The German sociologist Max Weber describes the biblical prophets as archetypal charismatics. Their authority lay not with institutional power but with the power of their message.
The prophets gave humanity the vision of universal peace inscribed on the cornerstone of the UN building in New York: “… and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Even so, some Talmudic rabbis are outraged by the prophets’ devastating diatribes against their own people.
From the time of Bar-Kokhba until the 19th century, Jews were a pacifist people, led by rabbis and guided by dialectical halachah. Kings, priests, politicians and warriors gave way to educational leaders, masters of sober legal debate.
Messiahs and mystics have tended to be marginalized in Judaism. Some founders of charismatic movements in Judaism, such as Jesus and the Baal Shem Tov, evidently did not see themselves as mass leaders.
Distrust of charisma in Jewish life reflects centuries in which leaders promised redemption and left broken hopes.
Jewish wariness of personality cults has proved fully justified in modern times. Millions of people have followed tyrannical mass murderers such as Hitler, Stalin and Mao.
Unlike the Gospels and the Koran, the Hebrew Bible is not built around the life of one man, a model of faith. It focuses less on charismatic individuals than upon one people, warts and all.
The Hebrew Bible abounds with failed leaders, kings, priests and prophets who misled the people, at times to moral collapse, defeat and exile. In the millennium of ancient Jewish statehood, from Saul, first king of Israel, to Bar-Kokhba, last ruler of an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel (died c 135 CE), most leaders are remembered with disgust, as arrogant idolators greedy for gain, leading the nation to ultimate ruin. The very idea of monarchy is condemned as “wickedness”.
The Bible concedes reluctantly the need for a king for national self-defence in wartime but tries to curb his power: he must not have too many horses or wives, or too much gold and silver, “that his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandments” (Deuteronomy 17: 20).
The disastrous consequences of messianic Judaism in the 1st and 2nd centuries CE left rabbinic Judaism with revulsion toward charismatic leadership.
Christianity, originally a Jewish messianic movement, developed an ideology of anti-Jewish hatred and the calumny that the Jews were collective deicides to be punished by unceasing persecution.
Later, Jewish history brought other notable charismatic failures. After the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 and Portugal in 1497, David Reubeni and Solomon Molcho were stark reminders of Jewish vulnerability in crisis; and after the 1648-49 Chmelnicki massacres in Poland, Shabbetai Zevi was a living warning of the dangers of charisma in Jewish life.
The Chasidic movement starting from the Baal Shem Tov (died 1760) was wary of apocalyptic messianism. Though Chasidism sometimes elevated the rebbe to a supernatural level, it tended to curb personality cults through rivalry among different groups and by keeping these cults within closed circles of devotees.
Since ancient times, mainstream Judaism stresses the value of education and limits its more extreme charismatic elements. Torah study is ideally the primary activity of the loyal Jew. All the other commandments are in effect included in it. The only true leader is the uncharismatic Torah teacher. Those who devote their lives to Torah are qualified to lead by teaching.
In the Mishna, the first codification of Jewish law (c 200 CE), Judaism is based on religious practice, not prophetic visions or messianic hopes.
If in the aftermath of the destruction of the Jewish state and the Temple in Jerusalem, the enemies of the Jews could not be cured of prejudice, if justice and fairness could not be established on earth, the Jews could at least try to teach their own children the positive values of Judaism, to encourage them to take pride in and love their Jewish heritage.
Granted that leaders are prone to waywardness and corruption, are they not needed at times?
The Talmudic rabbis reluctantly concede that this is so. They set out both an impossible ideal and the unpalatable reality.
The ideal leader is totally selfless, serving his people for their own sake, out of duty and love, not lust for power and self-aggrandizement. Leaders must be appointed by public consent, on the basis of their righteousness and wisdom: “All who engage in public service should do so for the sake of heaven” (Avot ii 2).
Leaders should not seek power but have power thrust upon them. There is a view that three leaders should be chosen, to avoid putting too much power in the hands of one man. Those who know the Torah are superior to leaders deficient in knowledge.
The rabbis, while having much to say about good leadership, are evidently more concerned with preventing bad leadership. They generally take the view, as Lord Acton put it, that “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Rabbinic Judaism imagines God weeping at the sight of corrupt, arrogant, tyrannical, and ineffective leaders. Preferable to them are men susceptible to a degree of control, even blackmail, with a history of scandal and public shame hanging over them.
Power as a corruptor of morality was regarded practically as a death sentence: happy the leader who served his time without corruption (‘naked as at the start’). All things considering, people might be better off in a leaderless void.
Perhaps no other ancient civilization taught more emphatically that leaders must accept that their followers will make them suffer. In the Midrash, Moses and Aaron are warned that they should expect their followers to curse and stone them.
The most esteemed rabbi of the talmudic age, Rabbi Akiva, who supported the failed messiah, Bar-Kokhba, was reportedly reluctant to lead, for he expected his followers to vilify him.
Suspicion of charismatic leadership survived in Jewish society to modern times and hampered the Zionist movement. Though Zionism produced remarkable leaders, including Herzl, Jabotinsky, and Ben-Gurion, each was curbed by his followers or opponents, by fear of giving one man too much power or credence; and each endured widespread criticism, mockery and scorn.
Herzl, a true leader, combining vision and political practicality, had relatively little support at first and was even suspected of messianic pretentions, a resurrected Shabbetai Zevi. His writings betray an occasional visionary gleam familiar from ancient texts. He recounts a childhood dream of becoming the messianic saviour of his people.
It is striking how, as leader of a political movement, Herzl found himself before his premature death in 1904 increasingly drawn to traditional Judaism, with unexpected growing empathy for Orthodox Eastern European Jews — those who, unlike their assimilated Western European brethren, preserved the biblical and rabbinic love of Zion.
In considering the political corruption which has dogged Israel’s recent history, Herzl was a model of selflessness, putting many of his successors to shame: he used up his family fortune to keep the struggling Zionist movement going, and he remained singlemindedly devoted to his cause to the day he died.
David Aberbach is author of 'Imperialism and Biblical Prophecy' and 'Charisma in Politics, Religion and the Media'
