Rabbi Isaac ben Shila said in the name of Rabbi Mattena, in the name of Rabbi Hisda: “If a father renounces the honor due to him, it is renounced, but if a rabbi renounces the honor due to him it is not renounced.” Rabbi Joseph ruled: “Even if a rabbi renounces his honor, it is renounced…”
Rabbi Ashi said: “Even on the view that a rabbi may renounce his honor, if a nasi renounces his honor, the renunciation is invalid.”
Rather, it was stated thus: “Even on the view that a nasi may renounce his honor, yet a king may not renounce his honor, as it is said, ‘You shall surely set a king over you,’ meaning, his authority should be over you” (Kiddushin 32 a-b).
Each of these people exercises a leadership role: father to son, teacher to disciple, nasi to the community, and king to the nation. Analyzed in depth, the passages make it clear that these four roles occupy different places on the spectrum between authority predicated on the person and authority vested in the holder of an office. The more the relationship is personal, the more easily honor can be renounced. At one extreme is the role of a parent (intensely personal), at the other that of king (wholly official).
I suggest that this was the issue at stake in the argument over how Moses and the Israelites sang the Song at the Sea. For Rabbi Akiva, Moses was like a king. He spoke, and the people merely answered Amen (in this case, the words “I will sing to the Lord”). For Rabbi Eliezer, son of Rabbi Jose the Galilean, he was like a teacher. Moses spoke, and the Israelites repeated, phrase by phrase, what he had said. For Rabbi Nehemiah, he was like a nasi among his rabbinical colleagues (the passage in Kiddushin, which holds that a nasi may renounce his honor, makes it clear that this is only among his fellow rabbis). The relationship was collegial: Moses began, but thereafter, they sung in unison. For Rabbi Eliezer ben Taddai Moses was like a father. He began, but allowed the Israelites to complete each verse. This is the great truth about parenthood, made clear in the first glimpse we have of Abraham.
“Terach took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of Abram, and together they set out from Ur Kasdim to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there” (Bereishit 11:31).
Abraham completed the journey his father began. To be a parent is to want one’s children to go further than you did. That too, for Rabbi Eliezer ben Taddai, was Moses’s relationship to the Israelites.
The prelude to the Song at the Sea states that the people “believed in G-d and in his servant Moses” – the first time they are described as believing in Moses’s leadership. On this, the sages asked: “What is it to be a leader of the Jewish people? Is it to hold official authority, of which the supreme example is a king [the rabbis are called kings]? Is it to have the kind of personal relationship with one’s followers that rests not on honor and deference but on encouraging people to grow, accept responsibility and continue the journey you have begun? Or is it something in between?”
There is no single answer. At times, Moses asserted his authority (during the Korach rebellion). At others, he expressed the wish that “all G-d’s people were prophets.” Judaism is a complex faith. There is no one Torah model of leadership. We are each called on to fill a number of leadership roles: as parents, teachers, friends, team-members and team-leaders. There is no doubt, however, that Judaism favors as an ideal the role of parent, encouraging those we lead to continue the journey we have begun, and go further than we did. A good leader creates followers. A great leader creates leaders. That was Moses’s greatest achievement. He left behind him a people willing, in each generation, to accept responsibility for taking further the great task he had begun.