A Brief Idea about Leadership

It feels like eons ago - now that we just had our 3rd child (who just woke us up at 4:15 AM, and now as I'm sitting to write something, our oldest, aged 7, has just woken up at 5:20) - but I remember a very nice idea I heard from Richard Joel, the former President of YU at a leadership conference when I was in college. 

"Moshe looked to and fro, saw there was no man, and smote the Egyptian." Joel shared a fascinating insight. Moshe looked inwards, saw that he was not yet a man - one who was willing to take leadership and responsibility - and then, realizing that he had to become a man, smote the Egyptian. 

I asked him a few years thereafter how he had come to that understanding, and he told me that the verses themselves state that when the two Jews were fighting, and he had said to the wicked one, "Why shall you hit your fellow Jew?" the response in kind was, "Are you going to smite me like you smote the Egyptian?" connoting that in fact there was a witness, connoting that Moshe had not in fact seen that there was no man on the premises but rather, that he had looked inward. Whether Joel's idea is irrefutable, I'm not sure, but it certainly is a very nice insight into human nature, one worth sharing, conveying and remembering. 

Comments

  1. UnknownDecember 26, 2021 at 7:47 PM

    Short and sweet!!
    Thanks Yoav!
    Hope you pen a piece whenever your baby keeps you up at night :)

    ReplyDelete

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