Chapter Two of the biblical Book of Exodus compresses into a mere five paragraphs the extraordinary story of Moses the Israelite boy born into a slave family who becomes the prince of Egypt and then a liberator of the oppressed. Surrounding him are compassionate, powerful women who subversively resist the genocidal decrees of the Egyptian Pharaoh to enslave and destroy the Israelites. Most important, Moses’ character develops as he makes courageous choices to side with his actual people, the persecuted; these choices are wildly out of sync with his supposed status as a member of the royal household.
This time of year, Jews around the globe read the Book of Exodus liturgically in our synagogues. Because Exodus tells Moses’ tale with such sparse language, I always look at the legends of my people that grew up around the story to fill it in. These are interpretive backstories taught by our ancient sages, but they may well have originated as people sat around campfires or as parents made up bedtime tales for their children.
One of my favorite tales is not about Moses the rebellious prince of Egypt but about Moses the shepherd. According to the Bible, after he fled Egypt to escape the Pharaoh’s attempt to kill him, Moses settled in a foreign land whose local leader took him in. He married that leader’s daughter, had a child, and quietly tended his father-in-law’s flocks on the edges of the desert. The later legend relates that one day a baby goat ran away from the flock and Moses pursued it into the desert. The kid soon came to rest and drink thirstily at a shaded oasis. When Moses caught up to the kid, he said to it, “I didn’t realize that you had run away because you were thirsty. You must be very tired now.” Moses picked it up, placed it over his shoulder and walked back to where the flock was quietly tending. God was so impressed by Moses’ behavior that God declared, “Moses showed so much compassion toward one tiny animal in this flock of animals? He is the right person for the job of leading My flock, the oppressed People of Israel.” This, according to the legend, is how God chose Moses to speak out against the Pharaoh.
I’m always struck by what my ancestors chose to emphasize about Moses in this backstory: not his courage as an elite-turned-rebel but his compassion as a care giver. There are other stories about Moses’ fierce pursuit of justice in and out of Pharaoh’s palace. Yet in this one, his role as a largely anonymous but merciful shepherd is what catches God’s eye in deciding to make him the leader of the Exodus from slavery.
Compassion is not the only material from which a great leader is built, but it is certainly the foundation without which leadership crumbles. Addressing President Trump in her sermon at the inaugural prayer service a few weeks ago, Bishop Marianne Budde emphasized how indispensable compassion is to leadership. She said to him, “Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.” The bishop went on to talk about LGBTQ Americans who fear for their rights and safety. Yet she mostly emphasized the millions of immigrants, especially those who are undocumented, living fearfully with their children in the shadows, doing the hard work that the rest of us won’t do and just looking for a way to join American society legally. She concluded by reminding the President, “Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land.” Bishop Budde was paraphrasing Moses who said this about himself after he fled Egypt, fearing for his life. I suggest that Moses’ compassion was in part the result of his experience as a political refugee whose new family and community embraced him. He could understand the suffering of a thirsty baby goat alone in the desert and the anguish of his fellow Israelites under the whip of a hostile Pharaoh; this is because he knew what it was like to fear and run for your life. He wove his compassion from the different cloths of experience, solidarity and empathy.
Our immigration debate is extremely complex, yet there are sensible and ethical solutions to all of it that would give immigrants a fighting chance to join American life and contribute mightily to our economy and culture. Sadly, too much of this debate has become a deflated football in a game of misinformed and often xenophobic politics at the highest levels of government and the lowest levels of decency. Going forward, our nation needs all its leaders to channel Moses, not Pharaoh. In this coming year, I pray that they and we make compassion, not contempt, our byword, for our nation’s and the world’s sake.
Dan Ornstein is the rabbi of Congregation Ohav Shalom and a writer living in Albany, NY. Check out his writings at danornstein.com
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