Lessons in Leadership

A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible

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Other works by the author

A Letter in the Scroll
Arguments for the Sake of Heaven
Celebrating Life
Community of Faith
Crisis and Covenant
The Dignity of Difference
Faith in the Future
From Optimism to Hope
Future Tense
The Home We Build Together
The Jonathan Sacks Haggada
The Koren Sacks Siddur
The Koren Sacks Mazorim
Morals and Markets
Not in Gods Name
One People?
The Persistence of Faith
The Politics of Hope
Radical Then, Radical Now
To Heal a Fractured World
Tradition in an Untraditional Age
Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren?

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Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The Gluckman Family Edition

Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union

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Lessons in Leadership
A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible
First Edition, 2015
Maggid Books
An imprint of Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd.
POB 8531, New Milford, CT 06776-8531, USA
& POB 4044, Jerusalem 9104001, Israel
www.korenpub.com
Jonathan Sacks 2015
Cover Photo Moses Striking Water from the Rock
(oil on canvas), Coninch, Salomon de (1609-74) (attr. to) /
Musee des Beaux-Arts, Tourcoing, France / Bridgeman Images
The publication of this book was made possible
through the generous support of Torah Education in Israel.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publisher, except in the case
of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.
isbn 978-1-59264-432-2, hardcover
A cip catalogue record for this title is
available from the British Library
Printed and bound in the United States

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This book is dedicated in honor of the 95th

birthdays of our grandparents
Frances and Robert Rub
who lead by example
in the way they live their life together
in their seamless integration of
traditional Judaism with the evolving world,
to the enhancement of both
in their commitment to building
a vibrant home for Jews in Israel
in their passion for learning and educating their children,
grandchildren, and great-grandchildren
in their engagement with their community
in the warmth and kindness they share
with everyone they encounter
in their unwavering devotion to their family
and, most of all, in their love for each other
With love, respect, and gratitude to our
Bubbe Frannie and Zayde Bob
Fred, Judy, JJ, and Leia Gluckman
May 2015/Iyar 5775

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Contents
Foreword: Leadership and Public Learning / Ronald Heifetz xiii
Introduction: Daring Greatly xix

Genesis
Bereshit
Taking Responsibility 3
Noa
Righteousness Is Not Leadership 7
Lekh Lekha
The Courage Not to Conform 13
Vayera
Answering the Call 19
ayei Sara
Beginning the Journey 23
Toledot
The Price of Silence 27
Vayetzeh
Light in Dark Times 31
Vayishla
Be Thyself 35
Vayeshev
The Power of Praise 41
vii

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Miketz
The Power of Dreams 47
Vayigash
The Unexpected Leader 51
Vayei
Surviving Failure 55

Exodus
Shemot
Women as Leaders 61
Vaera
Overcoming Setbacks 67
Bo
The Far Horizon 73
Beshalla
Looking Up 79
Yitro
A Nation of Leaders 85
Mishpatim
Vision and Detail 89
Teruma
The Home We Build Together 93
Tetzaveh
The Counterpoint of Leadership 99
Ki Tissa
How Leaders Fail 105
Vayakhel
Team Building 111
Pekudei
Celebrate 115
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Leviticus
Vayikra
The Sins of a Leader 123
Tzav
On Not Trying to Be What You Are Not 129
Shemini
Reticence vs. Impetuosity 135
Tazria
The Price of Free Speech 141
Metzora
How to Praise 147
Aarei Mot
Sprints and Marathons 153
Kedoshim
Followership 157
Emor
On Not Being Afraid of Greatness 163
Behar
Think Long 169
Beukkotai
We the People 175

Numbers
Bemidbar
Leading a Nation of Individuals 183
Naso
The Politics of Envy 189
Behaalotekha
Power or Influence? 193
Shela
Confidence 199
ix

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Kora
Servant Leadership 205
ukkat
Miriam, Moses Friend 211
Balak
Leadership and Loyalty 217
Pinas
Lessons of a Leader 221
Matot
Conflict Resolution 227
Masei
Leadership at a Time of Crisis 233

Deuteronomy
Devarim
The Leader as Teacher 241
Vaetanan
The Fewest of All Peoples 247
Ekev
To Lead Is to Listen 251
Reeh
Defining Reality 257
Shofetim
Learning and Leadership 263
Ki Tetzeh
Against Hate 269
Ki Tavo
A Nation of Storytellers 275
Nitzavim
Defeating Death 281
x

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Vayelekh
Consensus or Command? 287
Haazinu
A Leaders Call to Responsibility 293
Vezot Haberakha
Staying Young 299
Afterword: Seven Principles of Jewish Leadership 303
About the Author 313

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Foreword

Leadership and
Public Learning
Ronald Heifetz*

abbi Lord Jonathan Sackss extraordinary commentary on

the Five Books of Moses provides encyclopedic insight and wisdom
into the exercise of leadership. As the former chief rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, he draws upon a unique career combining
religious inquiry with leadership practice. Within the inflamed reality
that divides Jews, Christians, and Muslims in our world today, his work
could not be more relevant.

Ronald Heifetz is the founding director of the Center for Public Leadership and the
King Hussein bin Talal Senior Lecturer in Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy
School. He advises heads of governments, businesses, and nonprofit organisations,
and speaks extensively throughout the world. His first book, Leadership Without Easy
Answers (1994), is a classic in the field and has been reprinted and translated many
times. He coauthored the best-selling Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through
the Dangers of Leading with Marty Linsky (2002). His third book, The Practice of
Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World
(2009), was coauthored with Linsky and Alexander Grashow.

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Lessons in Leadership
In an earlier volume, The Great Partnership, Sacks distinguishes
the domains, and explains the synergy, of scientific and religious exploration.1 Science explores causal relationships and seeks explanations.
Religion explores interpretations and seeks meaning. In the pursuit of
meaning, the three Abrahamic faith traditions draw on the stories and
laws of the Five Books of Moses for interpretations that orient our lives.
Indeed, in our interdependent world, these five books touch religious
and philosophical communities everywhere.
It thus becomes particularly important to understand how these
books can inform and correct the widespread cultural assumptions
about leadership and authority that determine the way our societies
tackle our toughest problems and seize opportunities to develop and
grow. As I have argued elsewhere, some of these cultural assumptions
work against us. Rather than achieve collective success, they too often
lead us to corruption of our values, destruction in our lives, and finally,
the extinction of our communities. As we see from the Bible, this is true
not only in contemporary societies, but in ancient civilisations as well.
The Bible itself is a product of a people who, more than three thousand years ago, struggled to generate better forms of social organisation
in the wake of the first agricultural revolution. For several million years
up until that time, our ancestors were very well-adapted to nomadic life
in communities of less than forty people. But the land available to sustain the low-density needs of a foraging economy in that region became
scarce; the population had grown too large for hunting and gathering.
With the advent of agriculture, density became feasible and humanity
challenged itself to develop new capacities to coordinate village, city,
and national life with four hundred, four thousand, 400,000, and more
people. We therefore had to develop new forms of governance, authority, and social architecture.
In the Five Books of Moses, we see small communities of
herdsmenAbraham, Isaac, and Jacobencounter Egypt, already an
empire; we then see Moses and his colleagues establish, with Gods
guidance, the norms and governance of a society that would learn the
1. Jonathan Sacks, The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning
(New York: Schocken, 2012).

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Foreword: Leadership and Public Learning

lessons of Pharaohs Egyptand depart from its vicesto build something new and adaptive for all time.
We continue to face this struggle of governance and organisation today. There is a compelling logic to imperial thinking, to a social
contract of habitual deference and authoritative command as a means
of governing large organisational systems or populations of people. At
the same time, this kind of thinking often gets it wrong. Empires usually
go extinct. When does this approach fail?
My colleagues and I have found that the most common source
of failure in leadership is diagnostic. People treat adaptive challenges as
if they were technical problems. Technical problems are those that are
largely known, and therefore the systems, processes, and cultural norms
of a community are already in place to solve them. They are much more
readily amenable to authoritative expertise and command. To use a
medical analogy, these are the problems that doctors and nurses can fix
by performing surgery or prescribing medication. In contrast, adaptive
challenges demand a change of peoples attitudes, values, and behaviour.
One has to sift through what to keep, what to discard, and which innovations will enable one to survive and, hopefully, thrive. In medicine, these
challenges might be compared to the fundamental changes in lifestyle
often required of patients and their families.
Thus, the authoritative problem-solving response that would be
appropriate in the case of a technical matter becomes inadequate when
the challenge is adaptive and demands the more complex response of
social learning, innovation, and change. These are the times that call
for leadership and not just authoritative decision, coordination, and
commandwhen our organisations and communities must develop new
capacities. Yet it seems nearly universal that in these times of distress,
people yearn for technical solutions that require a minimum of personal
or collective responsibility and disruption. Too often,
we look for the wrong kind of leadership. We call for someone
with answers, decision, strength, and a map of the future, someone who knows where we ought to be goingin short, someone
who can make hard problems simple. Instead of looking for
saviours, we should be calling for leadership that will challenge
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Lessons in Leadership
us to face the problems for which there are no simple, painless
solutionsthe problems that require us to learn new ways.
Making progress on these problems demands not just
someone who provides answers from on high, but changes in our
attitudes, behaviour, and values. To meet challenges such as these,
we need a different idea of leadership and a new social contract
that promote our adaptive capacities rather than inappropriate
expectations of authority. We need to reconceive and revitalise
our civic life and the meaning of citizenship.2
This is the challenge that Rabbi Sacks explores between these pages. By
analysing the practices of leadership and structures of authority in the
Bible, Sacks shows us how the struggle we face today, every day, can be
guided by the stories of our ancestors. Our struggle is neither entirely
new, nor are we alone in having to discover solutions.
Every generation faces a variation of this challenge, because every
generation faces the natural inclination to invest its authorities with more
answers than they have. We are born into the world looking to authority
(our parents, originally) to know the way to go. We have a strong natural
tendency to retreat back to dependency on authority when times get tough
and problems seem to be beyond our capacity to resolve. We create a market for charlatans and demagogues, and many are only too happy to volunteer. As Ive advised several CEOs, directors, and presidents and prime
ministers of countries, leadership should generate capacity, not dependency.
Sacks provides us with profound insight into this fundamental
question of leadership: how can an individual with a grant of authority, human or divine, maintain the self-discipline to focus on the very
hard work of developing collective capacity, rather than succumb to the
temptation of generating perpetual dependency?
In biblical terms, we might ask how a culture of dependency can
transform into a culture of widely distributed leadership, how a people
enslaved for generations can become a society in which all members are
called upon to take responsibility whenever they see fit, whoever they
2. Ronald Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap/
Harvard University Press, 1994), 2.

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Foreword: Leadership and Public Learning

are. As Sacks puts it, how do we become Gods partners in the ongoing
work of creation?
Central to meeting this challenge, both in ancient and modern
times, is the need to comprehend the difference between leadership as
a practice and a calling for all of us, and the structures of authority and
governance that specify which roles we are to play in an organisation
or community. Leadership and authority are not the same. Many lead
from a position of authority, but many others lead without it, going
beyond the call of duty.
We have to create authority structures, as Yitro counsels Moses, in
order to organise our large communities. We need chains of command to
coordinate complex living. And we need checks and balances of authority to prevent the corruption of power, as Sacks explains: between kings,
prophets, and priests in biblical times and between executive, legislative,
and judicial branches of government in our day. Indeed, we quite desperately need authorities who are worthy of our trust. At the same time,
we cannot rely solely on authorities, even when they are trustworthy. As
Ive suggested, adaptive challengeschallenges such as climate change,
poverty, population growth, gender equality, terrorism are located
within us, are distributed among us, and can only be solved by all of us.
To survive and thrive in a changing world, we need an evolution in
our cultures that will allow for the generation of wisdom, critical thinking,
and innovation from the bottom up. Leadership cannot be reserved as
the province of the few in high positions of authority. Authorities must
serve as the backbone of a trusting society, but the leadership of that
society cannot come from there only. We need the people to transform
from followers to citizens, to see that citizenship is a call for leadership,
mobilising others within ones reach to take responsibility for the problems and opportunities we share. As Sacks suggests, we need passion,
initiative, and genius to emerge from anywhere it can.
Sackss commentary shows us how the lessons of our ancestors,
because they are embedded in our collective memory, can help us meet
the challenges of leadership and authority in our time. They are profoundly useful both for personal guidance and for public engagement.
These stories provide practical leadership tools to explain to people
the move from dependency to capacity, from responsibility lodged in
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Lessons in Leadership
authority to responsibility shared by a community, from technical problems to adaptive change. They can help us refashion the historic narrative
of our peoples so that, rather than live in the past, we can build from it
towards a better future.
The Five Books of Moses can begin to answer the central questions of authority and leadership: How can authority figures remain
honest and trustworthy? How can we check the corrupting tendencies
of centralised governance? How can a people scarred by abusive authorities renew its ability to authorise and trust others? How did Moses, the
nursing father, succeed in transforming a slave-minded peopleboth
deeply dependent on and deeply skeptical of authority into a selfgoverning society? What principles of adaptability have enabled the
Jewish community to survive and flourish over time?
Finally, this volume hints at a question close to my heart. Does
God learn? Sacks suggests that, since the partnership between God
and humankind is real, perspectives flow both ways. Deliberation takes
placetop down, bottom up. God changes the plan based on dialogue.
We must learn to listen; God listens, too. And if God, the ultimate
authority, listens and learns, then why shouldnt people in positions of
authority be able to publicly learn, too?
This volume contributes profoundly to our understanding of
authority, both human and divine, and of leadership as the building
of the adaptive capacity of a people. I hope it inspires us to grant our
authorities and ourselves as we practise leadership greater permission
to learn in public, together. Moses and Aaron fell on their faces before
the people. The need of leadership today is less that we know, and more
that collectively we have the courage to learn.

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Introduction

Daring Greatly

hroughout the twenty-two years that I served as chief rabbi of

the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, my team and
I faced many challenges. Early on, whenever this happened, we developed the habit of sitting down and studying Torah together. We would
search for the most appropriate text, and let it speak to us. It was astonishing how often it did so. That was when we discovered that there are
three types of Torah. Two we were familiar with: the Torah you learn
from books, and the Torah you learn from teachers. The leadership
challenges taught us a third kind: the Torah you learn from life. That is
how this book was born, as a series of insights we learned from a life in
active dialogue with Torah, the central text of our tradition.
It was fascinating to discover how much of the Torah is, in fact,
about leadership, not in the narrow sense of holding formal office, but
rather as a general approach to life. The heroes and heroines of the Torah,
the patriarchs and matriarchs and their children, and the Israelites as they
left Egypt and journeyed to the Promised Land, were all faced with the
responsibilities of freedom. That, it seems to me, is the central drama of
Judaism. The ancient Greeks produced a monumental literature about
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Lessons in Leadership
character and fate, with larger-than-life heroes and often tragic outcomes.
Ancient Israel produced a quite different literature about will and choice,
with figures with whom we can identify, often battling with their own
emotions against defeat and despair.
The Torah offers us some dramatic and unexpected scenarios.
It was not Noah, the righteous man, perfect in his generations, who
became the role model for the religious life but rather Abraham, who
confronted God with some of the most audacious words in the history
of faith: Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice? Moses, the
hero of four of the Torahs five books, is surely one of the most unexpected leaders of all time, inarticulate and tongue-tied at first, and
utterly unconvinced of his capacity to fulfil the task to which God has
summoned him.
It is a pattern that continued throughout Jewish history. Saul,
Israels first king, looked every inch the part, heads and shoulders
above his contemporaries, yet he turned out to lack both courage
and confidence, earning the stinging rebuke of the prophet Samuel,
You may be small in your own eyes, yet you are head of the tribes of
Israel (I Sam.15:17). David, his successor, was so unlikely a candidate
that when Samuel was told to anoint one of Jesses sons as king, no
one even thought of including him among the candidates. The battles
the Greek heroes had to fight were against their enemies. The battles
their Jewish counterparts had to fight were against themselves: their
fears, their hesitations, their sense of unworthiness. In that sense, it
seems to me, the Torah speaks to all of us, whether we see ourselves
as leaders or not.
During those twenty-two years, I came to know many leaders in
many fields: politicians, business people, other faith leaders, and so on.
I soon discovered the difference between the public face that leaders
must always show, bold, confident and unshakable, and the private face,
when a leader is no longer on display and can share his or her feelings
with friends. That is when you realise that even the great leaders have
their doubts and hesitations. They have their moments of depression
and near despair, and they are all the more human for it.
Dont ever think that leaders are different from the rest of us.
They arent. We all need the courage to live with the challenges, the
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Introduction: Daring Greatly

mistakes and mishaps, and to keep going. One of the truest as well
as most amusing remarks is the one attributed to Winston Churchill:
Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. It is
not their victories that make people leaders; it is the way they cope with
their defeatstheir ability to learn, to recover, and to grow.
Most of all, I began to understand that we are all called on to be
leaders within our sphere of influence, be it the family, the community,
at work among colleagues, or in play among teammates. What distinguishes a leader from a non-leader is not position or office or role but
rather, a basic attitude to life. Others wait for something to happen;
leaders help makesomething happen. While others curse the darkness, a
leader lights a light. The sages said that whenever we see the wordvayehi,
And it came to pass, it is always a prelude to tragedy. Leaders dont wait
for things to come to pass. They say notvayehibut yehi, Let there be.
That was the word with which God created the universe. It is also the
word with which we create a meaningful life, one that leaves the world
a little better for our presence.
It was during one of the worst crises of my life that I first discovered the
work of Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky at the John F. Kennedy School
of Government at Harvard. One sleepless night, I was surfing the pages
of a well-known internet bookshop when I came across a book entitled
Leadership on the Line.1 It was the subtitle that caught my eye: Staying
alive through the dangers of leading. This sounded radically unlike any
book on the subject I had encountered before. The others seemed to
say that leadership means seeing the path ahead and inspiring others to
follow. None had used words like danger. None had hinted that you
might need help staying alive.
I ordered the book, read it, and realised immediately that I was
reading the insights of people who understood the problems and pressures of leadership better than anyone else I had encountered. Not only
did they make sense of what I was feeling at the time, they also helped
me understand Torah, and the Hebrew Bible as a whole.
1. Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky, Leadership on the Line: Staying Alive through the
Dangers of Leading (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

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Lessons in Leadership
For instance, there is an extraordinary passage in which, after
the people complain about the food, Moses says to God, If this is
how You are going to treat me, please kill me now, if I have found
favour in Your eyes, and let me not see my own ruin (Num. 11:15).
What puzzled me is that the people had complained to Moses about
the food before (Ex. 16), and on that earlier occasion he had not
given way to despair.
What I now realised through Ronald and Martys book was that
on the first occasion, Moses was faced with a technical challenge: the
people needed food. On the second occasion he was faced with an
adaptive challenge. The problem was no longer the food but the people.
They had begun the second half of their journey, from Sinai to the Promised Land. They had escaped from slavery; they now needed to develop
the strength and self-confidence necessary to fight battles and create a
free society. They were the problem. They had to change. That, I now
learned, was what made adaptive leadership so difficult. People resist
change, and can become angry and hostile when faced with the need for
it. Receiving anger with grace, I read, can be a sacred task.2 This was a
breathtaking insight, and it helped me through some difficult moments.
I felt moved to write to Ronald Heifetz and thank him for the
truthfulness of his book. He wrote back, said he would be in London in
a fortnights time, and suggested we meet. We did, and became friends.
Elaine and I have cherished his wisdom ever since.
I say this because the essays in this book were not intended as
a technical study of leadership, but simply as the way wethe members of our teamlearned to study the Torah in a way that spoke to
us, wrestling as we were with the challenges of a religious community
in the twenty-first century. In them I did not strive for terminological
exactitude. So it is worth making two distinctions at the outset that I
learned from Ronald Heifetzs work.
The first is the distinction between leadership and authority. Authority
is something you have in virtue of office or the position you hold in a
family, community, or society. Presidents and prime ministers, chief
2. Ibid., 146.

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Introduction: Daring Greatly

executives and team captains all have authority. But they do not necessarily lead. They can be unimaginative or defensive; they can resist
change even when it is clear that change is needed. The classic example
is Pharaoh in the book of Exodus. Long after it has become clear that
his refusal to let the Israelites leave is bringing disaster on his people, he
continues obstinately to refuse.
Conversely, one can lead without authority. Here the classic
example is Nahshon son of Aminadav who, according to tradition, was
the first to wade into the Red Sea, after which the waters parted so that
the Israelites could cross over on dry land.3 The fact that tradition has
preserved this detail despite the fact that it is not mentioned in the Torah
tells us how deeply the sages knew that we cannot leave everything to
divine intervention. God needs us to act so that He can act through us.
Hence the profound wisdom of the Jewish tradition, that faith does not
mean leaving everything to God. It is not what God does for us that
changes the human situation. It is what we do for God.
One of the most moving traditions of the sages concerns Miriam,
the sister of Moses. A midrash says that after Pharaoh issued his decree
that every male Jewish child be thrown into the river, the men resolved
that they would have no more children. It goes on to say that Amram,the
father of Miriam, was head of the Sanhedrin, the court that took this decision, and it was Miriam who persuaded him to rescind it. Only because
of this was Moses born. Implicit in this tradition is the judgement that a
young girl had more faith than the man who was in effect the religious
head of the community. He had authority, but it was Miriam who had
the gift of leadership.
The way I have put the point in these essays has been to contrast
influence and power. Judaism has tended to be critical of power. Kings
had it and often abused it. Prophets had none, but their influence has
lasted to this day. The Talmud tells us that one nasi (head of the Jewish
community), Rabban Gamliel, asserted the authority of his office in such
a way as to humiliate his deputy, R. Yehoshua, and was deposed for so
doing (Berakhot 27b). The gedolei hador, the great sages of the generation whose interpretation of Jewish law is usually followed, rarelyif
3. Mekhilta, Beshalla; Sota 37a.

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everhad formal authority. They simply emerged through common
consent as the leading voices of their time. To a remarkable degree,
Judaism is about leadership by influence, not about authority in virtue
of formal office.
The second distinction worth making is between leadership as
a gifta talent, a set of characteristicsand leadership as a process
through which we acquire the skills and experience it takes to influence others, and the qualities of character needed to be able to make
space for others. Often in the Torah we see people grow into leadership rather than being singled out for it from birth. Genesis traces this
out in different ways in relation to both Joseph and Judah. We see both
grow. Only in Egypt, after many shifts of fortune, does Joseph become
a leader, and only after several trials do we see Judah do likewise. Moses
undergoes a series of personal crises in the book of Numbers before
he emerges, in Deuteronomy, as the figure through which he is best
known to tradition: Moshe Rabbenu, the leader as teacher. Leadership
is not a gift with which we are endowed at birth. It is something we
acquire in the course of time, often after many setbacks, failures, and
disappointments.
There is a story I have told elsewhere, but it is worth retelling in the present context. It happened in the summer of 1968, when I was an undergraduate student at Cambridge. Like most of the Jews of my generation I
was deeply affected by the anxious weeks leading up to the Six Day War
in June 1967, when it seemed as if Israel was facing a massive onslaught
by its neighbours. We, the generation born after the Holocaust, felt as
if we were about to witness, God forbid, a second Holocaust.
The little synagogue in Thompsons Lane was thronged with
students, many of whom had shown little engagement with Jewish life
until then. The sudden, extraordinary victory of Israel released a wave
of relief and exhilaration. Unbeknown to us, something similar was
happening throughout the Jewish world, and it led to some dramatic
consequences: the awakening of Soviet Jewry, the birth of a new type of
yeshiva for baalei teshuva, people returning to tradition, and a new sense
of confidence in Jewish identity. It was, for instance, the first time Jewish
students felt able, or moved, to wear a yarmulke in public.
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I decided to spend the next summer travelling around the United
States and Canada, meeting as many rabbis and Jewish thinkers as possible, to get some sense of where they were spiritually and intellectually.
I was studying secular philosophy at the time, and it was almost taken
for granted, in Britain at least, that being a philosopher meant that you
were an atheist, or at the very least an agnostic. I wanted to know how
Jewish thinkers in America were responding to these challenges. In 1966,
Commentary, an American Jewish magazine, had published an issue titled
The Condition of Jewish Belief, in which thirty-eight leading rabbis and
theologians gave their answers to a series of questions about faith. There
was no equivalent in British Jewry. So I booked a flight and a Greyhound
bus ticket, and in the spirit of Simon and Garfunkel counting the cars
on the New Jersey Turnpike, I came to look for America.
I met many impressive thinkers, but two names kept coming
up in conversation: Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik at Yeshiva University,
and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn.
Rabbi Soloveitchik was the outstanding Jewish mind of the age, an
intellectual giant who combined, as few have done, Talmudic mastery
with philosophical depth, exegetical genius, and poetic insight into the
human condition.
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, meanwhile, had emerged as a unique
leader in Jewish life. He had done something very unusual: he had turned
his hasidic group outwards, sending them to campuses and small communities, places that had never encountered that kind of Orthodoxy
before. It is hard now, half a century later, to realise that almost no one
had engaged in Jewish outreach before. He was a genuine pioneer, the
rarest of phenomena in an ultra-traditionalist segment of Jewish life better known for its segregation from the rest of the Jewish world. Wherever
I went, people spoke of him with awe.
I was determined to meet them both. The story of my encounter with Rabbi Soloveitchik belongs elsewhere. It was the meeting with
the Rebbe that has to do with leadership, in a way that was completely
unexpected. Full of chutzpah, I had gone to his headquarters at 770
Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, asking the first Hasid I met how to arrange
a meeting. He collapsed laughing. Do you realise how many thousands
of people want to see the Rebbe? he said. He told me to forget about
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Lessons in Leadership
it. It was simply not possible. Undaunted, I told him I would be travelling around the United States and Canada for the next few weeks, but
that in a few weeks time I would be staying with my aunt in Los Angeles, and if by any chance there was a possibility of a meeting, I could be
contacted there. I gave him my aunts phone number.
To my surprise, four weeks later, on a Sunday night, the phone
rang. The Rebbe, I was told, could see me for a few minutes on Thursday
evening. I packed my case, said goodbye to my aunt, and travelled by
Greyhound bus from Los Angeles to New York, not a journey I would
necessarily recommend to anyone wanting to travel coast to coast. That
Thursday night I met the Rebbe. It was a meeting that changed my life.
He was quite unlike what I expected. There was no charisma, no
overflowing personality. To the contrary, he was so self-effacing that
there seemed to be only one person in the room: the person to whom
he was speaking. This in itself was surprising. I later discovered that
this was one of the fundamental principles of Jewish mysticism, bittul
hayesh, the nullification of the self, the better to be open to the Divine,
and also the human, Other.
More surprising still was what happened halfway into our conversation. Having patiently answered my questions, he performed a
role reversal and started asking questions of his own. How many Jewish students were there at Cambridge University? How many of them
were engaged with Jewish life? How many came to the synagogue? And
when he heard the answersat the time, only about ten per cent of the
Jewish students were in any way actively engaged with Jewish lifehe
asked me what I was personally doing about this.
This was not what I was expecting. I had not the slightest intention
of taking on any leadership role. I began a tortuous statement explaining
why this had nothing to do with me: In the situation in which I find
myself, I began. The Rebbe let the sentence go no further. You do
not find yourself in a situation, he said. You put yourself in one. And if
you put yourself in one situation you can put yourself in another. Quite
soon it became clear what he was doing. He was challenging me to act.
Something was evidently wrong with Jewish student life in Cambridge,
and he was encouraging me to get involved, to do something to change
the situation.
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Introduction: Daring Greatly

What happened over the next few decades is a story for another
time and place. Suffice it to say that this encounter was the beginning of a long journey that led, in time, to a young man who had
plans of becoming a lawyer, an economist, or an academic, becoming instead a rabbi, a teacher of rabbis, and eventually a chief rabbi.
In retrospect I said that people misjudged the Rebbe. They saw him
as a man with thousands of followers. It was true, but it was the least
interesting thing about him. What I learned from him was that a
good leader creates followers. A great leader creates leaders. That is
what the Rebbe did.
It is as a way of saying a belated thank you to him that I wrote
this book. One of the most important tasks of a leader is to encourage
leadership in others. That is what I hope these essays do in some small
way for you. We each have a role to play in strengthening Jewish life,
and the scale in which we do so does not matter. If we make a positive
difference to one other person, that is enough. One life, said the sages,
is like a universe. Therefore, if you change a life you begin to change
the universe in the only way we can: one person at a time, one day at a
time, one act at a time.
To offer help to those in need, hospitality to the lonely, or
encouragement to those wrestling with difficulties, is to do a mitzva,
a holy deed. It is to do what God does: He supports the fallen, heals
the sick, and releases those who are bound. We can heal some of the
wounds of this world. We can do something; and we should never be
discouraged that we cant do everything. As R. Tarfon said, It is not for
you to complete the task but neither are you free to stand aside from it.
We are all called on to be leaders. But we are also called on to
be followers. In Judaism the two concepts are not opposites as they are
in many cultures. They are part of the same process. Leaders and followers sit around the same table, engaged in the same task, asking the
same question: how, together, can we lift one another? A leader is one
who challenges a follower. A follower is one who challenges a leader. A
Talmudic sage once said, I learned much from my teachers, more from
my colleagues, but most of all from my students. That is one of the great
insights of Jewish leadership. We are all part of the team and only as a
team can we change the world.
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Lessons in Leadership
Perhaps the most profound and unexpected lesson I learned in
the course of those twenty-two years was that leadership is not only
about what you achieve by it. It is what you become because of it.
Leading forces you to develop muscles you did not know you had. It
changes you. It gives you strength and courage and the willingness to
take risks. It teaches you emotional intelligence and the ability to see
the goodoften the greatin other people. Moses began his career as
a leader unable to speak in public; he ended it as one of the most eloquent visionaries the world has ever known. Leading makes you grow.
It is the most powerful thing that does.
The Jewish people right now needs leaders, people unafraid to face
the challenges of today and build for tomorrow instead of, as so often
happens, fighting the battles of yesterday. At the dawn of time, said the
rabbis, God showed Adam each generation and its searchers, each generation and its leadersmeaning, no two generations are alike. The world
changes and leaders help us to adapt to the new without breaking faith
with the old. I hope something in these essays moves you to take on one
leadership challenge, however small, that you may not have done before.
Happiness is a life lived in the active mode. It comes not to those
who complain, but to those who do. The greatest word uttered by the
Jewish people at the holiest moment of their history, when they met
God at the mountain and became His people, wasNaaseh, We will do.
Judaism is a religion of doing, and what we do together is greater than
any of us could do alone. That is the challenge of leadership. Jews dared
believe that together, and with heavens help, we can change the world.
Daring greatly makes us great. There is no other way.
My deepest thanks for the ideas in this book go to the people with whom
I worked most closely in the Chief Rabbinate. The first director of my
office, Jonathan (now Lord) Kestenbaum, framed the questions that led
to the study sessions out of which this book was born. His successor,
Syma Weinberg, taught me about the personal dimensions of leadership and the importance of emotional intelligence. Joanna Benarroch
and Dan Sacker helped me think through ways of communicating these
ideas in new ways to a new generation, and in a new role. Working with
each of them has been a privilege.
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Introduction: Daring Greatly

So too was serving British and Commonwealth Jewry. My colleagues in the London Beth Din and the rabbinate were always good
friends, and it was a blessing to see Jewish life in Britain, under their
leadership, grow more spiritual over the years.
The presidents and honorary officers of the United Synagogue
were the most loyal friends any leader could wish for. The British Jewish
community was and is blessed by the time, energy, and commitment its
members give to enrich every facet of Jewish life. Ours is a community
of leaders, doers, and givers out of all proportion to its numbers, and it
was inspiring to be a part of it.
My thanks as always to my publisher, Matthew Miller, my editor, Gila Fine, and the team at Maggid Books for their enthusiasm and
professionalism far beyond the line of duty. I am indebted to Professor
Ronald Heifetz not only for his lovely preface to this book, but for all
he has taught me over the years about leadership, its challenges, and
possibilities. It is a privilege to call him and his wife, Kathryn, friends.
I always save my deepest thanks for my wife Elaine, never more
so than in the case of this book. Throughout the years she has been my
lifeline, and her humour, her groundedness, her deep calm, simplicity,
and constancy of faith made every day a blessing. I thank God for the
gift of her love, and if I achieved anything as a leader, the credit is hers.
Jonathan Sacks
London
Iyar 5775

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Genesis

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Bereshit

Taking Responsibility

f leadership is the solution, what is the problem? On this, the

Torahcould not be more specific. It is a failure of responsibility.
The early chapters of Genesis focus on two stories: the first is
Adam and Eve; the second, Cain and Abel. Both are about a specific
kind of failure.
First, Adam and Eve. As we know, they sin. Embarrassed and
ashamed, they hide, only to discover that one cannot hide from God:
The Lord God called to the man, Where are you? He answered,
I heard You in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked,
so I hid. And He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have
you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?
The man said, The woman You put here with meshe gave me
some fruit from the tree, and I ate it. Then the Lord God said
to the woman, What is this you have done? The woman said,
The serpent deceived me, and I ate. (Gen. 3:912)
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Genesis
Both insist that it was not their fault. Adam blames the woman.
The woman blames the serpent. The result is that they are both punished
and exiled from Eden. Adam and Eve deny personal responsibility. They
say, in effect, It wasnt me.
The second story is more tragic. The first instance of sibling rivalry
in the Torah leads to the first murder:
Cain said to his brother Abel. And it came to pass while they were
in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then
the Lord said to Cain, Where is your brother Abel? Idont
know, he replied. Am I my brothers keeper? The Lord said,
What have you done? Listen! Your brothers blood cries out to
Me from the ground. (Gen. 4:810)
Cain does not deny personal responsibility. He does not say, It
wasnt me or It wasnt my fault. He denies moral responsibility. In
effect, he asks why he should be concerned with the welfare of anyone
but himself. Why should we not do what we want if we have the power
to do it? In Platos Republic, Glaucon argues that justice is whatever is in
the interest of the stronger party. Might makes right. If life is a Darwinian struggle to survive, why should we restrain ourselves for the sake of
others if we are more powerful than they are? If there is no morality in
nature, then I am responsible only to myself. That is the voice of Cain
throughout the ages.
These two stories are not just stories. They are an account, at the
beginning of the Torahs narrative history of humankind, of a failure, first
personal and then moral, to take responsibilityand it is this for which
leadership is the answer.
There is a fascinating phrase in the story of Moses early years. He
grows up, goes out to his people, the Israelites, and sees them labouring
as slaves. He witnesses an Egyptian officer beating one of them. The text
then says: He looked this way and that and saw no one [vayar ki ein
ish; literally, he saw that there was no man] (Ex. 2:12). It is difficult
to read this literally. A building site is not a closed location. There must
have been many people present. A mere two verses later we discover that
there were Israelites who knew exactly what he had done. Therefore, the
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Bereshit: Taking Responsibility

phrase almost certainly means, He looked this way and that and saw
that there was no one else willing to intervene.
If this is so, then we have here the first instance of what came to be
known as the Genovese syndrome or the bystander effect,1 so called
after a case in which a woman was attacked in New York in the presence
of a large number of people who knew that she was being assaulted but
failed to come to her rescue.
Social scientists have undertaken many experiments to try to
determine what happens in situations like this. Some argue that the presence of other bystanders affects an individuals interpretation of what
is happening. Since no one else is coming to the rescue, they conclude
that what is happening is not an emergency. Others, though, argue that
the key factor is diffusion of responsibility. People assume that since there
are many people present someone else will step forwards and act. That
seems to be the correct interpretation of what was happening in the
case of Moses. No one else was prepared to come to the rescue. Who,
in any case, was likely to do so? The Egyptians were slave-masters. Why
should they bother to take a risk to save an Israelite? And the Israelites
were slaves. Why should they come to the aid of one of their fellows if,
by doing so, they would put their own lives at risk?
It took a Moses to act. But that is what makes a leader. A leader
is one who takes responsibility. Leadership is born when we become
active rather than passive, when we do not wait for someone else to act
because perhaps there is no one elseat least not here, not now. When
bad things happen, some avert their eyes. Some wait for others to act.
Some blame others for failing to act. Some simply complain. But there
are people who say, If something is wrong, let me be among the first to
put it right. They are the leaders. They are the ones who make a difference in their lifetimes. They are the ones who make ours a better world.
Many of the great religions and civilisations are based on acceptance. If there is violence, suffering, poverty, and pain in the world, then
that is the way the world is. Or that is the will of God. Or that is the
nature of nature itself. All will be well in the World to Come.
1. Martin Gansberg, Thirty-Eight Who Saw Murder Didnt Call the Police, New York
Times, March 27, 1964.

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Genesis
Judaism was and remains the worlds great religion of protest.
The heroes of faith did not accept; they protested. They were willing to
confront God Himself. Abraham said, Shall the Judge of all the earth
not do justice? (Gen. 18:25). Moses said, Why have You done evil to
this people? (Ex. 5:22). Jeremiah said, Why are the wicked at ease?
( Jer. 12:1). That is how God wants us to respond. Judaism is Gods call
to human responsibility. The highest achievement is to become Gods
partner in the work of creation.
When Adam and Eve sinned, God called out, Where are you?
As Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Lubavitcher Rebbe, pointed
out, this call was not directed only to the first humans.2 It echoes in every
generation. God gave us freedom, but with freedom comes responsibility.
God teaches us what we ought to do but He does not do it for us. With
rare exceptions, God does not intervene in history. He acts through us,
not to us. His is the voice that tells us, as He told Cain before he committed his crime, that we can resist the evil within us as well as the evil
that surrounds us.
The responsible life is a life that responds. The Hebrew for responsibility, arayut, comes from the word aer, meaning other. Our great
Other is God Himself, calling us to use the freedom He gave us, to make
the world more like the world that ought to be. The great question, the
question that the life we lead answers, is: which voice will we listen to?
Will we heed the voice of desire, as in the case of Adam and Eve? Will we
listen to the voice of anger, as in the case of Cain? Or will we follow the
voice of God calling on us to make this a more just and gracious world?

2. Noted in Nissan Mindel, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, A Biography (New York:
Kehot Publication Society, 1969).

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