Every culture has its tales of heroes, leaders and exemplars whose lives and stories serve as models for our own. Whether we look at the ancient stories of Achilles or the modern chronicles of Superman, the narratives of these characters are presented so that they can be commentaries on morality, virtue, and the choices we make in life. In short, stories of heroes are stories of moral actions.
But another staple of every good hero narrative is that they have some weakness. Superman had kryptonite; Achilles, his heel. The list goes on. None of these heroes was perfect, but those who created their stories made them pretty close.
Throughout the narrative of Torah, we also have heroes, characters who take center stage and lead the way through various points of Jewish history. Like the heroes in our mythic stories, they too have weaknesses and imperfections, but unlike their comic book counterparts, the weaknesses of the people chronicled in Torah are moral weaknesses and striking mistakes.
Think about your favorite person described in Torah, your best example of a leader or role model. How about Abraham? Started the first major monotheistic religion, built relationships throughout the land, even argued for God to be the most just and fair deity God could be. Sounds pretty perfect, right? But he also sent his firstborn son, Ishmael, and Ishmael’s mother, Hagar, to the desert to die at the request of his wife (Gen. 21:9-16) and held a knife to his son Isaac at God’s request (Gen. 22:1-12). That seems like a less-than-stellar example.
What about Moses? He led the Hebrews out of Egypt, stood up to Pharaoh, led the People through the desert, and created the system of laws and culture that continued to develop over thousands of years into the Judaism of today. But the first time we meet Moses is when he murders an Egyptian taskmaster for beating a Hebrew slave, then flees from the authorities to live in hiding (Ex. 2:11-15). Even his sister Miriam, a shining example as a prophetess, leader of her time, and an inspiration to her people in times of both joy and hopelessness gives into the all-too-human temptation to spread gossip (Num. 12:1-10).
You can go through the same exercise for almost any main character throughout Tanach. Jacob? Stole from his brother (Gen. 25:29-34), lied to his father to co-opt his brother’s blessing (Gen 21:1-29), and allowed his sons to decimate the village of Shechem (Gen. 34:5-31). David? Committed adultery with a married woman, then sent her husband to the front lines to be killed (II Samuel 11:2-17).
Why would the most sacred text in Jewish tradition relay the stories and tell us all of their dramatic flaws and misdeeds? Should the narrative not have omitted them and given us perfect moral exemplars in order to inspire us to constantly work toward becoming our best selves?
I want to argue that our ancestors’ lives, as relayed in Tanach (the Hebrew Bible), are exactly the moral exemplars we need. In fact, I would argue that our Biblical narrative actually accentuates their failings in order to give us perspective on our own misdeeds, shortcomings and moral failings. By showing us their lives and character, warts and all, we are meant to get the message that you do not have to be perfect to be a great leader, a good parent, a spiritual seeker, or an upstanding human being.
Our ancestors’ flaws are so astounding that it would be impossible to revere them or treat them as superhuman because we can see that they make some of the most glaring human mistakes imaginable. In that way, we are called to examine both our successes, and more importantly, our failures, with a grain of salt and with an eye toward repair. If we only had perfect examples to which we could compare ourselves, many of us would never try to do better, since the standard of perfection would be so unattainable.
By having a narrative which humanizes our heroes, we are able to see ourselves in them, both their highest accomplishments and their deepest failings, and give ourselves the grace to work each day to make the former more impactful than the latter. Jacob seeks forgiveness from Esau; Moses looks for liberation for his people not through violent uprising, but through his faith and courage; Miriam uses her words to ask for forgiveness and to spread messages of hope. We can remember our ancestors’ mistakes and their ability to repair them as we build our own path to live a moral life.
