What’s Special About Great Rabbis?

Skepticism is the norm, so when a scholar earns near-universal respect up close, it’s not spin.

Q. What’s Special About Great Rabbis?

We Jews are naturally skeptical (“stiff-necked”), so that when you do find someone who is genuinely respected in learning and ethics by those who know them personally, it is extremely well-deserved. In the yeshiva world, there is no room, nor tolerance, for fakers. Scholars scorn and simply won’t attend the lessons of somebody unqualified, who received a position through “protekzia” or P.R. Everybody in your yeshiva knows you up close for years, and slowly but surely, only those “naturally selected”, are asked to teach, the more capable eventually rising to become the prominent and historical figures. Their every lecture, action and decision, are constantly scrutinized and questioned by tens, then hundreds, and then thousands, and only the truly great “make it”. How much more so this was the case in previous generations, when all of the Jewish Einsteins were not Nobel Prize laureates, but rather directed to the yeshiva and dedicated their genius to Torah, true status among Jews. Recent examples like Rav Kook, Rav Aryeh Levin, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach and Rav Mordechai Eliahu were easily accessible and their righteousness transparent to all, while historically, the Rambam, Rabbenu Tam and Maharal et al , have virtues clear to anyone who learned their works in depth. [It should be noted that although some opposed Rav Kook’s cooperation with Zionism, all of the great rabbis of his time respected his Torah genius and his sterling character traits.]