OCTOBER 14 • 2021 | 37

nor destroy on all My holy 
mountain, for the earth will 
be filled with the knowledge 
of the Lord as the waters 
cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9)
Abraham is without 
doubt the most influential 
person who ever lived. 
Today he is claimed as the 
spiritual ancestor of 2.3 
billion Christians, 1.8 billion 
Muslims and 14 million Jews, 
more than half the people 
alive today. Yet, he ruled no 
empire, commanded no great 
army, performed no miracles 
and proclaimed no prophecy. 
He is the supreme example 
in all of history of influence 
without power.
Why? Because he was 
prepared to be different. 
As the sages say, he was 
called ha-ivri, “the Hebrew,” 
because “all the world was on 
one side (be-ever echad) and 
he was on the other.” 
Leadership, as every leader 
knows, can be lonely. Yet you 
continue to do what you have 
to do because you know that 
the majority is not always 
right and conventional 
wisdom is not always wise.
Dead fish go with the 
flow. Live fish swim against 
the current. So it is with 
conscience and courage. So it is 
with the children of Abraham. 
They are prepared to challenge 
the idols of the age.

EVIL OF CONFORMITY
After the Holocaust, some 
social scientists were 
haunted by the question of 
why so many people were 
prepared, whether by active 
participation or silent consent, 
to go along with a regime that 
was committing one of the 
great crimes against humanity. 
 One key experiment was 
conducted by Solomon 

Asch. He assembled a group 
of people, asking them to 
perform a series of simple 
cognitive tasks. They were 
shown two cards, one with a 
line on it, the other with three 
lines of different lengths, and 
asked which was the same size 
as the line on the first.
Unbeknown to one 
participant, all the others had 
been briefed by Asch to give 
the correct answer for the 
first few cards, and then to 
answer incorrectly for most 
of the rest. On a significant 
number of occasions, the 
experimental subject gave 
an answer he could see was 
wrong because everyone 
else had done so. Such is 
the power of the pressure to 
conform: It can lead us to say 
what we know is untrue.
More frightening still was 
the Stanford experiment 
carried out in the early 1970s 
by Philip Zimbardo. The 
participants were randomly 
assigned roles as guards or 
prisoners in a mock prison. 
Within days the students 
cast as guards were behaving 
abusively, some of them 
subjecting the “prisoners” to 
psychological torture. The 
students cast as prisoners 
put up with this passively, 
even siding with the guards 
against those who resisted.
The experiment was called 
off after six days, by which 
time even Zimbardo had 
found himself drawn into 

the artificial reality he had 
created. The pressure to 
conform to assigned roles is 
strong enough to lead people 
into doing what they know is 
wrong.
That is why Abraham, at 
the start of his mission, was 
told to leave “his land, his 
birthplace and his father’s 
house,” to free himself from 
the pressure to conform. 
Leaders must be prepared not 
to follow the consensus.
One of the great writers on 
leadership, Warren Bennis, 
writes in On Becoming a 
Leader: “By the time we 
reach puberty, the world has 
shaped us to a greater extent 
than we realize. Our family, 
friends and society in general 
have told us — by word and 
example — how to be. But 
people begin to become 
leaders at that moment when 
they decide for themselves 
how to be.”

JEWS AS LEADERS
One reason why Jews have 
become, out of all proportion 
to their numbers, leaders 
in almost every sphere of 
human endeavor, is precisely 
this willingness to be 
different. Throughout the 
centuries, Jews have been 
the most striking example 
of a group that refused to 
assimilate to the dominant 
culture or convert to the 
dominant faith.
One other finding of 

Solomon Asch is worth 
noting. He noted that when 
just one other person was 
willing to support the 
individual who could see 
that the others were giving 
the wrong answer, it gave 
him the strength to stand 
up against the consensus. 
That is why, however small 
their numbers, Jews created 
communities. It is hard to 
lead alone, far less hard to 
lead in the company of others 
even if you are a minority.
Judaism is the counter-
voice in the conversation of 
humankind. As Jews, we do 
not follow the majority merely 
because it is the majority. In 
age after age, century after 
century, Jews were prepared 
to do what Robert Frost 
immortalized in his poem The 
Road Not Taken:
Two roads diverged in a 
wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the 
difference. 
This is what makes a 
nation of leaders. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 
served as the chief rabbi of the 
United Hebrew Congregations of 
the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His 
teachings have been made available 
to all at rabbisacks.org. This essay 
was written in 2014.

DISCUSSION 
QUESTIONS 

• When Abraham began 
his journey, what was he 
following, and how was he 
leading?

• When is it a good idea to 
take the road less traveled 
by?

• Does Abraham’s story 
inspire you to challenge the 
idols of today? If so, what 
do you see as today’s idols?

“ABRAHAM IS THE MOST 
INFLUENCIAL PERSON WHO EVER 
LIVED. YET, HE RULED NO EMPIRE, 
PERFORMED NO MIRACLES, 
PROCLAIMED NO PROPHECY.”

