehoshua 24:31 and 2:7, Yehoshua did succeed in leading by example.
Trying to develop klal yisroel’s next generation of Torah leaders purely via Talmud Torah and influence can be daunting. The task is complicated in my case by the weakness of my own example. It is also made more difficult by a culture in which so many in klal Yisroel learn so much Torah, but the Torah seems often to be sent out before them as a shield, or even as a battering ram, without being given sufficient influence on their own values.
We should not make Rechav’am’s error of assuming that authorization to lead can come from anyone but the led. We should also not despair if sometimes – often – we find ourselves on the front lines of a vital issue with no community following us into battle. The Torah teaches that it is possible for teachers to produce students and successors who are better leaders than themselves, and that should always be our aspiration.