THE REALITIES OF LEADERSHIP

I want to pick up on a theme brought up by Douglas Murray when he spoke at our synagogue in Beverly Hills this past Thursday night, something I believe is incredibly important—and very timely.

Douglas pointed to what seems like a never-ending human compulsion: the need to criticize leaders, to find fault, to poke holes, even when they’ve achieved extraordinary things. No accomplishment is ever enough. No record is safe. No gratitude lasts more than five minutes.

Just look at what’s happened in recent days.

Bibi Netanyahu, after more than 15 years of warning the world about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, finally saw his vision realized. Last week, B-2 bombers carried out one of the most daring and successful military operations in modern history, taking out Iran’s nuclear infrastructure with surgical precision.

It wasn’t just a tactical win—it was the culmination of years of political, military, and diplomatic preparation. But the knives are still out. The trial to convict him of corruption—for accepting cigars and champagne—is still being pursued. His rivals in politics and in the media are still out to get him, finding fault in anything and everything.

Or take Donald Trump. Whatever one thinks of his style—and yes, it’s definitely polarizing—the facts on the ground speak for themselves. The southern border is quieter than it’s been in years. This week, China blinked—for the first time ever. And the Middle East’s most dangerous actors—Hamas, Hezbollah, Syria, and now Iran—are all reeling.

It was Trump, in coordination with Netanyahu, who gave the green light for the B-2 strike. But none of that seems to matter.

This week, CNN and the New York Times managed to find a leaker who claimed there’s uncertainty about how much damage the bunker-buster bombs actually caused at Fordo, and raised questions about where Iran’s enriched uranium might be. Really?

Douglas Murray’s point was clear: we live in a culture where results don’t matter—the only thing that’s important is to criticize. Achievement is forgotten immediately—if it’s even acknowledged at all. And as he said Thursday night, this instinct to tear down our leaders isn’t just wrong—it’s corrosive.

I want to bring in Parshat Korach. Because there are lessons to be learned here that go beyond the obvious takeaway—that Korach was a bad man who rebelled against God’s chosen leader.

I’m going to sum it up by quoting Voltaire: “Perfection is the enemy of the good.”

We live in a world where people expect perfection, and anything less gets discarded. But that’s not idealism—it’s delusion. It sets the bar at divine, and punishes anyone who dares to be merely human.

Korach’s rebellion didn’t come out of nowhere. The Ramban tells us the seeds were planted much earlier. Korach was angry. Jealous. Envious. Bitter. He felt slighted when Moshe appointed Elitzafan ben Uziel—a younger cousin—as the leader of the Kehat family, to which he belonged. Korach believed that this role belonged to him. But he didn’t act on it right away. He waited.

Why? Because Moshe was too popular. Why was he popular? Because he was the perfect leader.

He had led the people out of Egypt, split the sea, brought them the Torah, and even secured forgiveness after the sin of the Golden Calf—a total reprieve. The people loved him. The Ramban writes that anyone who dared to challenge Moshe would have been stoned by the people themselves. So Korach waited. He bided his time. Watching and listening.

And then came the disaster of the meraglim—the spies—and the devastating decree that the Exodus generation would die in the wilderness. Suddenly, the people were shaken. Disillusioned. And most importantly—they were confused. Why hadn’t Moshe prayed harder? Why hadn’t he reversed the decree? He had let them down. So Korach pounced.

What the people didn’t realize was—Moshe had prayed. In fact, he had prayed with all his heart. And God had listened—to a degree. Instead of wiping the people out entirely and starting over with Moshe’s descendants, God allowed the people to live out their lives and let their children enter the land.

It wasn’t nothing—it was a tremendous mercy. But the people didn’t see it that way. All they saw was that Moshe hadn’t “saved them” this time. So, they turned.

But, as Leo Tolstoy said, “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” Looking for perfection is a trap. When we demand perfection from our leaders, we set ourselves up for perpetual disappointment. Moshe Rabbeinu had given them everything. And yet, at the first sign that he wasn’t perfect, they turned against him.

And we do this all the time. A leader gets 95% right, but we obsess over the 5% they didn’t get perfect. We forget the good and focus on the bad. We ignore the results and hold them to impossible standards, and when they inevitably fall short of divine perfection, we accuse them of betrayal.

But here’s the truth: only God is perfect. הצור תמים פעלו—“The Rock, His work is perfect.” Not Moshe. Not King David. Not your rabbi. Not your prime minister. Not your president.

And the damage this mindset causes goes far beyond politics. When the people turned on Moshe, it wasn’t just a lapse in judgment. It was a collapse of something more basic—hakarat hatov. Gratitude. Appreciation. Perspective.

As Simon Sinek, the bestselling author and leadership thinker, puts it: “The best leaders make mistakes. That’s how they learn. The worst leaders pretend they don’t.”

We have to stop judging our leaders by whether they’ve made mistakes—because they will. Inevitably. The question isn’t if they’ll fall short. The question is: when they fall short, how will we respond?

Parshat Korach doesn’t only teach us about rebellion. It teaches us about unreasonable expectations, about the fragility of public memory, and about the danger of forgetting what our leaders have done for us.

So what’s the takeaway?

Stop looking for perfect leaders. They don’t exist.

Stop waiting for someone who will never disappoint you. That person will never arrive.

Instead, look for people who serve. Who sacrifice. Who step into the arena and take the blows on our behalf.

Look for those who are trying their best—even when their best isn’t perfect in our judgment.

And above all: let’s be grateful. Gratitude isn’t merely a virtue—it’s a shield. It protects us from bitterness. From cynicism. And from the seduction of Korach-style resentment.

Because if we lose that sense of gratitude—if we forget the good people have done for us just because they couldn’t do everything—we don’t just lose our leaders. We lose our way.