Leadership has become one of the key buzzwords in contemporary business, politics and organizations of every type, including the nonprofit, educational and public administration sectors. While modern leadership theorists suggest various models, traits and approaches to leadership behavior that purport novelty, as Ecclesiastes famously reports, “There is nothing new beneath the sun!” The truth is that, while current leadership and management vocabulary might differ from the Torah, many of the notions advocated by contemporary leadership theorists appear to emulate major behaviors, traits, functions, experiences and actions ascribed to Moses in the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

Few might think of Moses as a leader, or even a manager, in the contemporary sense, but Moses— among the most significant leaders to emerge in Western civilization— is arguably the quintessential example of leadership from whom much can be learned by people entering, and occupying, leadership positions.

Moses, asserts Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, is “the preeminent figure of the Hebrew Bible” about whom we have considerable biographical details because we are told how he met his wife, Tzipporah, and we know the names of his two sons, Gershom and Eliezer, as well as of his father, Amram; his mother, Jochebed; his brother, Aaron; and his sister, Miriam. We even know the story of a certain amount of animosity that his older siblings, Miriam and Aaron, felt toward him at one point in the desert wanderings. Such ill will has even led some biblical scholars to mark this point as the beginning of the end of Moses’ leadership. Beyond familial jealousy, however, what we know best about Moses are his leadership qualities, tactics, even errors of judgment, which are amply described in the pages of the Bible.

Indeed, Moses’ life and career as a leader are outlined in detail in the Torah, or the Five Books of Moses as the first books of the Hebrew Bible are widely known. He rises to prominence in the second book, Exodus, but his presence is very much evident in the subsequent books of the Torah— Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy— and referenced in later books of the Tanakh, such as in the Book of Joshua, which refers back to particular incidents connected to Moses and his leadership of the Israelites.