Va'eira

The Rambam writes that the tribe of Levi were the ones originally selected to be the teachers & leaders of the Jewish people. The Kohanim were the ones who were going to lead the people in serving 'ה.

Why them? Wouldn't it make more sense to take the best people from each shevet to be leaders?

Last week, the Torah portion stated that because they didn't force the Jews to fill their quota, the Jewish supervisors got hit from the Egyptian taskmasters. Rashi explained that as payback for their taking the punishment for their brothers, they were chosen to be the Sanhedrin, the judges of the highest court in the land.

Here, too, one could ask how does that qualify them to become the Sanhedrin? Shouldn't the most qualified, scrupulous people be chosen?

The של"ה asks, when the posuk starts to tell us the lineage of Moshe, it starts with  ראובן & proceeds אלה ראשי בית אבותם, בני ראובן , these are the heads of the families of  ראובן, & goes on to enumerate the families of  ראובן &  שמעון. However, when it comes to Levi, it says ואלה שמות בני לוי , these are the names of the sons of Levi.
Why by Levi does it stress the names?

He answers that Levi knew that his family wouldn't be subjugated to the slavery as were the rest of the Jews; yet he wanted to still share in his brothers’ pain, so he named his children after different aspects of the slavery. גרשון , to allude to the fact that we were strangers, not in our own land; קהת , that the torture was like grinding teeth on cement; מררי , that they embittered our lives. Therefore it says  ואלה שמות בני לוי , These are the names of the children of Levi, to stress that the names teach us that even if one is not in a painful situation whereas others are, one must feel his brother’s pain.  

Maybe this is what makes a leader, one who feels the pain of the people, one who will get beaten so his fellow Jew won't.  Perhaps this is the reason that shevet Levi became the leaders; while they didn't have to do the work, this concept was instilled in them from their inception & they felt the pain of their brothers, thereby qualifying them to lead. So, too, the Jewish supervisors who didn't push the Jews & even took a beating for them. Those are the kind of people we need as leaders; ones who feel for the other person. That's what it means to be a leader: one who is נושא בעול עם חברו one who really takes to heart another person’s pain.  

This is highlighted by the story told about the חפץ חיים  who really felt the pain of another Jew. During the first world war, the חפץ חיים was constantly worrying about the Jewish communities in the path of the war. Once, in the middle of the night, the חפץ חיים's wife got up & noticed that the חפץ חיים wasn't in his bed. She got up, went looking for him & found him lying on a hard wooden bench with his head on his arm. She asked him, “why would you leave your comfortable bed & go sleep on a hard bench?” He answered her, “how could I when there are Jewish boys in foxholes on the battlefront with death facing them every moment. They’re cold & hungry & you want me to sleep in a comfortable bed??