Making sense of the sedra: Matot Masei

A united Jewish vision

On 7 October Staff Sergeant Roey Weiser, a soldier in the Golani 13th Brigade, was stationed at the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Gaza. He was near the safe room when terrorists entered the area. He could have gone to the safe room and stayed there, saving his own life. However he took on the task of ensuring that as many soldiers as possible could also reach it, and thus found himself protecting many other lives, but giving up his own.

Hannah Szenesh spent the summer of 1944 in a prison cell. She was interrogated, tortured and brutally beaten. She was a Special Operations Executive for the British army who had parachuted into Yugoslavia in order to assist the resistance in Hungary, but was caught. She could have prolonged her life by giving up names of her collaborators and details of their plans. However, she stayed silent for months, defending the lives of many others.

In this week’s parsha, Matot Masei, God tells Moshe: “Take revenge for the Children of Israel against the Midianites; afterwards you will be gathered to your people” (Bamidbar 31:2). Moshe immediately gets on with the task, organising the army and successfully completing God’s mission. He could have dragged his feet in doing this to prolong his life. Instead, he took immediate action, knowing that this would bring about its swift end.

I have given some extreme examples above, but there is a lesson to be learnt here from Hannah, Roey, Moshe and many other Jewish leaders. Sometimes we are called upon to do things that might be to our detriment but will have enormous benefit to others. This can be something as small as helping a colleague at work. You give up your time, energy and even your own work in order to help someone else meet a deadline, reduce their stress and help them keep their job – even though you may be jeopardising your own. Why would you do this? Because for the sake of the team, of its mission and its beneficiaries, you sacrifice your own needs for the sake of the collective.

Our Jewish leaders have always been those who have not a singular, individual vision for the future, but a communal, united one.