We live in an age of contradictions. On the one hand the post-modern age is histories most materialistic and narcissistic. In the united states there are hundreds of thousands of people who follow new-age gurus offering a whole smorgasbord of different spiritual paths that claim to be more evolved and advanced than age old religious teachings. The common factor between all of these self-styled gurus is that they all claim to be of higher spiritual perfection than others and some even claim that the divine light flows through them and then from them to their followers.
It may be true that they themselves sincerely believe that they are superior to others and almost god like – indeed they themselves are probably the most devoted and dedicated believers in themselves. In reality, however this very claim instantly disqualifies them from being what they profess to be.
The fact is that a real leader is a reluctant leader. Over the last few weeks in the Torah portions we have read about Moses’ rise to prominence as supreme leader of the Israelites. He was commended by God to speak to pharaoh – something that he was reluctant to take on. However, we never find Moses talking about himself or saying how he is the most connected to God and one can only connect to the divine light through him. Notwithstanding this we find the Torah telling us that, “The Israelites saw the great hand that God did in Egypt” this led them to “fear God and believe in Moses his servant.”
Taken literally this means that due to the amazing miracles that God performed through his servant Moses, the Israelites feared God and began to believe in Moses. This shows that Moses had to earn the peoples belief through performing miracles and saving them. The Kabbalists however do not see this as being convincing. The fact is that Moses was not just a miracle maker or a magician. He was a person who was a servant of God – a human who had connected to the divine in a way that no other human had or has ever done before or after. Were the miracles really indicative of that connectivity to the divine to the degree that suddenly the Israelites believed in Moses as being the servant of the All Mighty?
The great Chassidic leader and Kabbalist, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740-1810) in his magnum opus Kedushat Levi states a very simple but profound explanation. The Israelites only began to believe in Moses after God revealed to them the loftiest of spiritual levels at the Sea of Reeds. Once they perceived the divine reality on that level they were able to believe that humans have the ability to become connect to God on the highest of levels. In other words, the performance of miracles are not sufficient proof in order to conclude servant of God and conduit of the divine light status – for that real independent spiritual proof in necessary.
This teaches us something very profound about the belief we should have in human beings. Judaism does not teach the belief in humans – on the contrary it warns against it. Our relationship is with God and not with humans. Indeed human teachers can help us become close to God and guide us along the way. However these human teachers and spiritual guides remain just that – human beings. The only time in history when humans were truly justified in their belief that another human was in fact a servant of God was when God himself revealed that possibility to them collectively. Then they feared God and justifiably believed in Moses as His servant. Moses himself, however, had no direct part to play in the belief the people had in him – if he had he would have disqualified himself from the possibility of being a servant of the divine.