There is a story from the Torah this week that deals with a very real human thing — our emotions — with a lesson about what happens when they get out of hand. The Israelites are now into their 40th year in the wilderness. They are restless and they are thirsty. God tells Moses to speak to a rock and command it to give water. Moses is quite grumpy about the always-rebellious Israelites and in that moment, he strikes the stone instead of speaking to it. Water does come out from the rock, but there are consequences. Moses, our greatest leader, is told that he will not enter the Promised Land, in what appears to be a shocking and disproportionate punishment for all that he had done. But maybe that’s exactly the point – as a great leader, Moses is meant to be a role model, and rightly or wrongly (and I’ll suggest the former), he was held to a higher standard. That, we are taught, is the price of leadership; as the Spiderman origin story goes “With great power comes great responsibility.” It’s a lesson that applies equally today, and the leaders that I really admire are those who really aspire to live that way. It’s a short list, but I’m simply glad there is a list. These are the people who inspire me. This story does not stop with Moses. No matter how close he was to the Divine, he was no different from us. It seems we are all obligated to manage our emotions appropriately. “Pause when agitated,” I have been taught, and for good reason … because not much good comes out of impulsive actions. However, with that pause, we are invariably going to do better in the short run and the long run. That pause allows ideas like tolerance and patience and even kindness to sneak into our next actions. And we can build a better world, each of us, if these show up in our first responses rather than after our apologies. We might even be seen as role models, not because we seek it, but because of who we are. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Allan