JULY 4 • 2024 | 37

time he challenged Him to 
perform a miracle. God does 
as Moses asks.
Naturally we expect 
that this will end the 
rebellion: God had sent 
an unmistakable sign that 
Moses was right, the rebels 
wrong. But it doesn’t. Far 
from ending the rebellion, it 
made it worse:
The next day the whole 
Israelite community 
grumbled against Moses and 
Aaron. “You have killed the 
Lord’s people,” they said. 
(Num. 17:6)
The people gather around 
Moses and Aaron as if about 
to attack them. God starts 
smiting the people with a 
plague. Moses tells Aaron 
to make atonement, and 
eventually the plague stops. 
But some 14,700 people 
have died. Not until a quite 
different demonstration 
takes place — Moses takes 
12 rods representing the 12 
tribes, and Aaron’s buds and 
blossoms and bears fruit — 
does the rebellion finally end.

DON’T TAKE IT 
PERSONALLY
It is hard to avoid the 
conclusion that Moses’ 
intervention, challenging 
God to make the earth 
swallow his opponents, was 
a tragic mistake. If so, what 
kind of mistake was it?
The Harvard leadership 
expert, Ronald Heifetz, 
makes the point that it is 
essential for a leader to 
distinguish between role 
and self. A role is a position 
we hold. The self is who we 
are. Leadership is a role. It is 
not an identity. It is not who 
we are. Therefore, a leader 
should never take an attack 
on his leadership personally:

“It’s a common ploy to 
personalize the debate over 
issues as a strategy for taking 
you out of action … You want 
to respond when you are 
attacked … You want to leap 
into the fray when you are 
mischaracterized … When 
people attack you personally, 
the reflexive reaction is to 
take it personally … But 
being criticized by people 
you care about is almost 
always a part of exercising 
leadership … When you take 
personal attacks personally, 
you unwittingly conspire in 
one of the common ways you 
can be taken out of action 
— you make yourself the 
issue.” (Ronald Heifetz and 
Marty Linsky, Leadership on 
the Line, Harvard Business 
School Press, 2002.)
Moses twice takes the 
rebellion personally. First, he 
defends himself to God after 
being insulted by Datan and 
Aviram. Second, he asks God 
miraculously and decisively 
to show that he — Moses — 
is God’s chosen leader. But 
Moses was not the issue. He 
had already taken the right 
course of action in proposing 
the test of the incense 
offering. That would have 
resolved the question. As for 
the underlying reason that 
the rebellion was possible 
at all — the fact that the 
people were devastated by the 
knowledge that they would 
not live to enter the Promised 
Land — there was nothing 
Moses could do.
Moses allowed himself 
to be provoked by Korach’s 
claim, “Why do you set 
yourselves above the Lord’s 
assembly” and by Datan and 
Aviram’s offensive remark, 
“And now you want to lord 
it over us!” These were 

deeply personal attacks, 
but by taking them as such, 
Moses allowed his opponents 
to define the terms of 
engagement. As a result, 
the conflict was intensified 
instead of being defused.
It is hard not to see this as 
the first sign of the failing 
that would eventually cost 
Moses his chance of leading 
the people into the land. 
When, almost 40 years later, 
he says to the people who 
complain about the lack of 
drink, “Listen, you rebels, 
must we bring you water out 
of this rock?” (Num. 20:10), 
he shows the same tendency 
to personalize the issue 
(“Must we bring you water?”) 
— but it never was about 
“we” but about God.
The Torah is devastatingly 
honest about Moses, as it is 
about all its heroes. Humans 
are only human. Even the 
greatest makes mistakes. 
In the case of Moses, his 
greatest strength was also his 
greatest weakness. His anger 
at injustice singled him out 
as a leader in the first place. 
But he allowed himself to 
be provoked to anger by the 
people he led, and it was this, 
according to Maimonides 
(Eight Chapters, ch. 4), that 
eventually caused him to 
forfeit his chance of entering 
the Land of Israel.
Heifetz writes: “Receiving 
anger … is a sacred task … 
Taking the heat with grace 
communicates respect for the 
pains of change.” 
After the episode of the 
spies, Moses faced an almost 
impossible task. How do 
you lead a people when they 
know they will not reach 
their destination in their 
lifetime? 
In the end, what stilled 

the rebellion was the sight 
of Aaron’s rod, a piece of 
dry wood, coming to life 
again, bearing flowers and 
fruit. Perhaps this was not 
just about Aaron but about 
the Israelites themselves. 
Having thought of themselves 
as condemned to die in the 
desert, perhaps they now 
realized that they, too, had 
borne fruit — their children 
— and it would be they 
who completed the journey 
their parents had begun. 
That, in the end, was their 
consolation.
Of all the challenges 
of leadership, not taking 
criticism personally and 
staying calm when the people 
you lead are angry with you, 
may be the hardest of all. 
That may be why the Torah 
says what it does about 
Moses, the greatest leader 
who ever lived. It is a way of 
warning future generations: 
If at times you are pained by 
people’s anger, take comfort. 
So did Moses. But remember 
the price Moses paid and stay 
calm.
Though it may seem 
otherwise, the anger you 
face has nothing to do 
with you as a person and 
everything to do with 
what you stand for and 
represent. Depersonalizing 
attacks is the best way to 
deal with them. People get 
angry when leaders cannot 
magically make harsh reality 
disappear. Leaders in such 
circumstances are called on 
to accept that anger with 
grace. That truly is a sacred 
task. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

was chief rabbi of the United Hebrew 

Congregations of the Commonwealth, 

1991-2013. Find more at rabbisacks.org. 

