We live in an age that is afraid of compassion. During election season, our politicians compete with each other to demonstrate who is tougher, more hard-nosed, and less willing to make exceptions because of extenuating circumstances.
In race after race, politicians declare that they are more willing to sentence convicts to death, to stand tough against foreign enemies and to battle assertively to get their way. In our personal lives as well, we admire firmness, decisiveness and strength. We reward those postures of power and firmness whenever we can. The last epithet a politician would want associated with his or her own name is "compassionate." No one wants to be a wimp.
How striking, then, that 'compassionate' is one of the names Jewish tradition applies to the supreme leader, to God. El Rahum ve-hanun -- God of compassion and mercy -- seems a remnant of an earlier time: a kinder, gentler somewhere else.
Today's Torah portion reveals Moses in a similar light. Faced with the most threatening rebellion of his entire leadership, we expect Moses to react the way most powerful men would to an insubordination. We expect hardness, perhaps even ruthlessness, as Moses reasserts his control over a dangerous insubordination.
We know, from elsewhere in the Torah, that Moses is a man of tremendous passion and force. This is certainly an instance where we might expect him to lash out. Instead, Moses expresses repeated concern for the rebels themselves. Rather than punishing them immediately, he engages in a series of maneuvers to postpone the inevitable clash, hoping all the while that Korach and his followers will back down.
Instead of calling upon God immediately, Moses first summons two of the leaders of the revolt, Datan and Aviram, hoping that their obedience to his call would demonstrate a willingness to renew their loyalty to Moses and to God. When they refuse to come, Moses again postpones the public contest, saying only that "come morning, the Lord will make known who is His."
The Torah records that when first faced with the rebels, Moses "fell upon his face." Rashi understands this to mean that he was dismayed that they would yet again rebel against God. He notes that this is the fourth rebellion -- following the Golden Calf, the murmuring and the recalcitrant spies. Three times, Moses intervenes with God to overlook the rebellion, but now, at the rebellion of Korach, his hands sank down.
This may be compared to a prince who sinned against his father, and the councillor conciliated his father for him once, twice and three times. But when he offended the fourth time, there sank down the hands of the councillor, for he said, "How long can I impose upon the king? Perhaps he will no longer accept advocacy from me!"
Rashi's Midrash, taken from Midrash Tanhuma, illustrates a powerful mode of leadership not often accepted by our contemporaries. Rather than lash out, Moses demonstrates sufficient confidence in his own leadership to try to re-establish a connection with his enemies. Rather than simply use force to impose his will, Moses makes the effort to persuade, to discuss, to negotiate.
In our own time, when men are praised for their ability to impose their will, to "get things done," and women are condemned for being "too emotional," the compassionate efforts of Moses can encourage us to examine a higher level of interpersonal accommodation and understanding.
Power need not only be the ability to use force, the might to impose will. Perhaps the ultimate power, as our Rabbis understood so well, was the ability to control our own inner drives, to hold them in check, and to occasionally rise above them.
In the world of international politics, no less than in the world of friendship, family and love, taking the time to persuade, to explain and to educate can produce results whose depth and degree can far surpass a begrudging acquiescence to force.
Don't you agree?
Shabbat Shalom