When I became a father for the first time, like many men, I had no idea what I was doing. Short of helping create an actual human being, I had no real understanding of how to care for that life. I relied on instinct, love, anxiety, and whatever competence I could gather in the moment. But it takes time to grow into fatherhood. And while the title “father” has always been associated with masculinity, I am not sure that the actual work of being a father begins with masculinity at all. It begins with need. And somehow the dependence starts to change you. That is part of what makes Moses so interesting.

The Torah gives Moses many roles. He is a: prophet, teacher, liberator, lawgiver, and reluctant leader. He confronts Pharaoh, brings Israel through the sea, climbs Sinai to receive Torah-twice! And carries a nation of people who complain, panic, regress, and test him almost every step of the way. He is also a father to Gershom and Eliezer. And yet the Torah shows almost no interest in Moses’ fatherhood as a lived relationship. The few scenes involving his sons are remarkably passive: they are named, placed on a donkey, circumcised by Zipporah, and later returned to him by Jethro. We are not shown Moses raising them, comforting them, instructing them, or even greeting them. So when Moses, in book of Numbers, chapter 11, suddenly describes his leadership through the language of pregnancy, birth, nursing, and carrying an infant, the image lands with unexpected force.

In this week’s Torah reading, Moses reaches for a different image of himself. Exhausted by the Israelites’ rejection of manna and their demand for meat, he turns to God and asks: “Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do You tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant?” (Numbers 11:12).

That is not the usual language of male leadership that usually involves commands and sports imagery. It is the language of pregnancy, birth, nursing, holding, feeding, and carrying. Moses, the greatest male leader in the Torah, suddenly sounds like someone whose leadership has become maternal in function, if........

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