Failures of leadership – towards a Masorti response

The UK is reeling from a comprehensive failure of political leadership.  Whatever your view on the outcome of the referendum, it’s become clear that senior government leaders gambled with the future of the country for the sake of tactical advantage or even personal ego – sometimes to the extent of campaigning for a solution they didn’t even believe in.  Millions of people saw their vote not as an opportunity to influence the outcome, but as a protest against an establishment with which they feel no sense of connection.  Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Opposition, failed to throw his weight behind his party’s policy and is refusing to step down despite having lost the confidence of 80% of his MPs, being unable to fill his Shadow Cabinet, and the real risk of splitting his party for good. 

And in case we’re tempted to think that the answer is stronger leadership, a former charismatic Prime Minister stands accused of pushing the country into what has been described as the biggest foreign policy disaster since Suez by withholding information and strong-arming his colleagues rather than listening to them.

I’m reminded of the story of Rabban Yohanan Ben Zakkai the most prominent leader of the Jewish people at the time of the war against Rome, the siege of Jerusalem and, ultimately, the destruction of the Second Temple (66-70 CE)*.  At that time, the Jewish people was riven by sectarian conflict.  The Zealots, an extremist party who preferred death to what they saw as enslavement by the Roman empire (and whose story ended in mass suicide at Masada), had responded to the siege of Jerusalem by burning the city’s grain stores and bringing on famine – creating a situation so desperate that the people, they hoped, would have no choice but to fight.  But when Ben Zakkai, the leader of a moderate faction, walked the streets and saw the people cooking straw and drinking the water, he understood that there was no hope of defeating Rome. 

Ben Zakkai sent for his nephew – a leader of the Zealots – and together, secretly, they hatched a plan to escape from the besieged city and negotiate with the Romans.  Ben Zakkai faked his own death and two of his students carried his coffin to the gates of Jerusalem, knowing that the Zealot guards’ piety would require them to ensure that no dead body was left overnight in the holy city.  Upon reaching the Roman camp, Ben Zakkai sprang out of his coffin and presented himself to the Roman General, Vespasian, addressing him as ‘King.’  When, a few moments later, a messenger arrived from Rome to inform Vespasian that he had indeed been appointed Emperor, Vespasian interpreted Ben Zakkai’s words as an omen and offered to grant him any request he might make.  But rather than asking for Jerusalem to be saved, Ben Zakkai asked for the establishment of a rabbinical academy at Yavneh; this would become the foundation of a new form of Judaism which could survive the destruction of the Temple and which has now lasted for close to 2000 years.

This story (recorded in the Talmud, admittedly, by the descendants of Ben Zakkai’s moderate, rabbinic faction) contains stark lessons about leadership.  The Zealots, characterised by ideological purity and a refusal to compromise in the face of reality, failed to achieved their goals and condemned thousands of people to catastrophe.  Had they got their way, Judaism would have died along with them.  Ben Zakkai’s leadership, in contrast, was marked by pragmatism, a willingness to snatch partial victories from the jaws of defeat, and most of all by his success at building and capitalising on relationships.  He saw and understood the concrete situation of the people, he enlisted the help of his followers, he prioritised rescuing his colleagues and, most surprisingly, he built tactical relationships with his opponents and enemies.

A true leader is someone who has followers (look behind you – is anyone there?) and who knows how to bring people together to work for common goals.  This is no less true in community life.  A community is a network of relationships – the stronger the relationships, the stronger the community.  The most successful Masorti communities are the ones which prioritise relationship-building as an end in itself, where guests and new people are introduced to the members and invited into their homes, where community leaders hold regular one-to-ones and small group meetings to build relationships and find out what’s going on in their members’ lives, and where there’s a clear plan for how to get specific individuals more involved in aspects of community life which speak to them and make use of their talents.  Communities which struggle are the ones which spend all their time thinking about programmes and activities (which in the absence of systematic relationship-building rarely bring in more than a hard core of around 15% of members) and where the only time you get a call from the shul is when they want something from you. 

One of Masorti Judaism’s most important programmes is Jewish Community Organising, a training course for developing relational community leaders.  The cohort from this year’s course (including members from New London, New North London, Edgware, Elstree & Borehamwood and New Stoke Newington shuls) will now form the core for a movement-wide relationship-building exercise.  Each course participant plus leaders from additional communities will recruit a team of five ‘listeners’ who, after some initial training, will conduct five one-to-ones with their members.  The outcomes?   We’ll have built relationships between leaders and up to 50 members in each community.  Those leaders will understand the real needs of their members.  When it comes to planning programmes, we’ll know who to get involved, what we can ask of them and where our focus should be.  Most importantly, our investment in relationship-building means that when we invite people, they’re likely to show up. 

While synagogue life does not typically throw up the life-and-death dilemmas of national leadership, there are lessons here that some of our politicians would do well to learn.

*Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 56a-b

Parshat Behar - Freedom From and Freedom To

Parshat Behar - Freedom From and Freedom To

The Torah's take on whether individual rights are worth anything without social and economic equality

At the centre of modern progressive politics has been a debate over the meaning of freedom.  Classical liberals believed all human beings have a fundamental right to live free from outside interference.  They emphasised freedom from – the absence of coercion – and often prioritised the free market and rolling back the power of the State.  Against this, social democrats and contemporary, egalitarian liberals claimed this was not enough.  Freedom from meant nothing without freedom to – and you can’t have freedom to without a basic level of resources.  Freedom of expression means nothing, for example, if you’re denied access to education and don’t know how to write.  Or think of a homeless person who gives up their liberty by committing a crime in the hope of being locked up somewhere warm for the night.  Freedom to, in this sense, means not only the absence of coercion but the fair distribution of goods and opportunities.

In this week’s parashah we read that the Jubilee was a year of freedom in which land was redistributed and all Hebrew slaves were set free.  But in Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15 we learn a different procedure: Hebrew slaves are to be released after six years of servitude unless, of their own volition, they decide to submit themselves to the permanent ownership of their master.  A quirk of these texts is that they use different words for freedom.  The freed individual slave is described in Exodus and Deuteronomy as ‘hofshi’, while this week’s reading from Leviticus instructs us to ‘proclaim freedom –“dror” – throughout the land’.  What’s the difference between these two terms?

As pointed out by various commentators, hofshi is used by the Torah in the context of liberty for the individual slave, while dror means universal freedom for all.  Similarly, hofshi connotes a conditional release – Hebrew slaves have the option of remaining chained to their masters – while dror reflects an unqualified freedom with no exceptions.  Other scholars have pointed out that whereas hofshi means a rather narrow release from serfdom and labour, dror implies a much more sweeping freedom from any kind of subservience or domination by a master.  More broadly, hofshi can be understood as a negative release from coercion, whereas dror signifies the positive gift of freedom.  But what is the positive content of this freedom?

In the Talmud (Rosh Hashanah 9b) Rabbi Yehudah interprets dror to mean the freedom of a person to dwell wherever he likes and to carry on trade in the whole country.  This explanation is etymologically grounded - dror comes from the same root as ‘dwell’ – dar in Hebrew or medayer in Aramaic.  This interpretation connects the release of slaves to the redemption of the land.  It has been argued that just as freedom from subservience to a human master enables us to serve God, so too the redistribution of land reflects the abolition of limited human ownership in favour of God’s absolute sovereignty.

But perhaps the Torah is making a simpler, political point.  Being free to live and trade where you like means having land, a house, and goods to sell.  True liberty requires both freedom from – the release from slavery – and the equitable re-distribution of resources: a deeper conception of freedom to.