Parashat Beha’alotecha
Rabbi Abby Sosland, Morah Ruchanit (Spiritual Advisor) and Talmud Department Chair
When we consider Bamidbar’s lessons in leadership, we usually look straight to Moses. Moses provides a master course in how to deal with rebellion, how to manage God’s rage, and even how to get water from a rock. But Moses also teaches us about other forms of leadership, too, about those in the background, where we might not think to look.
Consider the enigmatic story of Eldad and Meidad. When Moses appoints seventy elders to experience God’s presence, Eldad and Meidad stay back in the camp, and they begin prophesying outside the holy boundary of the Ohel Moed, the Tent of Meeting. When Joshua hears that they are doing this, he panics. “Moses! Restrain them!”
What is so scary to Joshua about these “prophesying” men? Evidently, he sees these rogue spiritual agents as a threat to the system. Moses, on the other hand, is not concerned in the least. His famous response is filled with humility and democratic thinking: “Mi yiten kol am Adonai nevi’im!” (“Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!”)
Why did Eldad and Meidad stay back in the first place?
The Talmud in Tractate Sanhedrin (17a) describes the lottery held to choose the elders. Moses selected seventy-two candidates—six from each tribe—but only needed seventy. To decide, he placed seventy slips marked “Elder” and two blank slips into an urn. According to a baraita (a supplementary oral learning) taught by Rabbi Shimon, Eldad and Meidad felt unworthy of the honor. Saying “We are not worthy of this greatness,” they abstained from drawing a card to let others have the honor.
Because they avoided the spotlight, the text suggests, God rewarded them with a special form of prophecy—one that was not fixed to location or hierarchy. Their very humility transformed them into spiritual leaders.
By celebrating Eldad and Meidad, Moses demonstrates that real leadership is often found outside conventional spaces, rooted in quiet, unsung humility. While Joshua feared anarchy, Moses understood something deeper. No need to panic, he seems to be saying. The story of Eldad and Meidad reminds us that the spiritual experience can come to people in countless ways, a reality Moses knew was not to be feared, but celebrated.