Angels as Human Beings: On Hanoch Daum's The Hidden Rabbi (Column 90)

With God's help

A few weeks ago I read Hanoch Daum's book, The Hidden Rabbi. I liked the book very much, not necessarily on the literary plane but in terms of its content. I especially enjoyed the presentation of the revered Rabbi Neria Gross, the protagonist of the book, as a flesh-and-blood human being. We have a tendency to present (and perhaps also to see) rabbis and great Torah scholars as angels, in the spirit of The earlier authorities were like angels. Daum presents his rabbi as angels as human beings.[1] A man full of urges and hesitations, failures and recoveries, insecurities and problems. A human being like any other. I thought that before Rosh Hashanah this is a good time to reflect a bit on our humanity and our weaknesses, and on their meaning.

Technical aspects

It seems to me that nowadays many people would specifically identify with such a human figure, one who also has emotions and drives and is not pure intellect and pure values. A person who is hurt and sometimes acts wrongly, and even regrets what he did or said. Readers with more mature literary tastes also look for antiheroes, and certainly more than for cardboard heroes. People who rise and fall, who feel and struggle. Characters who have emotions and weaknesses. Those who do not always know what the right thing to do is, and do not always land on their feet.

Some would say that there is value in the hagiography of great people, because it helps present them as exemplary figures and role models. Others object and argue that a hagiographic presentation actually does harm, because it distances the person in question from us ordinary mortals, and in effect hints to us that we have no chance of reaching his lofty level. If Even by his deeds a youth makes himself known, as every Sorasky book begins, then what chance do I, an ordinary mortal, have of completing the Talmud at age two, the Jerusalem Talmud at age three, and at age five having my teacher tell my parents that he has nothing to teach me? What do I have to do with such heavenly angels? Moses our Master was born, and with his birth the radiance of his face was already shining. As far as I know, that did not happen in my case, so what do they want from me?!

For my own part, however, I do not reject the educational value of hagiography. As someone who was addicted to Sorasky books and knew them all by heart, they certainly left a real mark on me and did me good (whatever I later spoiled was entirely my own fault). I lived surrounded by majestic figures: R. Elchanan Wasserman, R. Shimon Shkop, R. Chaim of Brisk, the Chazon Ish, Rabbi Chaim Ozer, the Chafetz Chaim, and others, who for me were like family members. I knew by heart all their life stories, their connections to one another, their students, and the details of their surroundings. It is no wonder that all this left its mark on me.

What does this say about us?

I for one do not want to enter here into technical considerations—neither literary ones (with whom we identify more) nor utilitarian ones (what is more educationally useful), because they are peripheral to the discussion. The main question is what is true: do heavenly angels really walk among us? It may sound rather banal to many of us to claim that even the greatest rabbis occasionally suffer from urges, heretical and sinful thoughts, but there are quite a few people who are not really prepared to believe this. For them, the rabbi is a perfect person. Maybe he does not know everything (though he certainly knows most of it), but there is no doubt that he has no sinful thoughts, no urges, and no thoughts of doubt or heresy. And all the more so with regard to the patriarchs and the heroes of the Bible, and likewise with regard to the Sages and the medieval authorities. There it is customary to present them as angels dressed as human beings, even though it is quite clear to me that they were human beings just like me and you.

When we grow up, we will likely come to the realization that there is indeed no perfect person, nor any person without weaknesses, urges, and doubts. A rabbi without thoughts of heresy or sin is no rabbi. Without sinful thoughts, because that is not human (an angel is unfit to serve as a rabbi), and without heretical thoughts, because he is an idiot (and an idiot too is unfit to serve as a rabbi). Education based on lies, even if it is useful, is problematic (see Column 21 on holy lies).

This gloomy conclusion can lead us to one of two states: 1. to stop being impressed by great people. 2. to deny these insights and insist on continuing to tell ourselves that these are heavenly seraphs, unlike ordinary human beings (for otherwise what will remain of my religious commitment, my commitment to Jewish law, and my faith in the Sages). Option 2 is burying one's head in the sand. Option 1, which remains, does indeed teach us that it is not right to view people as perfect. One should not idolize anyone, nor assume of any person that he does not err, does not sin, and does not act from ulterior motives. It is important and right to be clear-eyed.

What I want to argue here is not that. It is obvious that rabbis and great people have urges and doubts. That is trivial. What I mean to argue here is something about us, and not only about them. We must not allow this simple insight to neutralize our admiration for these figures and our appreciation of them. Appreciation of a person should not be built on perfection, but on proper human conduct. A person of virtue is not someone without doubts and urges, but someone who conducts himself properly—or at least tries to conduct himself properly—despite his doubts and urges. Such a person can even be considered perfect (what the author of the Tanya calls a beinoni). And what about a person who fails because of urge or doubt? He is of course not perfect, since he failed, but if he repents and rises again, he can become—or return to being—such a person. And even if he fails and does not repent, he is certainly not perfect, but he can still be a person of virtue, and that is no less worthy of appreciation.

In other words, my goal here is to turn the whole picture on its head. It is not right to repress what we all understand—that there is no human being without urges and doubts. But nowadays that is already banal. My claim is that by the same token it is also not right to give up, because of those urges and doubts, our appreciation for such a person. Great human beings are not free of doubts and urges. On the contrary: their greatness lies precisely in the fact that they are human beings with urges and doubts, and nevertheless they conduct themselves properly. And if they did not conduct themselves properly, they know how to rise, recover, and deal courageously with their weaknesses. Angels are not great. They may be perfect, but that perfection has no value. They are that way simply because that is what they are. The same is true of the patriarchs, the Sages, and the medieval authorities. All of these were human beings, who erred and sinned, and acted from ulterior motives, and I do not accept the claim that their sins were minute hair-splittings beyond our reach. And yet, perhaps because of that, our appreciation for them need not be harmed. The thought that in order to create appreciation for a person one must depict him as perfect assumes a distorted understanding of reality. If we change our understanding and realize that a person who is not perfect can still deserve great appreciation, there will be no need for hagiographies and fictional stories of this sort. That may sound trivial to you, but from the way many of us relate to these matters it emerges that it is really not trivial at all—not with respect to the great figures in our history, on whose perfection we were all raised, and not with respect to our evaluations of contemporary figures, as we shall see below.

Back to the book

In Daum's book we read about Rabbi Neria Gross, who has been widowed from his beloved wife and is left with an only son, Noam. At a certain stage he falls in love with his former student. They apparently did not do anything forbidden, and yet there are flirtations there and problematic romantic feelings. Rabbi Gross is aware of this, but allows himself to continue meeting that former student in clearly romantic contexts. Forum "Tikkun" (of which he himself had been a member) calls him in for a searching inquiry, but he argues that he has such an orientation and one cannot blame him for orientations. First, because Jewish law does not forbid the orientation but the act. Would we ever imagine summoning for inquiry a rabbi who has an urge to speak slander, to steal, or to desecrate the Sabbath? But beyond that, even if he actually did speak slander, no one would think of summoning him for inquiry. People sometimes fall, and that certainly does not disqualify them from any office. So why is a same-sex orientation, even if it was realized in practice (in which case there is of course a violation of Jewish law), grounds for inquiry by the forum, or for removal from a position or rabbinic office (head of a yeshiva or rabbi of a settlement/community)? Even if Rabbi Gross had actually failed in a truly forbidden act, is there not There is no righteous person on earth who does not sin? Does one summon a rabbi for inquiry over every sin he has committed? If a rabbi failed in Sabbath desecration, should we summon him for inquiry?

So what is the role of Forum "Tikkun"? Is it superfluous? When a rabbi becomes involved with his student (in the book it is a former student who is already an adult), he is exploiting relations of authority, and therefore there is room to conduct an inquiry and examine whether he should remain in office. But this inquiry is not conducted because of the prohibition under Jewish law, for there is nothing here more severe than consensual relations with an unrelated male or any other sin. The forum's role is to investigate the element of exploitation (that is, the legal-moral aspect), not the prohibition under Jewish law. Forum "Tikkun" does not deal with Jewish law but with civil law. Its role is to assist, and sometimes to substitute for, investigative and judicial bodies because of the special sensitivities of religious society. Think of Forum "Takana" (the analogue of Forum "Tikkun" in the book): few of us notice that in fact it has no religious role grounded in Jewish law, and it does not deal with those aspects. Its role is to assist the legal authorities and to remedy social and human wrongs. Jewish law is not its concern.

The upshot for our purposes

These claims bring into very sharp focus the fact that rabbis are people like anyone else. Everyone has urges and doubts, and even if we knew about them, that would be no grounds for inquiry or condemnation, or even for a reduction in our esteem for them. The existence of urges, and even an actual sinful failure, are not reasons for removal from office, nor do they show the person to be unworthy of his role. The question is not what a person suffers from, but what he does with these things. Does he struggle? Does he refuse to let them interfere with his functioning? What does he do if he fails?

The important point is that not only does the Holy One, blessed be He, not assume perfection in a great person, but neither are we supposed to do so. Is a rabbi with a same-sex orientation worthy of less appreciation? When something like that becomes known to us, should we expect him to resign, or dismiss him? Is it now wrong to ask him questions? In my opinion, as long as it does not actually interfere with his functioning, absolutely not. The same applies to a rabbi with kleptomaniac tendencies or any other evil inclination. Admittedly, when he has doubts and that leads him to heretical conclusions or to a slackening of faith that may affect his functioning—then that is grounds for removal or dismissal (but certainly not for a decline in our appreciation of him). Let each of us examine himself: is the insight above—that failure does not diminish our appreciation of a person—really as trivial as it may seem?

A note on rabbis' quarrels

Once I accompanied a newly observant man at the beginning of his path, and he asked me why rabbis are always involved in quarrels and are unwilling to grant legitimacy to other opinions. I told him that people joke about this and cite the saying of the Sages, Torah scholars increase peace in the world, meaning that they multiply peace agreements—because of all the wars. Just as, if I may borrow a secular example, Yasser Arafat was the world champion in peace agreements.

But on the substance of the matter I told him that peace and acceptance of the other can also stem from lack of faith in the justice of one's way. There is no great wisdom in living peacefully with everyone out of the absence of a position or a lack of values. If I am a skeptic, then I have no problem accepting everyone. The question is how I behave when I do have positions of my own, that is, when I believe in them and reject their opposite. In such a case it is likely that I will come to wars and quarrels, and sometimes even where that is not appropriate, and in inappropriate forms. Those quarrels too can be viewed charitably, for at least one sees here people to whom their values matter and who are prepared to fight for them. I referred him to the well-known letter of the Chazon Ish in praise of extremism and against compromising mediocrity. Extremists can sometimes be very annoying and rather foolish, and yet at least some of them deserve appreciation for their relation to their values.

The meaning of this is that on the one hand, not every quarrel of a great person is justified, but by the same token even an unjustified quarrel does not require us to stop appreciating him. He is a human being, and as such he can of course fail, but at least he fails in struggle because of values and for their sake. These are exactly the same two facets mentioned above.

The righteous as human beings

The author of the Tanya writes that a beinoni is someone who does not sin but still has an evil inclination, while a righteous person is one who has completely slaughtered his evil inclination. This is a view of a utopian human being who probably does not really exist. I want to argue that even someone who has an evil inclination can be righteous, and perhaps only he can be righteous (because human beings, as such, always have an inclination), but more than that—even someone who fails can be righteous. Righteousness is a human condition, and human beings always have an inclination and always also fail (even Moses our Master failed). In Column 29 I discussed a complex evaluation of people, and I mentioned there something a Swiss mathematician with whom I spoke once said to me: that he very much loves and appreciates the Hebrew Bible's attitude toward its heroes, presenting them as flesh-and-blood human beings who fail and rise again, unlike other ancient myths that present their heroes as angels. It is not always important to ask whether a given person has urges, or whether he failed, or even whether he repented. No less important are why he failed, how he did it, and how he deals with it.

In Chaim Grade's books, Tsemah Atlas and Milhemet HaYetzer, he sets side by side the figures of the young and stormy Novardok yeshiva head, Tsemah Atlas, and opposite him Abraham the Visionary (who, as is known, is a literary name for the Chazon Ish). To understand the story, one needs to know the background. The Haskalah movement harmed many young people, who abandoned their faith and their religious commitment. The Alter of Novardok, who wanted to cope with this phenomenon, sent his young men to establish yeshivot for younger youth in villages. Such a yeshiva head was a young man of about twenty, who gathered children and young adolescents around him and taught and educated them toward faith and Torah commitment. Novardok gave its students a very wild and unconventional education that placed sincerity and integrity at the top, and educated them to disdain public opinion so as not to let it influence one's decisions. When a young man who has received such an education becomes responsible for children and youth, it is no wonder that problematic things can occur.

This Tsemah Atlas set up such a yeshiva in the village of Volkenik. He is described in the book as a person consumed by doubts and urges. His way of coping with them is to educate his students in an extreme and stormy manner, without compromising with any thought of heresy or doubt, and with no urge whatsoever. He launches a jihad against every glimmer of doubt or forbidden thought. Against this background he throws Chaimke (that is, the author, Chaim Grade) out of his yeshiva, and as a result Chaimke ends up in the hut of Abraham the Visionary, who was vacationing in that village. Abraham the Visionary, according to the description there, is the antithesis of Tsemah Atlas—harmonious and settled in mind. He is ready to hear every question and every opinion, and he deals with them calmly and serenely. Grade's portrayal of the Chazon Ish in his book (Grade later abandoned his religious commitment and the religious world) is an extraordinarily impressive ethical treatise, much more so than all the hagiographic books I have read about him.

Ever since reading those books, I have been accompanied by the feeling that a person's extremism usually reflects a war he is waging with himself—that is, with things inside him that bother and trouble him. People who are at peace with themselves and with their path usually conduct themselves calmly. They can be extreme in their worldview (and the Chazon Ish certainly was), but their relation to people and to other opinions is calm, not stormy.

But here I want to point to another aspect, perhaps even the opposite one. That same Tsemah Atlas, who was troubled by thoughts and urges, is not guilty of that. He is a human being like any other, and by nature thoughts and urges accompany him. One should not judge him for having doubts or thoughts, because that is human nature. To his credit, it should be said that he tries to cope with them. True, he does so in a problematic way, and sometimes he harms his students, but that is what genuinely seems right to him. He acts according to the best of his understanding, and for values in which he truly believes. Is he not worthy of appreciation for that? He is a young man sent into a complex battlefield without any real tools for coping there, and this was the best he could do.

The path versus the results

We are accustomed to evaluating people by the results of their actions and by the bottom line, but it seems to me that the manner of conduct and the motivations are parameters no less important in our evaluation. Given a person's situation, the questions of how he conducts himself, what matters to him and drives him, and what he fights for are no less important for our evaluation of him than the problems he causes. Such an approach, of course, does not allow us to formulate a clear evaluation, because the criterion is complex and subjective, especially since we do not know what is in a person's heart or what exactly his motivations and aims are,[2] but at least it is important to understand that the bottom line is not a sufficiently good measure for such an evaluation. One certainly can and should criticize a person's problematic conduct, but when it comes to judging him, it is sometimes right to detach the judgment from those criticisms. This distinction finds expression on two planes: 1. the importance of the path—someone who has repented versus the wholly righteous person. 2. the importance of the motives and the circumstances—the transgressor versus the righteous person.

1. The Sages say that someone who has repented is preferable to a wholly righteous person.[3] The meaning of this is that even if, in terms of results, the person who has repented can attain at most the level of the wholly righteous person, he still has the advantage that he has repented. The path too is important for our evaluation of him. In Hasidic thought they explain in this way the rabbinic teaching about one who says I will sin and repent (Mishnah Yoma 8:9): in essence, this is a person who wants to acquire the level of someone who has repented, and so he wants deliberately to sin and repent. Rabbi Kook too, in Orot HaKodesh II (pp. 530-32), notes that one of the perfections is the very fact of our perfecting ourselves. That is, a person's worth is determined not only by the state in which he finds himself but also by his path.[4]
2. Up to this point we have dealt with someone who has repented versus the wholly righteous person. But what I mean here is something more radical. The one who has repented is someone at the very highest level, and we have seen that the path he traveled is important, not only his objective state. Here I wanted to make a claim about transgressors. Even falls and defects do not necessarily suffice for a negative judgment. Even if the person has not repented—meaning that he is still a transgressor—our evaluation of him is still not simple. The question is what he is struggling with and how he does so.

So too with the dispute concerning Noah, about whom the Torah says that he was righteous in his generations. Rashi there brings that some interpreted this disparagingly and some interpreted it favorably. Relative to his own place he was righteous, but in Abraham's generation he would not have been considered such a great righteous person. On the other hand, in a generation like his it is harder to be righteous. The meaning of this is that Noah indeed was not wholly righteous. He had shortcomings and defects, and he did not necessarily repent of them. And still, our evaluation of him need not be harmed by that. More than that, it is possible to see him as a greater righteous person than someone wholly righteous in an easier generation. Here we are no longer talking about someone who has repented, but about the correct evaluation of an imperfect person. It is not the bottom line that determines things, but the motives, the circumstances, and the way he deals with his shortcomings.

It is perhaps fitting to conclude with Maimonides' well-known words in Laws of Repentance 2:2:

What is repentance? It is that the sinner abandon his sin, remove it from his thoughts, and resolve in his heart never to do it again, as it is said: “Let the wicked forsake his way,” etc. Likewise, he must regret what has passed, as it is said: “For after I returned, I regretted it.” And the Knower of hidden things will testify concerning him that he will never return to this sin again, as it is said: “Nor will we ever again say ‘Our God’ to the work of our hands,” etc.

And people have already noted this (see, for example, Lechem Mishneh ad loc.)—that according to this criterion it will be hard to find people who have repented. Of whom can it be said that after repenting he never returned to sin? Some of Maimonides' commentators[5] wrote that this is not an assessment of the future, but an assessment of the quality and intensity of the repentance in the present. In terms of his current state, he will never return to that sin. After that it is possible that he will fall again, because a human being is a complex and not always stable creature, but our evaluation of him is according to his momentary state and intentions, not necessarily according to what he will actually do in practice. He wants the right thing, even if he will not succeed in bringing that will into practical realization.

I am sure that what I have written here sounds trivial to people, but when you examine your own attitude toward the cases I have described here (such as Rabbi Neria Gross in Daum's book, or rabbis' quarrels), you will see that this is not so. We are all human beings, greater or lesser. It is worth avoiding idolization and the attribution of perfection to people, and by the same token it is not right to deny them the appreciation they deserve because of that lack of perfection. The moment we adopt the second recommendation, there will be no need for the creation of idolization and the childish attribution of perfection that is customary among us.

[1] Simcha Raz, in his book Angels as Human Beings, actually presents human beings as angels. By contrast, The Hidden Rabbi presents angels as human beings.

[2] This is the advantage of literature, because the writer allows himself to describe the person's inner thoughts in the book, thereby providing us with a fuller and more complex picture of his conduct. That is why, especially with regard to a literary hero, one can formulate a judgmental position. With regard to a living person, this is very problematic.

[3] See the dispute in Berakhot 34b and Sanhedrin 99a, and Maimonides, Laws of Repentance 7:4.

[4] See further in my article here, which deals with the relation between process and change of state.

[5] See Mishnat Rabbi Aharon, vol. II, Homilies (p. 249), Sichot Musar (by Rabbi Chaim Shmulevitz), 5731, essay 4, and others.