In 2001, Gal Einai published HaRav Ginsburgh’s third book in English: Awakening the Spark Within: Five Dynamics of Leadership that Can Change the World.
In that volume, HaRav Ginsubrgh analyzes the concept of leadership from a Jewish point of view and how each person can tap into the soul qualities of a leader to affect their own lives, the community around them, and ultimately, the entire world. Along with a general overview of leadership in the context of Jewish history and contemporary realities, five specific qualities of leadership are explained in depth. This article is the first in a series exploring these important ideas that speak to the situation today and the rectifications needed to bring redemption to the world.
Click here for additional chapters in this series
In the 600th year of Noah’s life, in the second month, on the 17th day of the month, on that day, all the foundations of the great abyss burst forth and the windows of the heavens were opened. And the rain was on the earth for 40 days and 40 nights.”[1]
Commenting on these verses, the Zohar states that in the 600th year of the sixth millennium, both the waters from below—symbolizing mundane knowledge, knowledge that is discovered through human contemplation of reality—and the waters from above—symbolizing the Torah’s wisdom, knowledge that is revealed by God from above—will burst forth and flood the world in preparation for the Messianic era.[2] Thus, the lower waters symbolize mundane wisdom and the higher waters represent Torah wisdom.
The 600th year of the sixth millennium (5600 in the Jewish calendar) was 1840. During the years 1760-1840 virtually every field of human endeavor underwent radical change. 1760 is usually referred to as the start of the first Industrial Revolution. During those years, the United States of America and the modern nation-state of France were born, having transformed the old-world order of monarchial rule through political revolutions that ultimately changed the entire world. The changes initiated during that period gathered momentum and were followed by revolutions in science, transportation, communications, medicine, media, economics, politics, and art. True to the Zohar’s prediction, these advances in mundane, secular knowledge have literally flooded the earth, changing forever the world in which we live.
The period from 1760-1840 was also blessed with a parallel deluge of Torah wisdom. The Chasidic movement was born, and Kabbalah’s closely guarded, esoteric and mystical traditions spread to the masses for the first time. Today these teachings are freely available, and as the Zohar predicted, the higher waters of Torah wisdom have begun to flood the world.
As is true with all things, the radical changes engendered by the industrial and technological revolutions has both positive and negative consequences. One result of such rapid change has seen a crisis and loss of faith and respect for institutions and leadership universally. At every level of society, we see greed, distrust, scandal, dysfunction, instability, turmoil and confusion, especially in the areas of moral and ethical standards.
The only thing that can change this reality is positive leadership based on honest, healthy, holy, and inspired vision. This in fact is the reason that should motivate us to search for the Torah’s original blueprint for proper leadership. Of course, knowing the Torah’s prescription for leadership is meant to not only inform, but to inspire us to develop these qualities in ourselves and to seek true leadership that embodies them as character traits.
A Nations of Leaders
At Mount Sinai God spoke to Moses with this message:
And now, if you hearken well to Me and observe My covenant, you shall be to Me the most beloved treasure of all peoples, for Mine is the entire world. You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites. [3]
To be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation is understood to mean that Israel’s role is to be a nation of leaders, to lead the world morally, ethically and spiritually towards universal redemption and rectification; to be in Isaiah’s words, “a light unto the nations.”[4]
The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that every Jew contains a Messianic spark deep within their soul.[5] This spark is each person’s leadership potential. When enough people have activated and rectified that holy spark it will create a critical mass of redemptive energy which will in turn draw the figure of Mashiach into reality.
Jewish Influence
One of the greatest contributions the Jewish People have made to the world is the vision of the universal brotherhood of man. The first all-encompassing vision of worldwide redemption, universal peace, and true harmony among nations is attributed to the great prophet Isaiah. God chose him and the other prophets recorded in the Tanach to reveal a Divine message regarding the ultimate potential and destiny of mankind. These words give voice to the loftiest dreams and aspirations of all people and have profoundly influenced thinkers, writers and leaders in every generation. In fact, the words of Isaiah “And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore,”[6] are prominently inscribed near the entrance of the United Nations.
Despite Israel’s long history of persecution and oppression there is no doubt that the Jewish people exerted a tremendous influence on virtually every area of human thought and practice. This stems in great measure from the profound influence Judaism had on both Christianity and Islam in their inception and as they spread to encompass much of the planet. Due to these historical realities, Torah ideas have spread literally throughout the world.[7]
Leadership and Speech
One of the hallmarks of leadership is speech. It is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “For the word of the king is authority.”[8] The ultimate authority is of course God, the King of kings, who created the world through speech as stated by the sages in Pirkei Avot: “With ten utterances the world was created”[9] This is based directly on the Torah’s account of Creation which records ten Divine utterances. God’s speech immediately creates the object referred to. The first explicit instance is on the first day: “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.”[10] Divine speech, as it were, is quite literally the instrument of creation.
There is a teaching of the sages that speaks in God’s name and declares, “Just as I create worlds, so too you can create worlds.”[11] This amazing statement reflects the idea that humankind is created in the image of God and thus is a recipient of the ability to create. Since God is described as having created reality with speech, the implication is that our human faculty of speech, wields incredible power to fashion and mold reality.
In fact, according to Onkolos, the words, “a living soul,” in the verse describing man’s creation, “God formed man of dust from the ground, and He breathed into his nostrils the soul of life, and man became a living soul”[12] mean “speaking soul,” clearly implying that what defines a human being is the faculty of speech.
The Mashiach, the Ultimate Leader, will show the indisputable and celestial power of speech. The Hebrew word Mashiach (מָשִׁיחַ) can also be pronounced to mean “speaker” (משיח). Through his speech, he will bring all of humanity together into a new, more expanded level of consciousness, which will ultimately unite the world in peace and harmony.
Silence and Speech
Knowing when to speak and when to be silent represents a lofty level of wisdom. King Solomon, in the Book of Ecclesiastes, lists fourteen pairs of seemingly opposite activities beginning with: “Everything has an appointed season, and there is a time for every matter under the heavens.”[13] “A time to be silent and a time to speak” is included in this archetypal list of the human psyche.[14]
Note that King Solomon mentions silence before speech. Similarly, silence precedes speech when Ezekiel describes a particular feature in his vision of the Divine Chariot. There he uses what is perhaps the Bible’s most mysterious word, chashmal. The word chashmal does not have a clear meaning in Hebrew. In an effort to decipher its meaning, the sages describe it as a composite word whose two syllables mean “silence” (chash) and “speech” (mal).[15] They further explain that the word is also a notarikon for the phrase, “living beings of fire” (חַיּוֹת אֵשׁ), who at times are silent and at times speak.[16] These living beings are a type of angel, who separate silence and speech temporally, like King Solomon’s “a time to be silent, a time to speak.” Yet, because God transcends time, chashmal when attributed to its Divine source, represents a paradoxical state in which silence and speech can be found simultaneously. Experiencing God is therefore associated with the experience of silence and speech concurrently.
One image that can help us better appreciate the Divine interplay between silence and speech can be found in the wilderness—an area uninhabited to any significant extent by humans. Modern city dwellers and even people living in rural areas visit the wilderness only on special occasions. However, life in the wilderness was the norm during the entire period of Jewish history described in the Torah. The patriarchs spent their lives tending to their flocks in the wilderness, far from civilization. Moses received his mission to redeem the Israelites from Egypt in the wilderness. That is where the Torah was given,[17] and that is where the generation that made the Exodus from Egypt lived and died, before the people were led by Joshua into the Land of Israel.
The Hebrew word for “wilderness” (מִדְבָּר) is pronounced meedbar (it also means “desert”). Silence is a thick presence that permeates the wilderness. And yet, the Hebrew word for “wilderness” derives from the root meaning “speak” (דבר), thus giving the Divine paradox of simultaneous silence and speech an address, so to speak. To experience the paradox, the patriarchs and matriarchs, the twelve sons of Jacob, and the prophets of old, all spent time in the wilderness where in the physical silence, they could silence the din of their ego, and hear first the voice of their Divine soul, and ultimately, God’s speech. By hearing God’s words in the silence of the wilderness and aligning their own inner being with it, the prophets found the strength needed to speak what were oftentimes unpopular messages to the people.
One of the most detailed descriptions of this experience was passed down from the prophet Elijah. When he was in the Sinai wilderness, the word of God came to him, and he relates,
And behold God passed by and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke the rocks in pieces before God; but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but God was not in the fire and after the fire the sound of still silence. And when Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood in the entrance of the cave.”[18]
The sound of still silence mirrors the speaking silence of the chashmal.
Because mal, the second half of chashmal, means both separation and speech, the Ba’al Shem Tov derived a three-stage model from the complete word.[19] According to the Ba’al Shem Tov’s model, the three stages corresponding to chash mal mal are silence, separation, and speech. Cited by many of his disciples, this three-stage model was an essential teaching of the Ba’al Shem Tov with which he guided the spiritual and creative growth of his followers, especially those whom he judged would go on to positions of leadership. In his own terminology, these stages are known as (1) submission (hachna’ah), corresponding to chash, silence, (2) separation (havdalah) corresponding to the first mal, and (3) sweetening (hamtakah) corresponding to the second chash.[20]
Submission entails the diminishment or silencing of the ego required to allow our Divine soul to emerge. Separation both severs our connection and identification with the extraneous and the false and binds our identity with the essential and the true thereby clarifying for us an orderly path towards the fulfillment of our heavenly mission in life. Finally, sweetening allows us to speak (or express in other ways) our authentic Divine soul, its inner thoughts and directives, thereby ensuring that its goals are fully developed and realized in reality.
The Five Dynamics
Now that we have hopefully awakened the reader’s interest and curiosity, we introduce here the five soul dynamics of leadership that we will be exploring in the upcoming articles in this series:
- The Art of Compromise
- The Drive for Wholeness
- The Power of Compassion to Inspire
- The Drive for Integration
- A Sense of Folly
As stated in the beginning of Awakening the Spark Within: “Our sincere desire in this exploration is not merely to bring certain ideas to light but to inspire the reader to search for and find the sparks of leadership within himself or herself.”
Click here for additional chapters in this series
Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash
[1]. Genesis 7:11.
[2]. Zohar 117a.
[3]. Exodus 19:3-6.
[4]. Isaiah 42:6, 49:6, 60:3.
[5]. First appearing in the Ba’al Shem Tov’s name in Me’or Einayim, a collection of homiletic teachings by Rebbe Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, a disciple of both the Ba’al Shem Tov and his successor, the Maggid of Mezritch.
[6]. Isaiah 2:4.
[7]. See Hilchot Melachim 11:7, “Nevertheless, the intent of the Creator is not within the power of man to comprehend…. Ultimately, all the deeds of Jesus of Nazareth and that Ishmaelite who arose after him will only serve to prepare the way for Mashiach’s coming and the improvement of the entire world, motivating the nations to serve God together….”
[8]. Isaiah 8:4.
[9]. Ibid. 5:1
[10]. Genesis 1:3.
[11]. Based upon Bereishit Rabbah 98:3.
[12]. Genesis 2:4
[13]. Ecclesiastes 3.1.
[14]. Ibid 3:7.
[15]. Ezekiel 1:4.
[16]. Chagigah 13b.
[17]. One of the Five Books of Moses, the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew, is named after the wilderness.
[18]. 1 Kings 19:11-13.
[19]. In doing so, he also followed the Arizal who had already created a 4-part model from the word: chash chash mal mal.
[20]. Keter Shem Tov (ed. Kehot), §28.
