By Rabbi Ari Sunshine
Parashat Ekev
In the corporate world, we often see a familiar pattern when a crisis hits a company: Executives at the top immediately scramble to find a scapegoat. They point fingers down the chain of command, sacrifice a mid-level manager and issue a polished press release to protect their own reputations. In the modern secular theater of power, authority is eagerly claimed for the perks and the prestige, but accountability is treated like a hot potato, passed off to anyone unfortunate enough to be standing out of the spotlight.
Our Jewish tradition offers a radical, countercultural model of what it truly means to lead. Authentic leadership is not an entitlement to privileges; it is a burden of absolute accountability for the lives and actions of those under our watch. We find the blueprint for this truth in this week’s parasha, Ekev, when Moses retells the story of his exchange with God in the book of Exodus in the middle of an existential crisis for the Israelites. When the children of Israel committed the devastating sin of the Golden Calf at the foot of Mount Sinai, God spoke to Moses on the mountain with words that would shatter any leader’s comfort zone. Deuteronomy 9:12 tells us that God instructed Moses: “Get up, descend from the mountain, for your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.”
A famous midrash on this exchange between Moses and God uses a parable of a tenant farmer and the owner of a vineyard. According to the midrash, when the vineyard produced good wine, the owner of the vineyard would say, “My wine is GREAT!” and when the vineyard produced poor-quality or spoiled wine, the owner of the vineyard would say, “The wine my tenant farmer made is terrible!”, to which the tenant farmer responded, “Master, what do you mean? If the wine is good, it’s your vineyard, and if the wine is bad, it’s my vineyard? Whether it’s good or it’s bad, it’s your vineyard.” The parallel is then drawn to God claiming Israel as God’s people during and after the Exodus, but now telling Moses, “Go down and deal with YOUR people who have become corrupt,” with Moses responding, “Wait … when the Israelites are sinning, they belong to me, but when they are meritorious, they belong to you? Whether they are worthy or flawed, they belong to you,” prompting Moses to say to God in Deuteronomy 9:29, “V’hem amcha v’nachaletcha,” “Yet they are Your people and Your inheritance.”
Throughout the journey of the Exodus, the Israelites were explicitly God’s people. But the moment they failed, the moment they collapsed into spiritual chaos and built an idol, God blamed the disaster on God’s subordinate, Moses. It was as if God was the first in a long line of leaders in history guilty of a toxic mismanagement strategy: When the team succeeds, the credit belongs to the boss, but when the team breaks down, the responsibility lands squarely on the subordinates. Fortunately, Moses recognized the problem and challenged his boss. He stood firmly in the breach to shield the very people who had humiliated his leadership. He faced the Divine wrath and reversed the pronoun, effectively calling God out for claiming pride and credit when things were going well with the Israelites, but being quick to pass the buck to Moses when things went off the rails. Moses understood that you cannot accept the crown of authority during a triumph while divorcing yourself from the team during a crisis.
Whether those under our watch bring us honor or bring us catastrophe, a true leader steps forward, absorbs the blow and says, “The ultimate responsibility rests with me.” May we find the courage to lead with the fierce, protective accountability of Moses, owning our teams’ failures as deeply as we celebrate their successes.
Rabbi Ari Sunshine is a senior rabbi at Congregation Shearith Israel in Dallas. He is a past president and member of the Rabbinic Association of Greater Dallas.