This week, we complete our review of HaRav Ginsburgh’s book, Awakening the Spark Within: Five Dynamics of Leadership that Can Change the World. Having treated the broader vision of leadership and the first four dynamics, we now turn to the fifth: a sense of holy folly and humor. Leadership requires the leader to sport both, for his own wellbeing and for the wellbeing of those following him.
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The last of the five dynamics of leadership that we have been exploring in recent editions of Wonders is holy folly and a good sense of humor. By its very nature, it is the most paradoxical and enigmatic of all the qualities required of a true leader. We will introduce here three different perspectives as to what holy folly means as found in the Bible and the oral tradition, and then we will explain each one in more detail.
1) A leader must at certain times apply severity or punish wrongdoing. The result of this is those responsible are held accountable, while others hearing or witnessing punishment are encouraged to heed the warning. Yet, for a leader, punishment is in a sense folly in relation to his own soul, in that it hurts the leader as much as, if not more than, the person being reprimanded.
2) There are times when a leader must resort to making a mockery of himself or, in the case of King David, to feign insanity, in order to redeem a situation or even save a life.
3) A touch of foolishness or a good sense of humor, when used to awaken joy in others, is considered a very positive trait.
Punishment as Holy Folly
The idea of holy folly comes from a verse from King Solomon: “Dead flies stink, yet they ultimately express fragrant oil. More precious than wisdom, than honor, is a little foolishness.”[1] The simple understanding of this verse, as explained by many commentaries, is that a lifetime of wisdom and honor achieved through building a positive reputation can be ruined in a moment of foolishness. Yet, the Midrash understands it quite differently and relates three specific cases of a leader using punishment, each which expresses a type of folly.[2]
The first case is when Korach and his followers challenged Moses’s right to leadership. After many attempts to make peace with him, Moses exclaims: “If as all men die [that is, naturally] will these men, Korach and his followers, meet their deaths, then God has not sent me. But if God will create a new creation and the earth will open its mouth and swallow them along with all their belongings and they will go down alive to the grave, then you will know that these men have angered God.”[3] Immediately upon finishing these words, the earth opened and swallowed up Korach and those following him. Significantly, the Midrash tells us that as Korach descended into the abyss, he was heard confirming Moses’s authority, thus actualizing the words of King Solomon of metamorphosing the “stink” of rebellion into fragrant oil of acknowledgement.[4] On the surface, Moses’s request of God to create a new creation signified an extreme case of folly, as it runs against normative logic to ask such a thing of God.
The second case the Midrash brings is when two of King David’s trusted advisors, Do’eg and Achitophel, turned upon him and spread malicious slander about him. Feeling betrayed, David prayed to God to bring them down to the pit of destruction.[5] It was this prayer that ultimately motivated them to repent.
The last case of punishment described in the Midrash relates to the story of Elijah the Prophet.[6] Elijah, seeing how the Jewish people had turned away from God and were worshipping idols, proposed a “contest of the gods” between himself and 450 priests of Ba’al. Whoever could bring down fire from heaven and consume an offering would show the people who the true God is. After giving the priests of the Ba’al virtually all day to accomplish this feat, Elijah demanded his turn. After preparing his own offering and dousing it with water, he offered a short prayer and immediately fire came down from heaven and consumed not only the offering but the entire altar. The people in awe openly acknowledged the God of Israel as the true God. Elijah then took the priests of Ba’al and brought them down to the valley where they were executed.
Interestingly, all three of these punishments contain the idea of descent. Korach descended into the abyss. David prayed that his foes would be taken down to the pit of destruction, and Elijah brought the priests of Ba’al to the valley where they were executed.
Another verse from King Solomon attests to our previous statement that all these cases included a certain level of folly, because “also punishment for a tzaddik, [a righteous person] is not good.”[7] In all three cases we see the tzaddik acting against his very nature to punish for a greater good.
King David Feigning Insanity
The second type of folly mentioned above is the necessity in extreme circumstances to act like a fool or even feign insanity. The background of this example comes from a Midrash that states that at one-time David said to God that he did not understand why in such a beautiful world insanity existed. God answered David: “By your life, you will need this someday.”[8]
When King David was fleeing from King Saul, who was trying to kill him, he was forced to escape to the land of the Philistines. Soon after entering one of their cities, a person recognized him from when he had slain Goliath. Word was sent to the king, and David, sensing tremendous danger, pretended to be insane. He “scratched on the doors of the gate and let his spittle run down his beard.” When the king came and saw this, he exclaimed: “is it not enough that my wife and daughter are insane? You bring me more madmen!” They expelled him from the city, and thus, David's life was spared.[9]
A Sense of Humor and Joy
The third example of folly—or in this sense, a good sense of humor and the ability to awaken laughter and joy in others—is in a certain way the simplest manifestation of folly to understand and to act upon. The Talmud tells a story of Rabbi Shmuel ben Yitzchak, who used to take three myrtle branches and juggle them before a bride at her wedding. One of his contemporaries, Rabbi Zeira, felt that his behavior was not befitting a great sage. When Rabbi Shmuel died, a pillar of fire was seen accompanying him to his resting place. This pillar of fire was considered an acknowledgment from heaven that his actions were not only acceptable but were laudable. When Rabbi Zeira saw this, he realized how wrong he was to have negatively judged Rabbi Shmuel.[10]
Another example is of the third-century sage Rabbah, who was known to begin his public discourses with either a humorous anecdote or an amusing story to relax the participants and to create a warm rapport with them, knowing that this would make them more receptive to his teachings.[11]
When King David was bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, he did so by making it a great public celebration. King David was so full of joy that he began to dance wildly in the streets in complete abandon. When his wife, Michal, saw him from her window, she rebuked him for making a fool of himself. David’s response revealed that though on the surface it appeared that he was using the occasion to bring attention to himself, he told her, “And I shall behave even more humbly than this and I shall be lowly in my own eyes.”[12] What Michal did not realize is that bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem was like a wedding celebration between God and Israel, and David's holy folly was completely appropriate.
Maimonides writes about joy produced by a little foolishness when he describes the celebrations that took place in the Temple during the holiday of Sukkot.[13] Every night water would be drawn from the nearby Shilo’ach spring and brought up to the Temple in a festive procession. The whole night the people would celebrate with singing, ecstatic dancing and even acrobatics. This celebration was so joyous that the Mishnah states: “One who has never seen the joy of the water drawing celebration has never in his life seen joy.”[14]
Maimonides further notes that in general, a commandment fulfilled with love and joy represents the purest and most ideal way of serving God. One of the main obstacles to reaching this type of pure joy comes from an inflated ego, pride, and arrogance. Maimonides continues by quoting a verse from Proverbs: “Do not glorify yourself before the king.”[15] When a person is full of ego and pride, this holds him back from being able to praise and honor God properly.
Serving God with joy is one of the main objectives of the ultimate leader, the Mashiach. When permuting the letters of Mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ), it produces the word “he will be joyous” (יִשְׂמַח) or, with a slightly different vocalization, “he will make others joyous” (יְשַׂמַּח). When the Mashiach brings the whole world together in acknowledgment of one God, and peace and harmony create a physical and spiritual global village, joy will spread and infuse every person, bringing out their full potential.
Concluding Summary
In conclusion, more than any other theme that connects and motivates all five dynamics of leadership is vision. We now quote from the concluding remarks of Awakening the Spark Within: Five Dynamics of Leadership That Can Change the World:
When pursuing the first dynamic, the art of compromise, one must be ever aware of the point of goodness and truth in each person, seeing beyond the dualities of this world to the vision of oneness underlying all creation. The second dynamic, the drive for wholeness and the ability to draw the supernatural into normative reality, entails a vision of a perfect future. The very nature of inspiration, the third dynamic, is aroused and invigorated by a visionary outlook on life. The preoccupation of the leader with refining the physical world and integrating all knowledge with Torah, the fourth dynamic, is predicated on the leader’s vision of all existence as a unified Divine revelation. All the different levels of folly, the fifth dynamic, necessitate a keen visionary awareness of the appropriate action needed at a specific moment in time.[16]
May we all learn to integrate these five dynamics of leadership in order to play our part in bringing true leadership to the world. When enough people activate their own spark of Mashiach, it will create a critical mass of redemptive energy that will manifest with the coming of Mashiach. May it be soon!!
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[1]. Ecclesiastes 10:1.
[2]. Kohelet Rabbah 10:1.
[3]. Numbers 16:29-30.
[4]. Kohelet Rabbah 10:1.
[5]. Psalms 55:24.
[6]. 1 Kings 18:19-40.
[7]. Proverbs 17:26.
[8]. Midrash Tehillim 34.
[9]. 1 Samuel 21:11-16.
[10]. Ketubot 17a.
[11]. Berachot 64a.
[12]. 2 Samuel 6:16-23.
[13]. Hilchot Lulav 8:12-13.
[14]. Sukkah 5:1.
[15]. 25:6.
[16]. p. 133.
