OUR LEADERS WHY WE ALWAYS GIVE THEM GRIEF
The trial of Netanyahu is entirely consistent with Jewish tradition: from Moses to Herzl there has been a deep suspicion of charismatic leaders — and with good reason
THE PICTURE of an Israeli prime minister on trial, though astonishing, is in some ways consistent with the view of leaders in Jewish history. For Judaism is deeply suspicious of charismatic leaders, and with good reason.
In Jewish literature, the charismatic leader, however remarkable, is often described, misleadingly, as being little better than the people he leads, in some ways worse.
Moses: an ineffectual stutterer; Saul: a slave to irrational impulses; David: a poor father; Amos: merely a shepherd and “dresser of sycamore trees”; Jeremiah: an unwilling prophet-priest in the Temple in Jerusalem; and, in later Jewish history, Akiba, an ignorant shepherd; Shabbetai Zevi, a dysfunctional manic-depressive; the Baal Shem Tov, a humble children’s teacher; Herzl, a charlatan.
And yet, the value of charismatic leadership is recognized. From the prophets to the rise of Zionism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a complex interrelationship of gifted individuals and nation emerges.
The German sociologist Max Weber describes the biblical prophets as archetypal charismatics. Their authority lay not with institutional power but with the power of their message.
The prophets gave humanity the vision of universal peace inscribed on the cornerstone of the UN building in New York: “… and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Even so, some Talmudic rabbis are outraged by the prophets’ devastating diatribes against their own people.
From the time of Bar-Kokhba until the 19th century, Jews were a pacifist people, led by rabbis and guided by dialectical halachah. Kings, priests, politicians and warriors gave way to educational leaders, masters of sober legal debate.
Messiahs and mystics have tended to be marginalized in Judaism. Some founders of charismatic movements in Judaism, such as Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov, evidently did not see themselves as mass leaders.
Distrust of charisma in Jewish life reflects centuries in which leaders promised redemption and left broken hopes.
Jewish wariness of personality cults has proved fully justified in modern times. Millions of people have followed tyrannical mass murderers such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Unlike the Gospels and the Koran, the Hebrew Bible is not built around the life of one man, a model of faith. It focuses less on charismatic individuals than upon one people, warts and all.
The Hebrew Bible abounds with failed leaders, kings, priests and prophets who misled the people, at times to moral collapse, defeat and exile. In the millennium of ancient Jewish statehood, from Saul, first king of Israel, to Bar-Kokhba, last ruler of an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel (died c 135 CE), most leaders are remembered with disgust, as arrogant idolators greedy for gain, leading the nation to ultimate ruin. The very idea of monarchy is condemned as “wickedness”.
The Bible concedes reluctantly the need for a king for national self-defence in wartime but tries to curb his power: he must not have too many horses or wives, or too much gold and silver, “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandments” (Deuteronomy 17: 20).
The disastrous consequences of messianic Judaism in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE left rabbinic Judaism with revulsion toward charismatic leadership.
Christianity, originally a Jewish messianic movement, developed an ideology of anti-Jewish hatred and the calumny that the Jews were collective deicides to be punished by unceasing persecution.
Later, Jewish history brought other notable charismatic failures. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, David Reubeni and Solomon Molcho were stark reminders of Jewish vulnerability in crisis; and after the 1648-49 Chmelnicki massacres in Poland, Shabbetai Zevi was a living warning of the dangers of charisma in Jewish life.
The Chasidic movement starting from the Baal Shem Tov (died 1760) was wary of apocalyptic messianism. Though Chasidism sometimes elevated the rebbe to a supernatural level, it tended to curb personality cults through rivalry among different groups and by keeping these cults within closed circles of devotees.
Since ancient times, mainstream Judaism stresses the value of educa