ARE YOU LIKE A SURGEON OR A PILOT?

A man goes to consult a specialist about his medical problem. After the visits, the man asks, "How much do I owe you?" "My fee is five hundred dollars," replies the physician.

"Five hundred dollars? That's impossible. No one charges that much!" "In your case," the doctor replies, "I suppose I could adjust my fee to three hundred."

"Three hundred dollars? For one visit? Ridiculous."

"Well, then, could you afford two hundred?"

"Who has that kind of money?"

"Look, replies the doctor," growing irritated, "Just give me fifty bucks and get out."

"I can give you twenty says the man. Take it or leave it."

"I don't understand you," says the doctor. "Why did you come to the most expensive doctor in New York if you have no money?"

"Listen, Doctor", says the patient, "When it comes to my health, nothing is too expensive."

I came down from the mountain, and the mountain burned with fire, and the two Tablets of the Covenant were in my two hands. And I saw that  behold, you had sinned against the Lord your G-d, and had made yourselves a molten calf; you had quickly turned from the path which G-d had commanded you. 

I grabbed hold of the two Tablets and threw them from my two hands, and I broke them before your eyes.   

The question is an obvious one. Why did Moses throw and break the heavenly tablets? He could have hidden them,  returned them to their maker, or left them on the mountain. Why destroy them?

By way of illustration. For your 25^th anniversary, you buy your husband an extraordinary gift. The watch he always craved; the car he always envied. 

As he comes home that evening, he behaves in such an obnoxious way, that you decide you won’t give it to him. 

If you have some self-control, do you go and destroy the watch or blow up the car? No! You keep it! You sell it. You return it and get back your money.

Some might suggest that Moses was so angry, he lost it. It wasn’t a rational decision, it was a rash move. Yet this seems very strange. Moses has just spent forty days and forty nights with G-d; he was the most refined human being to walk our planet, known as “the master of all the prophets,” the “most perfected human individual.” The Torah itself states that “there never arose a prophet like Moses whom G-d knew face to face.”

What is more, smashing even one brick of the Holy Temple is a biblical prohibition. Smashing even one stone on the altar is a biblical sin. Smashing the tablets, the holiest item in the world, is a grave sin. How could Moses, in a fit of anger, commit such a grave sin?

There is a Midrash that explains.  

Moses saw that the Jews may not survive. He linked his soul to theirs, and he broke the tablets. He told G-d, that they sinned, but I also sinned by breaking the tablets. If you forgive them, forgive me too. If you don’t forgive them, then do not forgive me either.

Yet this too needs much explanation. Is this a game? Moses decides to sin by smashing the holy tablets, that way G-d is “stuck.” For now,  G-d has no one “left” to call righteous. Either he gets rid of everybody, including Moses, or he forgives everybody. 

Besides, how could you compare Moses’ “sin” to Israel’s sin? They created and worshiped an idol merely 40 days after Sinai; he threw down the tablets. You can’t compare the genre of the sins!

The Baal Shem Tov gave a famous parable: if you are stuck in the mud, I can’t sit on my ivory tower and extricate you. 

I need to get down and dirty to help you get out. If a lifeguard sees someone drowning, he can’t remain seated on his comfortable chair  giving the person instructions on how to get out. He needs to jump into the water, into the tumult, and rescue the person.

Some years ago, I read the speech of a man describing his father’s illness:

My father suffered a serious stroke three years ago. Much of his body was paralyzed. After his initial medical care, he was brought to Northridge Hospital for rehab. So, after work each night, I’d go up and visit. At first, he was very depressed. He felt everything good in his life had been taken from him. And then one night, his mood changed, his whole attitude was different. I thought perhaps the physical therapy was beginning to work, returning his strength and control. Or perhaps they changed his medications. Then I learned the truth: At eleven o’clock, he excused himself, and told me he had an appointment. Who do you have an appointment with at eleven o’clock at night? I asked. And he told me: A few nights ago, they brought in a kid who had been in a terrible motorcycle accident. The kid was completely paralyzed, his body almost destroyed. The kid was so depressed, he was suicidal. He saw nothing in his future, so he refused to take his medications. He wanted to die. They brought social workers psychologists and psychiatrists, but no one could reach the kid. Except my father. With his own body broken, he wheeled his wheelchair into the kid’s room each night when it was time for medications. My father sat with the kid talked to him, and talked him into staying alive for just another day. Each night, Dad went into that kid and talked him into taking his meds. He told him off the abyss and back into life. That’s what healed my father.

I want to ask you a simple question that has been bugging me:  What is the difference between a surgeon and a pilot?

When it comes to finding the doctor, we turn over the planet to make sure he is the best of the best of the best. Yet when it comes to choosing our pilot, to whom we entrust our lives during a flight 30,000 feet over the Pacific, we don’t even know his name…

The answer is obvious:

The surgeon is not lying on the slab with the patient. If the surgery doesn't go well, the surgeon remains intact. He goes back home to drink his beer and read his newspaper.

Your surgeon you must research well; your pilot need not research because you know that if he does not know what he is doing, he will never board that airplane.

This is what the Baal Shem Tov taught. So, leaders are like great surgeons. They are brilliant scholars, erudite legal experts, eloquent orators, fine activists, and lovely people. Yet their approach is that of the surgeon: they try to help the patient, and the community, to the best of their ability. But ultimately, they remain outside of it all. Your problem will not affect them.

But the true leader must be like a pilot. To sublimate the turkey, the sage must stoop down, to feel him, to experience him, to become part of his life, to show him that you understand, you care, you empathize, you “get it.”

At last, we can appreciate Moses’ action. G-d speaks to Moses after the incident of the Golden Calf:

And the Lord said to Moses: "Go, descend, for your people that you have brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly.”

G-d did not only mean this geographically. He meant it also emotionally. Moses! Go down! Go descend! For your people lost it. You can’t remain on an ivory tower, atop a mountain and lift them. You need to “go down,” you need to feel them, touch them, experience them, fall with them, to lift them.

Moses descends. He sees the situation. The nation is entrenched in idolatry. G-d says there is no remedy. They have sunk too low. Forty days after your marriage, still on your honeymoon, and you are already playing games… Moses sees the situation. He asks himself one question: How can I lift them from their abyss? How do I raise them from the quagmire? How do I extricate them from this whirlwind of disaster?

He knows the answer: He must descend into their world. He must jump into the pit. He must connect to their souls, where they stand today, to create for them a different tomorrow. But he is not part of their world. He has been on the mountain. He is as removed as one can be from this sin of idolatry! How can Moses become part of it?

At that moment, Moses remembers a teaching that would be later recorded in the Talmud:

Someone who breaks vessels during a feat of rage is considered as a worshiper of idolatry.

Moses smashed the tablets in his rage, thus descending, so to speak, into the moral space of his people, entering into the zone of a subtle form of idolatry,  so that he could connect to the people, can be there with the people, and help them rise once again, which is exactly what he did.

To lift the people from the lowest space, Moses descended right there! He was there with them, in their lowly, filthy, confused, demoralized, dark space. Now, he could embrace them and lift them.

This is the meaning of the words of the Midrash above: Moses saw that the Jews would not survive. He linked his soul to theirs, and he broke the tablets. He told
G-d,  they sinned, but I also sinned by breaking the tablets. If you forgive them, forgive me too. If you don’t forgive them, then do not forgive me either.

This was no game. Moses understood that he needed to link his soul to the soul of the people, he must descend to their abyss, as G-d explicitly told him, for if not, how could he possibly lift them from the abyss?! He thus did something similar to the type of sin the Jews committed. Now, he can show them the way out of their wilderness, and as G-d forgives him, He can forgive them.

There is a critical lesson here. You remember the Film “The Doctor,” where a highly professional but emotionally clueless doctor treats his patients like machines  until he falls ill and experiences what it is to be a patient.

When I was in summer camp, they used the beautiful words of Albert Camus and turned it into a Jewish song:

Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend, and together we will walk in the ways of Hashem.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky