Alephs and Alphas

For as long as my children have been able to sit at the Shabbat table, right after Kiddush and Ha-motzi we have played “Roses, Thorns, and Buds.” We go around the table, every child getting the chance to share their “rose” – the best part of their week gone by, their “thorn” – the worst part of their week gone by, and then a bud – something they are looking forward to in the week to come. It is a wonderful custom and conversation prompt, and – like challah and grape juice – is a permanent fixture at the Cosgrove Shabbat table.

About two months ago we introduced a new element into our Shabbat routine. The game is now called “Roses, Thorns, Buds, and Compost.” Debbie and I decided to add asking the family to reflect on those moments in the week gone by that we wish we could do over. While there were a few non-bimah-appropriate “also-rans” for what this new category should be called, given the horticulture theme of “Roses, Thorns, and Buds” we settled on “compost.” The mistakes, misfires, bad judgment calls and quick-tempered words of the past week – those things we did or said that we might want to throw away and pretend didn’t happen, but can’t, because they did. And so, we talk about them openly, we turn them over, we learn from them, because we hope that with thoughtful reflection and the passage of time, those moments, like compost, can become a source of growth. While I can’t speak for Debbie or my children, for me this new exercise communicates that we can acknowledge our mistakes and still have a seat, literally and figuratively, at the table. Most of all, I have discovered that the new routine serves to spotlight and sanctify a character trait that is not celebrated enough in this world: humility. I want my children to know that by naming their missteps, by openly discussing the “could’ve, would’ve, should’ve’s” of the week gone by, not only are they not diminished, but they are elevated, in the eyes of their parents, their siblings, and the world around them. I want my children to know that to be self-aware and self-reflective, to honestly assess and acknowledge our imperfections – in other words, to demonstrate humility – is the virtuous path by which greatness can be achieved.

This week we begin the third book of the Hebrew Bible, Leviticus, in Hebrew Va-yikra, meaning “called out.” Va-yikra Elohim el Moshe . . . “the Lord called out to Moses and spoke to him from the tent of meeting.” This is, by all accounts, Moses’s big moment. He has faced down Pharaoh in Egypt, crossed the sea, ascended Mount Sinai to receive the Torah, built the tabernacle, weathered the challenge of the golden calf and now, at the heart of the Torah, with an intimacy that nobody had experienced before and nobody has since, he gets the call from God, entrusted to receive the priestly law by which all of Israel shall worship. This was the backstage pass, the icing on the cake, the va-yikra moment, the exclusive “call” reserved for the one and only person to stand face to face with God: Moses.

You may not know that when you look at the word va-yikra in the Torah, you see that the final letter – the aleph – is written much smaller than letters of the rest of the word and the rest of the Torah. The rabbis interpreted this orthographical anomaly as a message of deep significance. Rabbi Jacob ben Asher, also known as the Ba’al ha-Turim, explains that as Moses penned the account of his exchange with God, his humility was such that he squirmed at the thought of recording such an intimacy with the Creator. Instead of writing va-yikra, “called out,” as instructed, he dropped the aleph, leaving the word va-yikar – meaning to ”happen upon,” as if to say that God stumbled upon Moses merely by chance or by accident, rather than selecting him for his merit. God, however, responded with the first autocorrect on historical record, demanding the aleph be written – va-yikra – insisting that their dialogue and thus Moses’s greatness be recorded. Va-yikra written with a small aleph, as it is written in every Torah scroll to this day, is the compromise struck between God and Moses. Moses’s alpha status is retained, but it is retained only by way of codifying his abiding humility in the small aleph.

More often than not, and increasingly so, when we consider the choice between daring to be great and living with humility, we think of it as an either/or proposition – that we have to choose one or the other. “It’s hard to be humble,” Muhammad Ali once said, “when you are as great as I am.” We tell our kids and we tell ourselves to think great thoughts, seek bold achievements, follow our hearts, be all that we can be, and then promote our successes widely. Who needs consensus, we think, when the fast track of conviction is ours for the taking? “Fortune,” we say, “favors the brave.” As for humility, as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. wrote, “Humility is the first of virtues, for other people.” We are living in a time when the measure of leadership seems to be derived from how self-assured a leader is in his or her infallibility, heaven forbid that a leader should countenance the possibility that they are wrong. Ours is an era intoxicated by its own certainty, where leadership has devalued the virtue of expressions of doubt, self-awareness, and self-criticism.

The Moses model of leadership is important because it teaches that leadership comes by way of humility, not in spite of it. Moses, we know, suffered from a speech impediment his whole life. The rabbis explain that when Moses was a small child in the house of Pharaoh, every time Pharaoh held him, Moses would reach for the royal crown. Worried that the child might have leadership ambitions, Pharaoh and his advisers devised a test: a piece of gold and a glowing piece of hot coal were placed before Moses. If he reached for the gold, Pharaoh’s suspicions would be confirmed and Moses should be killed. Sure enough, when the gold and the glowing coal were placed before Moses, Moses – destined for greatness – reached for the gold. At that moment, the archangel Gabriel intervened, nudging Moses’s arm toward the coal. When it burned his hand, he stuck his fingers in his mouth, burning his tongue and leaving him for the rest of his life “slow of speech.” Throughout his life Moses struggled between the gold and the coal – between self-assurance and humility, the alpha and the small aleph. The greatest prophet of our people is also described as the most humble man who ever lived. Even after his death, the tension between his greatness and his humility is left in the balance. Next week when we tell the story of Passover at the seder, we will find Moses – the man without whom the Exodus would not have happened – conspicuously absent from the Haggadah. We celebrate the crowning glory of Moses’s life with no mention of him anywhere.

In our own lives, as we seek out promised lands of our own, we too must be ever mindful of the gold and the coal, the alpha and the small aleph, of the need to find balance between the strength of our convictions and the acknowledgement that no one person, certainly not any of us, holds a lock on truth. Nothing should dissuade us from leaving our mark in the short time we have on this earth, to dream big dreams, to make hard decisions and to trust our own intuitions. But what our tradition teaches is that the path to realizing those dreams is paved with self-awareness and humility. First and foremost, there is something fundamentally distasteful about a person lacking in humility. Social graces aside, on a practical level, we would do well to remember that the strength of our ideas is emboldened, not weakened, by allowance for self-doubt and, by extension, the input of others. There is no example more instructive than that of the disagreements between Hillel and Shammai, the two greatest scholars of their day. Hillel’s views, more often than not, were codified as law. Why, the Rabbis ask, did the arguments of the house of Hillel nearly always carry the day? It was not, the Talmud explains, a matter of substance, but rather of style: Hillel would always first state the opposing view of Shammai, and only afterward state his own opinion. By Rabbinic thinking, the worth of an opinion stems from the forthright admission that the bearer of that opinion has considered other views, always allowing that he or she could be wrong. To say that you have your doubts doesn’t mean that you don’t hold ideas sacred, nor does it mean that you can’t tell right from wrong. To humbly admit doubt signals that you have considered the range of opinions, you can see the alternatives, and that your conclusion is neither flip nor easily come by. Ego, inflated self-confidence, and the like serve to impair, not fortify, our judgment. It is the ideas that have survived the furnace of criticism – from others and from ourselves – that ultimately stand the test of time and the judgment of history.

Finally, it is by way of a humble demeanor that we are able to get buy-in from others for our ideas. No question, it is far easier to walk through this world cocksure of the veracity of our thoughts, doubling down on the decisions that we, and not anyone else, have made. It is also a really bad way to create a sense of team. When God created the first human being, God famously said, “Let us make man in our image.” The Rabbis understood that verse to mean that God sought counsel with the ministering angels in order to teach humanity the virtue of humility. Even God sought counsel and consensus. We can’t, in this world, go very far alone. Not only are our ideas better when they are subjected to the critique of others, but they have a much better chance of being actualized when those around us, those with whom we are called on to lead, believe themselves to be stakeholders in the vision set before them.

It is not easy, not for me, not for anyone, to admit when they are wrong. Nobody likes to concede imperfection, that what we don’t know far exceeds what we do know, and that the boldness of our convictions must always be tempered by the input of others. A life well lived is not to be found in greatness or humility, but in the balance, the healthy tension, the dialectic between the two. We shuttle back and forth – from the moment of our birth to our final breath. As Rabbi Simcha Bunem famously taught, one must walk this earth carrying a slip of paper in each pocket. On one, we write, bishvili nivra ha-olam, “for my sake the world was created.” On the other, we write, v’anokhi afar v’efer, “I am but dust and ashes.” We take out each slip of paper as necessary, reminding ourselves, self-correcting ourselves – whenever our posture leans excessively one way or the other. We are all – always – works in progress.

Friends, as individuals, as families, and as a community, a bright future awaits for those willing to step forth with boldness of spirit and deed. My late teacher Rabbi Louis Jacobs once wrote: “To remain in the ease of the valley when mountains are to be climbed is neither greatness nor humility. To climb the mountain and then survey those down in the valley with cold contempt is neither humility, nor true greatness. To climb the mountain and yet gaze on the peaks still unconquered, this is greatness and humility.” (Jewish Values, pp. 116-117) Friends, we have climbed great mountains, and we have done so by doing it together. There are many more peaks yet to be climbed – some that we already see and even more, I hope and imagine, that are not yet in our view. With boldness and with humility, let us venture into that bright and unknown future together.