At the closing of last week’s sidrah, Moses approaches the Jewish people to relay his experiences at the burning bush. The enslaved Jews are praised for their unanimously faithful response. 

Yet, in this week’s sidrah, Moses once again promises redemption and the people refuse to believe him. Their change of heart is explained in the verses themselves: between the two incidents Moses had asked Pharaoh to let the Jewish people go. In response, Pharaoh increased the workload of his Jewish slaves. 

Now, when again told about God’s promise to redeem the Jews, they are pessimistic because of their “shortness of breath and hard work”. Having experienced how Moses’s first promise of freedom had led to misery and torturous labour, they don’t believe that his second promise will result in much more. 

Immediately afterwards, God once again tells Moses to speak to Pharaoh. Moses responds, “How will Pharoah listen to me if the Jews did not?”

What a strange comparison! We know that the reason the Jews did not listen is because of their hard labour. Pharaoh, on the other hand, is totally unburdened. How could Moses have equated the two?

The Chatam Sofer (Rabbi Moses Schreiber, 1762-1839) explains that the comparison of Pharaoh’s attitude to that of the Jews is not actually a comparison at all; rather it is a cause and effect. 

That is to say, the very fact that Pharaoh listened to Moses in the first instance was a miracle - a miracle that came about through the merit of the Jewish people who listened to Moses. Now however, seeing that the people had not listened and had not believed, Moses asks God how Pharaoh would listen to him. It would seem that Moses’s potential as a leader depends on the extent to which his people believe in him. 

In today’s tumultuous times the international scene is full of dubious leaders. But we must ask ourselves if we are not to blame. Perhaps we must accept that leaders can only become effective insofar as their people believe in them.