Jason Lever Sermon 16th August 2025/22nd Av 5785

Sermon for Eikev

The theme of my dracha is leadership.

While this is not an original area to hang some learning on this and many other Parasha across the year, I make no excuses. After all, Rabbi Sacks entitled one of his books “Lessons in Leadership” and showed this theme’s connection with every single Parasha in the Chumash. And many of these reflections involve the Prophet of all Prophets, Moses. Foremost of them, one can argue, not just because of his achievements, but through overcoming his hesitations about taking on the mantle of leadership and undertaking the toughest of missions that God set for him.

There are many models of leadership, including ways to lead by example not just diktat. Many of us are familiar with the management mantra of ‘distributed leadership’, seen as a new approach several decades ago of not just having one person at the top dictating things downwards, taking all the decisions and always playing the major role. Just look around this room. People leading on welfare and other support. Some focused on keeping us safe. Others helping with education, of our children or on Israel in the tough times we’re in. I’ll only name a few of them for reasons that will be obvious.

The Kay family for one - Michelle on the council, Gordon’s sermons and davening in preparation for Solly’s big day, Ariella’s helping at Cheder, and of course Solly already being a great “Anim Zemirot” leader - a piyyut that brings us out from the sorrow of Kaddish memories and helps leave our Shabbat prayers on a high note of praising God’s glory.

The following line really stands out for me in today’s Parasha - “For I was in dread of the fierce anger against you [the People] which moved the Eternal to [want to] wipe you out”. This is Moses, our great Prophet and leader, exhibiting that very human foible - fear. It was one thing for the people to falter, expressing concern about entering Canaan as they’d have to deal with “a people great and tall, the Anakites” - especially given the old saying, “who can stand up to the children of Anak?”.

Maybe a more modern equivalent for our people might have been ‘don’t mess with the Cossacks’. But for Moses, fear? For Rabbi Reuven Hammer, Moses comes across as ‘a man who is afraid’, not of the Anakites, rather that the people will continue to be “stiff-necked”. Part of this re-telling of the story of the Israelites to that point in Devarim is Moses reminding them of - and retraumatising himself about - the Israelites’ constant kvetching and defiance culminating in the Golden Calf and the extra 38 years of wandering in the wilderness.

In this Parasha, Moses is fearful that the people, despite being on the cusp of arrival in the long-awaited Promised Land, that they will not remain faithful to God. And succumb to dangerous tendencies towards following the ways of the Canaanites (especially idolatry) and/ or becoming complacent under conditions of prosperity (and so not creating a new society based on God’s instructions and mitzvot). But right at the end of what Erez leined, Moses gets to the business end of his recapitulated story of the Israelites’ journey, and a reminder of leadership qualities come through. Not ending on how he has God’s ear or special powers exercised through the Divine. No, he ends his pitch to them by relaying not a sense of his own importance but of his self-sacrifice for them. “I threw myself down before the Eternal - eating no bread and drinking no water for 40 days and 40 nights”, when he atones on their behalf for the many ways that they demonstrated an utter loss of faith in the Almighty. Then, as matter of factly as a modest, behind the scenes factotum, not an alpha leader, he finishes by saying -

“And that time, too, the Eternal gave heed to me”.

Our friend, Rabbi Plaut in his Chumash commentary reminds us that Moses had already fasted in that manner in preparation for receiving the Commandments; and a second time before he descends from Mount Sinai brandishing the second tablets. He draches that ‘the 3 x 40 days and nights of self-abnegation amount to a total of 120 days, paralleling the 120 years of Moses’ life’ (which we wish each other as the apogee of any life we can lead). To me, this 40 days of fasting and self-isolation of Moses is akin to what might be seen, in more modern times, as going on a spiritual retreat. Meditating and giving space to measure up the issue at hand. Being a leader who can take that momentary step back and ‘do the work’.

Listening to oneself. Listening to what others are feeling and articulating. Seeking and

listening for some direction from on high. When one of our great kings, King Solomon, said to God who appeared in a dream to him and asked him what he would like to be given, said lev shome’a. A listening heart. We see all around us great leaders in our Shul community who reflect this quality. Wouldn’t it be good if more of our world leaders might take a leaf out of his book.

Let’s finish where we started with Rabbi Sacks. He suggests that God chose Moses, a man who found it hard to speak, to lead the Jewish people because ‘one who cannot speak learns how to listen… to the unspoken cry of others and to the still, small voice of God’. I don’t know about you, but that would seem to me to be two valuable and indispensable qualities to fulfil ourselves where we lead and I lead, and I’d like to see manifest in all our leaders v’al kol yisra’el v’al kol ha-olam.

Shabbat Shalom.