Sensitivity
A Message for Parashat Ki Tissa 2018
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As Moshe
and Yehoshua walked together to the scene of het ha-egel, the cries of
the nation rang out from a distance. Yehoshua exclaimed, “A sound of war in the
camp!” But Moshe corrected him: “Not the sound of crying out in triumph, and
not the sound of crying out in defeat. A sound of crying out I hear” (Shemot
32:18-19). Imagining the full effect of Moshe’s reaction at that time, the Hakhamim
retold: “Moshe said: ‘Yehoshua, a person who will in the future lead six
hundred thousand people doesn’t know how to distinguish between one sound and
another?’”[1]
The Rabbis clearly understood that this ability to “distinguish between sounds”
was a vital quality of leadership, but they never explained why. How was this
trait related to the proper guidance of Am Yisrael?
R. Yehuda Amital z”l, the former rosh
yeshivah of Yeshivat Har Etzion would often describe the unique character
of his students' involvement even beyond the walls of the beit
midrash by means of a Hasidic story. R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi – the “Alter Rebbe” and founder of Habad – and
his grandson, R. Menahem Mendel – the “Semah Sedek” – once sat studying Torah
in a three-room house. The Alter Rebbe sat in the inner room, while the Semah
Sedek was in the middle, and his baby slept in the outer room. The baby began
to cry, but the Semah Sedek was so immersed in his studies that he did not hear
it. The Alter Rebbe, however, heard the baby and quickly ran to soothe it. As
he returned to his place in the inner room, he reprimanded his grandson: “If
someone is studying Torah and fails to hear the crying of a Jewish baby, there
is something very wrong with his learning.”[2]
I believe that although Yehoshua did hear
the cries of the people at that time, his failure to understand them was
similar to the Semah Sedek’s mistake. Each of them lacked
sensitivity. Moshe was teaching Yehoshua that his inability to decipher the
nation’s shouts signified a disconnect. The ears of a sensitive leader can hear
beyond the muffled calls of his people – he can understand why they are
crying, as well.
In his best-selling book Principles, billionaire
Ray Dalio listed many of the recurring lessons that he has encountered in his
climb to success as an investor and hedge fund manager. One of his core
principles is to “remember that the who is more important than the what.”
He explained that potential visionaries sometimes fail at their projects by
mistakenly focusing on what they want accomplished, and overlooking who
will accomplish it best. He wrote: “Not knowing what is required to do the job
well and not knowing what your people are like is like trying to run a machine
without knowing how its park work together.”[3]
The success or failure at “being in sync” with your team will oftentimes
dictate the successive results of the project. This was, in a sense, Moshe’s
message to Yehoshua at that time: he taught him that leading a nation entails
more than tactical planning and perceiving vision – it requires understanding
the people.
Moshe’s words to Yehoshua extend further than
the realm of national leadership and project management. They affect our vital
roles as friends, spouses and parents, as well. They teach the essential lesson
of sensitivity. Shared dreams can only carry our relationships as far as
we can hear and understand each other’s cries.
Shabbat shalom!
Rabbi Avi Harari
[2] As retold in Elyashiv
Reichner’s By Faith Alone: The Story of Rabbi Yehuda Amital (New Milford, CT, 2011), pg. 23.
[3] Ray Dalio, Principles
(New York, NY, 2017), pg. 400.