"אִם רָאָה": מנהיגות בקהילה

(Numb. 27:15-16:), “And Moses spoke […], ‘Let the Lord, [the God of the spirits of all flesh], appoint….’” Let our master instruct us: What blessing does one say on seeing a human being that is different? Thus have our masters taught: On seeing a black person, one with white blotches,²³Lawqan. Gk.: leuke (“white leprosy”); cf. leukos (“white”). a hunchback, a pockmarked person or one afflicted with dropsy²⁴draqinus. Cf. Gk.: huderikos or hudropikos, or rhadinos (“one excessively thin”)., one says, “Blessed is the One who makes mortals different.” On seeing an amputee, someone blind, or someone smitten with boils, one says, “Blessed is the true Judge.”²⁵TBer. 7:6; yBer. 9:2 or 1 (13b); Ber. 58b. Note that with the exception of the pock-marked person, the first group were born with their afflictions while the second acquired them later in life. When [should one recite this]? When they who were [once] whole have become different. But if they were like that from their mother's womb, one says, “Blessed is the One who makes mortals different.” On seeing good creatures and good trees, one says, “Blessed is the One who has created such things in his world.”²⁶TBer. 7:7. But if he sees crowds²⁷Gk.: ochloi. of human beings, he says, “Blessed is the One who is learned in mysteries.”²⁸Numb. R. 21:2. [As] just as their faces²⁹Gk.: prosopa. are unlike each other, so are they unlike in temperament. Rather each and every individual has his own individual temperament; and so it says (in Job 28:25), “To fix a weight for the spirit,” [i.e.,] the [spiritual] weight of each and every individual. You yourself know that it is so, because of what Moses asked from the Holy One, blessed be He, at the time of his death, when he said to him, “Master of the world, the temperament of each and every person is revealed to You; and the temperament of one person is unlike the temperament of another. Now that I am departing from them, would You please, if You so desire to appoint a leader over them, appoint over them a person who will bear with each and every one of them according to his temperament.” Where is it shown? From what they have read on the matter (in Numb. 27:16), “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint [someone over the congregation]….”