Dear Friends,
I've heard it said that "the shoes make the man." You can pay a pretty penny for designer shoes these days, and if you're enduring rough terrain you need the proper footwear for protection. It should strike us as odd then that when G-d first revealed Himself to Moses at the burning bush He said to him: “shaal n’olecho me-al raglecho – remove your shoes from your feet!”
Why? Generally speaking, when a Jew finds himself standing at a Makom Kadosh, on sacred ground, he takes off his shoes, so as to remove all barriers between himself and the holy soil. There should be direct contact. The Kohanim (priests) who performed the service in the Holy Temple never stepped foot in the Bais Hamikdosh wearing shoes. This is also why, to this day, when the Kohanim stand before the congregation to administer the priestly blessings, they take off their shoes.
Aside from the general explanation for removing one’s shoes at a holy site, however, there is another reason Moses received this instruction. When you’re wearing shoes, it’s generally a smooth and easy walk. You don’t feel every little stone, every pebble, every bump in the road.
G-d’s message to Moses was: “You are about to become the leader of Am Yisroel, the Jewish people. Take off your shoes!" From this day on, you have to be sensitive to every “pebble,” to every bit of pain and sorrow that your flock will encounter. In other words, a key quality for Jewish leadership is empathy; feeling the pain and distress of others.
Some of us may be old enough to remember the famous western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Well I would suggest that people can be divided into the apathetic, the sympathetic, and the empathetic.
To be apathetic means that you’re disconnected; disengaged from people and the world around you. It means that in the morning you put on your rugged boots with steel-tips and spiked heels, so to speak, and you march through life doing your own thing. Isolated and detached from people, from G-d, from the world around you.
Then there’s sympathy. Sympathy means that we do connect, but not too deeply. We say hello to one another, we shake hands, we wish each other a good Shabbos. We are friendly and cordial, and may care that another is in pain, but we certainly don't feel that pain as our own.
But empathy is on another level. Empathy means truly feeling the pain and hardship of a fellow human being. There is a famous story about a Jerusalem Tzaddik, holy person, named Rabbi Aryeh Levin. He accompanied his wife to the doctor because she had pain in her foot. When the doctor asked what brought them in, he replied "my wife's foot is hurting us." He didn't ignore her pain, he didn't merely acknowledge her pain, he felt her pain right alongside her.
That is what our world needs more of today. Invest in the people around you. In a society with shorter and shorter attention spans, give them your attention. Be fully present. Celebrate the highs and mourn the lows together. Each of us can be that empathetic leader in our own small way. This is what we strive for at Chabad of Naples. To dance at each other's simchas and to comfort one another when life knocks us down.
This Shabbat, and in the week to come, I encourage all of us to tap into that empathy. To metaphorically remove our shoes so that no pebble escapes our attention. To embrace our neighbor as ourself, sharing the journey of life, with all its ups and downs, together.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Fishel & Ettie Zaklos