Sublime

through which he is best known to tradition: Moshe Rabbenu, the leader as teacher. Leadership is not a gift with which we are endowed at birth. It is something we acquire in the course of time, often after many setbacks, failures, and disappointments.

Maimonides lays out: learn the truth from whoever says it.37

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik (1903–1993) boldly insists that in this amazing encounter, Moses serves as a paradigm for what is true of every human being: to be created in the image of God is to be assigned a specific task by God.

The main goal of a Jew is to serve God with simplicity and without any sophistication (Likutey Moharan II, 19).

The sixth Rebbe deduced from this principle that Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), the Ba‘al Shem Ṭov, “master of a good name,” generally abbreviated as the Beshṭ, should be considered the “Moses of Ḥasidism” and Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the “Moses of Ḥabad.”

to be a Jew is to cry out, even when silence would be safer, easier, and more convenient.

The prohibition on embarrassing another is one of Judaism’s cardinal sins, they say, and one should sooner die than transgress