D’var Torah – June 27

Shabbat Shalom!

I hope this finds you all well.

British field marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery is purported to have said, “Leadership is the capacity and will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.”[1]

When one thinks of leaders one imagines titans of industry like Andrew Carnegie, the Dodge brothers, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, presidents like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt (TR and FDR), Reagan, and Trump; civil rights giants like Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Mahatma Gandhi, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; monarchs like Queen Elizabeth II; world leaders like Churchill, Ben Gurion, and Golda Meir, coaches like Vince Lombardi and Bill Belichick; explorers like Lewis and Clark; and military commanders like Nelson, Patton, Bradley, Chesty Puller, Moshe Dayan, and Schwarzkopf.

We are fascinated by famous leaders. We want to know and intimately understand their backgrounds, upbringing, formative years, education and training, emotions and mental state, moral values, and decision-making process….i.e, what made them tick. But most importantly we want to understand how they were able to inspire, motivate, organize, and lead hundreds, thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions of people.

Leadership is an art, an art that is surrounded by a golden orah. We admire leaders and seek to know them, study them, and even copy and emulate their ways.

But what about followership? Followership?!?! Who honestly cares about being a follower? What tact and talent goes into being a follower? It’s not sexy, glamorous, or glorious. After all, leaders make all the powerful and impact decisions and followers simply and mindlessly carry out those decisions…right?

But yet, if we don’t have followers, things don’t get done. And if the followers are bad, things get really bad really fast.

In this week’s parsha of Korach (Numbers 16:1-18:32), we read why followership is just as important as leadership:

Korach is the antithesis of good followership. He goes beyond questioning Moses and Aaron; he actively attempts to subvert their authority and leadership. He is a disloyal rebel who seeks to undermine those in authority.

By at the same time, and on the other end spectrum, a follower who obeys and serves without any question, reservation, or complaint whatsoever is equally as frightening. As post-Holocaust Jews who lost 6 million of our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers to those who claimed when they were brought to justice, “I was only following orders,” blind followership scares us to our core.

So what then does good followership look like?

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks (z”l) gave us two powerful insights: “In Judaism, followership is as active and demanding as leadership,” and “I believe that followership is the great neglected art. Followers and leaders form a partnership of mutual challenge and respect. To be a follower in Judaism is not to be submissive, uncritical, blindly accepting. Questioning and arguing are a part of the relationship. Too often, though, we decry a lack of leadership when we are really suffering from a lack of followership.”[2]

In the end, a system, organization, entity, etc. needs both high-quality leaders and followers to be successful. Perhaps the lesson of parshat Korach is that we must honor followership just as much as we honor leadership. Followership and leadership must be a respectful and engaged two-way street, not a draconian one-way relationship. We must teach people to be both good followers and leaders. And when in positions of followership, we must teach people when to listen, obey, and do, when to say no, and when to make suggestions and recommendations.

Bizrat HaShem, with God’s help, may we all learn and engage in the sacred arts of both leadership and followership.

Wishing you a Good Shabbos and a great weekend.

Bivrakha,

Rabbi Aaron Stucker-Rozovsky

Beth El Congregation | 520 Fairmont Ave, Winchester, VA 22601

(540) 667-1889 (office)