THE ART OF FINISHING

On December 23, 1783, George Washington walked into the Maryland State House in Annapolis and did something that stunned the world.

The Independence War was over. Britain had been defeated. Washington commanded the army that had secured American independence, and he possessed something enormously dangerous: power.

Plenty of victorious generals before him had discovered that once you have an army behind you, surrendering authority can seem unnecessarily quaint.

Kings were made that way. Dictators too. But Washington stood before Congress, handed back his commission, and said: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action.”

Finished the work. That was the remarkable part.

King George III had reportedly been told that Washington intended to surrender his command and return to his farm at Mount Vernon. His response was extraordinary. If Washington really did that, the king said, “he will be the greatest man in the world.”

George III understood something that history repeatedly demonstrates: acquiring power is difficult. Giving it up voluntarily can actually be much harder.

And this week, as we begin the Torah again with Parshat Bereishit, those words of Washington have been ringing in my ears: “Having now finished the work assigned me.” Because that is almost exactly how the Torah describes God.

For six days, God creates. Light. Darkness. Heaven and earth. Seas and dry land. Trees, stars, animals, birds, fish, human beings. The opening chapter of Bereishit is one relentless burst of creative activity.

And then comes a word that is as stunning as it is surprising: וַיְכַל

וַיְכַל אֱלֹקִים בַּיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי מְלַאכְתּוֹ אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה – “God finished on the seventh day the work that He had done.”

God finished. Really? God finished?

The answer is: Of course, God could have continued. Another continent. Another species. A few more mountains. Perhaps another ocean somewhere. Surely, with infinite power, there was always something else that could have been added.

But the Torah’s first great lesson about leadership is that creation requires something besides the ability to begin, and the energy to build. It requires the wisdom to know when the work is finished.

That is why Shabbat is not an afterthought to creation. It is its culmination of creation. The Midrash asks what the world lacked after the six days of creation and answers: menuchah — rest. Only when Shabbat arrived was creation complete.

In other words, knowing when to stop was itself part of the building process.

I have been thinking about this all week, because, after seven years, our shul beloved president, Steve Dorfman, stepped down from the presidency of YINBH.

Being president of a shul is one of those extraordinary positions where you can devote hundreds of hours to something entirely voluntarily and still receive telephone calls from people who would like to explain what you are doing wrong.

Nobody calls up the president to say, “Steve, I just wanted you to know that the air-conditioning worked beautifully today.”

Nobody texts him after Shabbat to report that the kiddush food was great this week.

When the bills get paid, the event succeeds, the roof does not leak, the seats are allocated, the crisis is resolved, the difficult personality has been calmed down and everyone goes home happy, nobody knows that anything happened at all.

That is the strange privilege of communal leadership: often, the better you do it, the less anybody notices.

But over seven years, Steve noticed everything.

Through COVID and all the extraordinary challenges that came with it. Through October 7 and everything that followed. Through Israel missions, financial pressures, fundraising campaigns, difficult decisions, community celebrations and community crises. Through endless meetings, phone calls and conversations that most members never knew were taking place.

Steve took ownership. There is an enormous difference between having a title and taking ownership. A title tells everybody what office you hold. Ownership means that when something goes wrong at 11:30 at night, you assume it is your problem.

Steve did that.

There were times during the past seven years when I would raise an idea with him — sometimes a perfectly sensible idea, sometimes perhaps slightly less so — I do that from time to time — and rather than respond with the traditional institutional phrase, “That sounds very interesting; perhaps we should form a committee,” Steve would ask: “Okay. How do we get it done?”

That is leadership.

Steve’s positive can-do attitude has meant a great deal to me. A rabbi and a shul president do not always have an easy relationship. There are shuls where the president thinks his principal function is to control the rabbi, and rabbis who think the president’s principal function is to agree with the rabbi. Neither arrangement generally ends well.

Steve and I developed something far more valuable: a genuine partnership and, beyond that, a deep friendship.

Don’t get me wrong: We have disagreed. We have debated. We have navigated difficult moments. But I always knew that Steve was motivated by one overriding concern: what is best for this community? He believed in me, supported me, gave me room to lead, and helped turn ideas into reality.

And our shul is stronger because of it. More vibrant. More stable. More ambitious. More confident about its future.

So that’s the connection to Bereishit. There is a temptation when you have poured yourself into something to begin believing that it cannot survive without you.

Sometimes that temptation is even disguised as responsibility.

“I would love to step aside, but who will do it if I don’t?”

“I’m happy to hand it over, but nobody understands it the way I understand it.”

“I’ll leave eventually — just not yet.”

And suddenly voluntary service becomes ownership.

Bereishit rejects that idea at the very beginning of the Torah. God creates the world — and then steps back from creating it.

Not because He no longer cares about it. Quite the opposite. The act of stepping back allows the world to exist independently, and allows human beings to become responsible for what happens next.

The greatest creator is not the one whose creation can never function without him.

The greatest creator is the one who builds something capable of continuing.

That is why Washington’s resignation was so important. America was not supposed to become Washington’s personal possession. If the new country depended forever on the man who had brought it into existence, then the revolution had failed. Its future depended on his willingness to hand responsibility to somebody else.

And that is true of every healthy institution.

A shul must always be bigger than its rabbi.

It must always be bigger than its president.

People serve. They build. They carry responsibility. They leave their mark. And then, at the right moment, they hand the work forward.

Which is why Steve stepping down is not an ending. It is a sign that the past seven years succeeded. Stepping down is not stepping away.

It is also important for me to acknowledge his wife Chavi — because nobody serves seven years as president of a shul alone. Every late meeting, every interrupted evening, every phone call that had to be taken, every crisis that somehow became urgent just as dinner was being served — somebody else paid part of that price.

Chavi’s support made Steve’s service possible, and our gratitude belongs to her as well.

Bereishit begins with the creation of the world. But strangely enough, the first complete thing God teaches us is not how to start. It is how to finish.

וַיְכַל אֱלֹקִים — God finished the work.

George Washington said: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action.”

Steve, after seven remarkable years, has finished this particular assignment.

The work of our shul, thank God, is nowhere near finished, and it will go on at full throttle.

But in the meantime: Steve — thank you for seven years of dedication, judgment, generosity, loyalty, friendship and heart. Thank you for showing up when it mattered, particularly when nobody else knew it mattered. Thank you for building something strong enough to hand forward.

The Torah begins again on Shabbat Bereishit.

And so do we.