In the mid-1800s, a controversy erupted regarding Moses’s character. The newly published Mishnah commentary of Rabbi Israel Lipshutz (1782-1860), the Tiferet Yisrael, tells the story of an Arabian king who had heard of Moses’s fame and commissioned a talented artist to visit Moses and make a perfect portrait of him. When the artist brought back the portrait, the king gave it to his best physiognomists, who could tell a person’s character simply by looking at their face. The physiognomists told the king that the face was of a man who was “entirely wicked, arrogant, greedy, capricious, and suffused with every known vice.” Shocked by this assessment, and certain that the artist had failed to portray Moses properly, the king went to visit Moses. Immediately, he saw the artist had gotten Moses’s portrait perfectly, so the king assumed the physiognomists had failed.
When the king mentioned this to Moses, Moses explained that the physiognomists were correct; by nature, he had many negative character traits. However, with great effort and determination, he had managed to overcome his natural inclinations and become a great man instead.
The Tiferet Yisrael drew heated opposition from rabbis who considered this legend sacrilegious. Shnayer Z. Leiman, who published a translation of this passage, quotes several of the opponents in his introduction. One, Rabbi Hayyim Isaac Aaron Rapoport of Jerusalem, published two entire pamphlets attacking this legend, filled with quotations from biblical and rabbinic passages proving that Moses was born with an exceptional character.
This controversy is not surprising. Moses is 80 years old when God sends him to redeem the Jews from Egypt. We know very little about most of his life; there are a handful of narratives about him as a young man, and then the record goes silent. Much about Moses remains an enigma.
Among the unknowns is why God chose Moses to redeem the Jews.
The Talmud states that God chose Moses even before he was born; as a child, his sister Miriam received a prophecy that her future brother would redeem the Jewish people. And after Moses was born, a divine light filled the home.
Rashi cites these comments from the Talmud. They depict Moses as larger than life, a born prophet and redeemer. And the enormous influence of Rashi’s commentary is why the Tiferet Yisrael’s depiction was so controversial.
Other commentaries highlight Moses’s character as the reason for God’s choice. The following passage in the second chapter of Exodus offers a window into Moses’ soul:
“Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
“And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, “Why are you striking your companion?” Then he said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” So Moses feared and said, “Surely this thing is known!” When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian; and he sat down by a well.
“Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters. And they came and drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. Then the shepherds came and drove them away; but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock.”
The Torah presents three separate incidents about Moses. Moses intervenes to save a Jewish slave from an extreme beating by killing the Egyptian slavemaster. The next day, Moses attempts to break up a fight between two Jews. When he arrives in Midian, Moses protects Jethro’s daughters from the shepherds attacking them.
Many read this section as Moses’ “resume”; in it we see the virtues of a future leader.
First, Moses is courageous. The Ralbag points out that Moses risks his life to take on the Egyptian slavemaster. Maimonides points out how Moses, “a trembling stranger” when he arrives in Midian, still takes on the local shepherds.
When read together, the three episodes point to another virtue: a profound sense of justice. Nechama Leibowitz explains that: “Moses intervened on three occasions to save the victim from the aggressor. Each of these represents an archetype. First he intervenes in a clash between a Jew and non-Jew, second, between two Jews and third between two non-Jews. In all three cases Moses championed the just cause.”
Justice should be blind, and by standing up for anyone in need, Jew or non-Jew, Moses shows his impartiality.
Justice should be blind, and by standing up for anyone in need, Jew or non-Jew, Moses shows his impartiality.
Finally, Moses shows enormous compassion. Shadal explains that when the Torah says Moses “looked at the burdens” of his Jewish brethren, it means that “he looked upon their affliction with a compassionate eye.” A midrash elaborates on this, saying Moses visited the Jews and helped them complete their work.
Another midrash presents Moses’s vocation as proof of his compassion:
“When Moses … was shepherding the flock of Jethro in the wilderness, a lamb ran away from him. Moses ran after it until it reached a …. a pool of water … and the lamb stopped to drink. When Moses reached the lamb, he said: ‘I did not know that you were running because of thirst. You must be exhausted.’ He lifted the lamb onto his shoulders and carried it as he walked. The Holy One, blessed be He, said: ‘You have compassion to tend the flock of flesh and blood in this way … shall shepherd My flock, Israel.’ Thus it says: ‘And Moses was a shepherd.’”
In short, Moses is chosen because of his remarkable virtue. And today, virtue-based leadership has many academic champions. However, this picture of Moses as the paradigmatic virtuous leader is incomplete; and other commentaries, while not as extreme as the Tiferet Yisrael, see Moses as flawed, a leader who is not yet ready to lead.
Samson Raphael Hirsch argues that Moses betrays timidity in the way he confronts the Egyptian slavemaster:
“But Moses is … far removed from that captivating boldness required to place oneself at the head of hundreds of thousands and to sweep them along into perilous enterprise; to break their chains and, sword in hand, wrest freedom from the yoke of a tyrant.
“To the man who first ‘looks around on all sides to see whether there is no witness,’ it never even occurred, not even in a dream, to become the savior and leader of his people. He lacked, ‘from within himself,’ the very first element required to become such a historical ‘hero.’”
Read this way, while certainly courageous, Moses lacks the requisite courage to lead; and when asked by God decades later, he will be too reluctant to answer the call.
Looking at Moses’s full “resume,” there are many other reasons to disqualify him as a leader of the Jews. He was raised in the home of Pharaoh; why would the Jews trust him? (For more on this point, see my previous article, “Moshe and the Road Less Traveled.” He has essentially retired, living a comfortable life in Midian. God only appears to Moses some 60 years after his heroic exploits. Moses has crushing humility and refuses God’s call time after time. And he has a bad stutter.
Moses is not at all the obvious choice to be the savior of the Jewish people.
But perhaps that is the point. The Ran argues that, paradoxically, Moses’s speech impediment shows that his message was authentic. Moses was not a persuasive speaker; no one was entranced by his eloquence. Had his message not been compelling, people would have ignored Moses because of his stutter.
Moses’s stutter certainly undermines his ability to make speeches; but it also highlights the sincerity of his words, his deep desire to communicate the message of freedom.
It is this lesson that allows us to make sense of Moses’s resume. Virtue is critically important, but it is in grappling with flaws and failures that you see a leader’s intangibles. It’s not easy to measure passion, inspiration and sincerity. But they are attributes that allow the defeated and discouraged to overcome and triumph. And God chooses Moses because He sees Moses’s intangibles. He sees a young man who has defied fate multiple times, who is vulnerable and strong all at once.
After much hesitation, Moses faces his fears and accepts God’s mission. He stutters as he stands in Pharaoh’s palace. But that doesn’t matter.
Because his stutter speaks louder than words.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.
