On Leadership

It was precisely this week, in April of 1963, that Martin Luther King Jr. sat in a Birmingham, Alabama jail cell drafting what would become our nation’s perhaps most treasured literary and moral document. Together with Ralph Abernathy and about fifty others, King had sought to leverage an Easter season boycott to integrate the downtown stores of Birmingham. King’s non-violent protest march got only a few blocks before they were arrested and King put in solitary confinement. As you may recall, while King’s letter addressed the scourge of racism, discrimination, and injustice, its ostensible audience was neither Alabama’s Governor George Wallace, nor for that matter any of the obvious perpetrators of segregationist policy. The cause of King’s ire was a letter printed in the Birmingham newspaper signed by eight local white clergymen – ministers, priests, bishops, and a rabbi – self-described racial moderates who critiqued King for his extreme, unwise, and untimely protests – outsider methods that could precipitate violence.

In the estimation of many, King’s letter is comparable in stature to the Gettysburg Address and Zola’s J’accuse; a cri de coeur against leaders who are hypocrites with respect to their own value systems. King takes his colleagues to task for their do-nothing leadership, having “almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice . . .” King railed against those who “remain[ed] silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows,” predicting that “. . . we will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” It was not only that, as Heschel would later say, “indifference to evil is worse than evil itself.” Rather, it was that these leaders failed to represent the very traditions, texts, values, and ideals that they preached and taught and that their clerical calling demanded that they embody. Did they not know their scripture, their prophetic calling, the shared Judeo-Christian insistence to create a just society? I can think of no better way to mark the anniversary of King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” than to spend some time this weekend rereading it, reading what is perhaps the greatest smackdown against hypocrisy in leadership: leaders who talk the talk the talk but fail to walk the walk.

Aside from the anniversary of King’s letter, according to the Jewish calendar we are in the midst of the sefirah, which means “counting,” specifically the days between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot. If you are unfamiliar with the observance, also known as “the counting of the omer,” it involves counting each day between our liberation from Egypt and the receiving of the law forty-nine days later at Mount Sinai. This year, as you may know, I am urging each of you to count off each day with at least one phone call to a person who would benefit from a check-in – a modest gesture of social solidarity during this time of physical distancing. By a certain telling, it is a joyous time of year as our people, both ancient and modern, eagerly anticipate the gift of God’s Torah.

What you may not know (and what my misshapen facial scruff indicates), is that according to tradition, this period of time is also understood by many as a time for sober reflection. The Talmud (Yevamot 62b), records that it was precisely during these weeks that twelve thousand pairs of Rabbi Akiva’s students died – felled by a plague. In many Jewish communities, despite the anticipated arrival at Mount Sinai, this is a somber time of year. Weddings are not performed and certain aspects of mourning, like not shaving, are observed.

For me, the most important aspect of the mournful character of the sefirah has always been the question “why?” Why were Rabbi Akiva’s students punished as they were? What misstep, what wrong, what crime did they commit to justify such a punishment? The Talmud states only “lo nahagu kavod zeh bazeh,” they didn’t treat each other with kavod, that is, with respect. Over time, subsequent commentators have read into the Talmud’s terse language a more fatal leadership flaw of Akiva’s students. Akiva, as you may know, was the greatest representative of Torah in his day, and his students, more than anyone else, were expected to be living exemplars of Torah. They were the teachers, the guardians of tradition, responsible for modeling behavior for others to emulate. But they didn’t treat other with respect. The gravity of their failing was compounded because their behavior was not only a personal failing but also a leadership failure to represent the very ideals that they were called on to embody. All the time, but especially during this time prior to celebrating the receiving of the law, a person is expected to narrow, not widen, the gap between what one says and what one does. For Rabbi Akiva’s students it was the dissonance, the disconnect, between what they said and what they did – between the talk they talked and the walk and the walk they walked – that brought on their catastrophic punishment.

There are, to be sure, many measures of leadership. The courage and charisma needed to stand before a Pharaoh. The empathy required to understand the needs of those one leads. The emotional intelligence necessary to respond instinctually to the demands of the moment whether expected or unforeseen. But from Moses to Machiavelli to Martin Luther King Jr., perhaps the most important and most enduring measurement of a leader is the degree to which a leader not just talks the talk but also walks the walk. “We are,” wrote Aristotle, “what we repeatedly do.” It is by way of our deeds, not our words, that we rise and fall, a thought that once led Emerson to reflect, “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears, I cannot hear what you say.” Of the three types of people whom the Talmud relates that God hates, the first is “ehad b’peh v’ehad b’lev,” a person who says one thing and does another, in other words, a person who does not practice what they preach.

This criterion, I believe, helps us understand the enigmatic and seemingly unjustified death of Aaron’s two sons Nadav and Avihu which we read about in this morning’s Torah portion. None of the reasons offered by the rabbis – arrogance, disrespect of Moses and Aaron, a licentious lifestyle, or anything else – fully explains their sudden and tragic demise. Their fatal misstep, if you will, was not any one thing they did; rather, it was that they had forgotten that their position called on them to represent not just themselves, but also something much bigger – God. This is the only way to understand God’s justification for their deaths: Bikrovai akadesh, “Through those near to me, I will be made holy.” (Leviticus 10:3). In other words, while everyone should aspire toward consistency between word and action, it is a responsibility that falls especially on those who represent something more than their own personhood. Indeed, the close reader will hear echoes of our parashah soon enough when we read of Moses being barred from entering the promised land for the misstep of striking rather than speaking to the rock. Unto itself, Moses’s punishment is totally disproportionate to his misdeed. Yet, in light of Moses’s stature as a leader, his wrong behavior was enough to preclude his entering the promised land. It seems there is a relationship between a leader’s stature and the expectations we have for their behavior.

“A good leader,” I recently read, “tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.” By extension, a leader who fails to show these qualities represents a failing not just of an individual, but of the ideals that leader professes to embody. The consistency between what one says and does, the walk and the talk – that one does not expect of others what one does not expect of oneself – this is the measure by which leaders make or miss the mark. Examples from history abound – in both directions. Dr. King and the clergymen, Aaron’s sons, Moses and the rock. General Eisenhower, who famously drafted a letter of resignation prior to the Normandy invasion, stating, that in the event of failure, “. . . any blame or fault attached to the attempt . . . is mine alone.” The stakes need not be life or death. The leadership of Derek Jeter was not based merely on his athleticism and talent; it was his ability to work as hard if not harder than anyone else and thus inspire others to follow, that made him “the captain.”

At all times, but especially in times of crisis, the behavior of leaders sets the culture of the people and the institutions they lead. And ours is such a time. A time for every individual and every institution that contributes towards setting culture to speak and act in a manner befitting the demands of the hour. Given our goal to flatten the curve of this plague of our generation, all of us, individually and institutionally, must comport ourselves accordingly and model the behavior we would ask of others. Given the social and economic stress being inflicted on our social fabric, it is incumbent upon us all to adopt a spirit of sacrifice commensurate with the magnitude of our present crisis. It is not enough simply to reflect on the sort of public conversation we wish to see. In this hour we must act in accord with our ideals, creating consistency between our words and actions and demanding the same consistency from all those in leadership positions.

Some of you may be listening today and thinking, “I agree with you, rabbi, but I am not a leader. I don’t run an institution; I am not a bearer of culture. Your sermon does not apply to me.” I ask you to think again. Because no matter the scale, no matter the context in which you live – in your family, your workplace, your home – you are an exemplar. The degree to which you demonstrate patience, kindness, compassion, creativity, a collaborative spirit, a spirit of sacrifice, a spirit of transparent communication is an unspoken signal to those around you. At all times, but especially in times like this, it is the smallest gestures that speak volumes. Each one of us has both the opportunity and the obligation to be our best selves, for ourselves and for others to follow.

This past week, I had occasion to revisit a 2014 commencement address delivered to the graduates of the University of Texas by Admiral William McRaven, the retired United States four-star Navy admiral. The admiral shared the lessons he learned from Seal training that made him the leader he would grow to become. His speech that day went on to become a book that I recommend in full. Today I share with you his first lesson. McRaven states:

“Every morning in basic SEAL training, my instructors . . . would show up in my barracks . . . and the first thing they would inspect was your bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. . . .

“It was a simple task – mundane at best. But every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs, but the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over.

“If you make your bed every morning you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

“And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made – that you made – and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

“If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.”

Friends, some people lead institutions, some people lead countries, and some people are just trying their level best to make their beds. But we can all lead. We can all live by a consistency of deed and action – in the big things and the little things – improving our lot, the lot of those around us, and the lot of the world in which we live. It is not enough, in the journey in which we find ourselves, merely to talk the talk. We need to walk the walk, step by step, each one of us an embodiment of the ideals we profess to hold dear, slowly, courageously and collectively mending this world in such desperate need of repair.