44 | JULY 20 • 2023 

I

t was one of the great moments of per-
sonal transformation, and it changed not 
only Moses but our very conception of 
leadership itself.
By the end of the book of Bamidbar, 
Moses’ career as a leader would seem to 
be ending. He had appointed his succes-
sor, Joshua, and it would be Joshua, not 
Moses, who would lead the people across 
the Jordan into the Promised 
Land. Moses seemed to have 
now achieved everything 
he was destined to achieve. 
For him, there would be no 
more battles to fight, no more 
miracles to perform, no more 
prayers to make on behalf of 
the people.
It is what Moses did next that bears the 
mark of greatness. For the final month of 
his life, he stood before the assembled peo-
ple, and delivered the series of addresses 
we know as the book of Deuteronomy or 
D’varim, literally “words.
” In these address-
es, he reviewed the people’s past and fore-
saw their future. He gave them laws. Some 
he had given them before but in a different 
form. Others were new; he had delayed 
announcing them until the people were 
about to enter the land. Linking all these 

details of law and history into a single over-
arching vision, he taught the people to see 
themselves as an am kadosh, a holy people, 
the only people whose sovereign and law-
giver was God Himself.
If someone who knew nothing about 
Judaism and the Jewish people were to ask 
you for a single book that would explain 
both who Jews are and why they do what 
they do, the best answer would be D’varim. 
No other book so encapsulates and drama-
tizes all the key elements of Judaism as a 
faith and way of life.
In a much-watched TED talk, and a book 
with the same name, Simon Sinek says that 
the transformative leaders are those who 
“Start with Why.
” More poetically, Antoine 
de Saint-Exupery said, “If you want to build 
a ship, don’t drum up people together to 
collect wood and don’t assign them tasks 
and work, but rather teach them to long for 
the endless immensity of the sea.
”
Through the addresses we read in the 
book of D’varim, Moses gave the people their 
Why. They are God’s people, the nation on 
whom He has set His love, the people He 
rescued from slavery and gave, in the form of 
the commandments, the constitution of lib-
erty. They may be small, but they are unique. 
They are the people who, in themselves, 

testify to something beyond 
themselves. They are the peo-
ple whose fate will defy the 
normal laws of history. Other 
nations, says Moses, will rec-
ognize the miraculous nature 
of the Jewish story — and 
so, from philosophers Blaise 
Pascal to Nikolai Berdyaev and 
beyond, they did.
In the last month of his life, 
Moses ceased to be the liber-
ator, the miracle-worker, the 
redeemer, and became instead 
Moshe Rabbeinu, “Moses, 
our teacher.
” He was the first 
example in history of the lead-
ership type in which Jews have 
excelled: the leader as teacher.

PLANTING A VISION 
Moses surely knew that some 
of his greatest achievements 
would not last forever. The 
people he had rescued would 
one day suffer exile and per-
secution again. The next time, though, they 
would not have a Moses to do miracles. So, 
he planted a vision in their minds, hope in 
their hearts, a discipline in their deeds and 
a strength in their souls that would never 
fade. When leaders become educators, they 
change lives.
In a powerful essay, “Who is fit to 
lead the Jewish people?” Rabbi Joseph 
Soloveitchik contrasted the Jewish attitude 
to kings and teachers as leadership types. 
The Torah places severe limits on the power 
of kings. They must not multiply gold or 
wives or horses. A king is commanded “not 
to consider himself better than his fellow 
Israelites, nor turn from the law to the right 
or to the left” (Deut. 17:20).
A king was only to be appointed at the 
request of the people. According to Ibn 
Ezra, the appointment of a king was permit-
ted, but not an obligation. Abarbanel held 
that it was a concession to human frailty. 
Rabbeinu Bachya regarded the existence of 
a king as a punishment, not a reward. In 
short, Judaism is, at best, ambivalent about 
monarchy — that is to say, about leadership 
as power.
On the other hand, its regard for teachers 
is almost unlimited. “Let the fear of your 
teacher be as the fear of heaven,
” says the 

The Leader 
 as Teacher

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

