In this week’s portion, Moses faces a challenge from the least likely of quarters: his siblings, Miriam and Aaron. They seek to undermine his position through a critique of his foreign wife, with the ulterior motive of questioning Moses’ singularity as leader. God answers definitively, yet with a keen insight into what distinguishes the qualities of Jewish leadership from other cultures: In Judaism, humility is paramount. Not self-abnegation, a diminishing of one’s capacity, or the “humble brag,” but rather an embrace of perspective in understanding one’s role as a service-leader, straddling the line between God and humanity. In an era in which there is often an inverse correspondence between the abilities of our leaders and their inflated sense of themselves, the Jewish model is as inspiring as it is potentially transformative.
