Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Better Left to the Imagination

     Though I admire some people for their talents I would prefer not to meet them in person. Often those one looks up to do not measure up to one's admiration. They may be talented in some areas but they are still flawed mortals. This is not limited to the media. Long ago I met a rabbi who wrote books that I had really enjoyed at the time. When I met him I realized that he was a mere human. I suppose on the one hand that was good . One can be a mere human but aspire to much. At the time it just disappointed me. It should not have detracted from the greatness of his works, but it had. I would have preferred to have met him at a book event or a somewhere else where he was speaking so I could have just seen the smoke and mirrors and not seen the shlemiel he really was. Some things are better left to the imagination.

3 comments:

Lost and Found said...

Interesting take. I think you should try and view it in the exact opposite way. Here you have some regular guy who managed to write such a great book.

I had a rebbi who I respected immensely and thought he knew everything. I asked him a question once on a gemara that I knew he had to have seen dozens of time, if not more. He couldn't answer what I thought was a basic question. At the time, I was quite bothered by it and the respect I had for him was lowered a bunch. Years later I realized that, yes, he's human too, just like me. He's not perfect and has a flawed memory like everyone else on the planet.

Learning a flaw of someone's isn't a reason to lose respect for them. On the contrary, I think it makes them more relatable and allows us to see what they achieved as something that we can do too

May I ask what you saw that made you think of him as a shlemiel?

frum single female said...

LAF - ultimately you are correct however, i still prefer not to have met this particular rabbi. He was not a bad person but i was invited for a shabbos meal at his house and his wife kept nagging at him. He seemed like such a meek person with such a nasty wife. I guess I felt sorry for him and wished his life had been more idyllic. I guess its more encouraging to the average person to realize average people can achieve greatness even though they are disrespected by their spouses but there really is part of me that wishes I hadn't seen that side to him.

Lost and Found said...

Ah, ok. Ouch. That makes it a lot easier to understand. There are some things we really don't want to know- that's definitely one of them. But in a sense, it speaks to his middos (to some extent) that he puts up with it.

Then again, that's something I wouldn't want to know about anyone, not necessarily a rabbi.

But I am in agreement with you. That's tough to see.