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Essays on the Weekly Torah Reading
Rabbi Azriel C. Fellner

B’HA-ALOT’KHA

GATHER FOR ME

Leadership is never easy. Leaders need to sublimate their own desires for the needs of the people he/she leads. The hours are often long and the demands heavy. Indeed that word heavy appears many times in the Torah, the heaviness of the burden, of responding to the needs of the people.

Indeed, Moses’ life has become wretched. The people complain about the lack of meat, the quality of the food given to them in a miraculous manner, and generally grumble and moan, their cries of disappointment endless, like the wilderness itself. There is in the opening verses of Chapter Eleven a kind of interminable bellyaching on the part of the Israelites about their condition.

Moses, finally has had enough and complains to God, I alone cannot bear this people, for they are too heavy for me. (Numbers 11: 14) The image is sharp. It is as though the Israelites have perched themselves on Moses’ shoulders as he carries them through the wilderness. He also compares himself to a nanny who carries a yowling infant on her lap. He wants it to end. Even death would be preferable. And if You would deal thus with me, Moses exclaims, kill me. . .(Numbers 11: 14) It’s an astonishing request; but it comes from deep within, from a leader who has had a meltdown. After all, Moses, despite his intimate relationship with God, is all too human. He obviously is in need of help.

Immediately the Torah tells us that God asks Moses, Gather for Me seventy of Israel’s elders whom you know (i.e. people you know to be reliable, honest, righteous) elders and officers of the people and bring them to the tent of meeting and let them take their place with you. (Numbers 11: 16) These people will now share Moses’ burden. Part of Moses’ authority will now be apportioned to them. Thus, Moses will feel less harried. And through this sharing of authority and leadership, the beginning of an organized community takes shape, over and above the various placements of the tribes in their appointed locations. (Numbers Chapter 2) Now there will be cabinet members as well as legal decisors, as it were, reporting back to Moses, each member responsible to and for the people he serves.

There is, however, something which requires some examination. When God responds to Moses’ call for help, the Torah says Gather for Me seventy elders. . .Was it really for God that Moses calls forward men who would be of help to him? Why does the Torah say, Gather for Me? Certainly, God does not need burden sharing. Moses does. The phrase for Me should rather have read, Gather for yourself those who can help you and share your burden.

The Ohr Ha-Hayim (Morrocan rabbi, Hayim Ibn Attar, 1696-1743) suggests that the phrase for me means that God Himself will ratify the appointment of the elders; their tasks will be Divinely affirmed. Once you have appointed them Moses, and they have been passed by Me, then they will become your elders and officers.

The Sifrei (Babylonian Legal Midrash, 200 C.E.) goes a step further. The Sifrei interprets the phrase for Me, as saying that the word Me means that whatever is associated with Me (God) must be such that it will endure forever. Moses, in other words, did not just appoint people who would assist him in leading and teaching the people and share his burdens. Moses was creating an institution that needed to endure, something that would survive beyond the present generation. It was to be the precursor of the Sanhedrin, the Sifrei clarifies and illustrates.

Moses’ task here in our Torah portion was more than burden sharing. It was the creation of something enduring.

This is the second time we read of Moses’ requiring assistance. Earlier in the Book of Exodus, 18: 13-27, the decision to have help was motivated by Jethro who saw his son-in-law working endless hours and who suggested that Moses get some support from others. What happened then, just before the giving of the Ten Commandments, did not have Divine ratification. Though it was an excellent idea and Moses followed through on Jethro’s suggestion, it did not carry the kind of institutional weight which is reflected in the phrase for Me and which to the Sifrei meant something permanent and sacred.

Institutions which are created for the greater good, which transcend time and whose purpose goes beyond the momentary and the mundane will endure. But when an institution no longer concerns itself with what is best for the people it serves, or when it becomes a haven for personal grievances and self-centered policies, when it becomes a forum where the lie and the truth are interchangeable then it is no longer for Me—for a higher standard of leadership, and yes, even in a secular setting—a sacred and stable place.

Institutions that have lost their way, institutions which no longer are receptive to the for Me which marked the 70 elders appointed by Moses, can bring about an atmosphere where hatred, racial inequities, antisemitism and indifference grow like poisonous weeds. The institutions themselves begin to weaken, melt and finally wither; the voices of the elders spewing irrational judgments and distortions.

An institution is crippled when the phrase For Me with a capital “M” becomes for me with a lower-case “m.”