חדש באתר: עוזר בינה מלאכותית המבוסס על כתביו ושיעוריו של הרב מיכאל אברהם

Q&A: I Pulled a Trick on Myself (Unintentionally)

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Originally published:
This is an English translation (via GPT-5.4). Read the original Hebrew version.

I Pulled a Trick on Myself (Unintentionally)

Question

I played a trick on myself.
I read a story about a certain rabbi (during the period of his training for the rabbinate). In my eyes, that rabbi was indeed an enormous Torah scholar. But his value system and moral world are not impressive. And of course that comes through strongly in his sermons and in the books they published after his death.
As I read, I found myself commenting to myself on certain flaws I was noticing along the way in his personality. And that also comes through clearly from the story.
Later it describes how he went, with his knowledge, to study at a university, and that didn’t really fit for me with his narrow world…
Looking again, I noticed that I had swapped American Rabbi A for American Rabbi B (a learned Torah scholar, educated and broad-minded, though also not perfect at all).
Afterward, the story softened and took a more human and more humble turn, and above all my attitude toward the story softened.
A central component here is not only the story itself, but the personality and my point of view regarding that personality.
Is something wrong with my power of judgment?

Answer

Something is wrong with all of our powers of judgment, but in your case it דווקא seems less so, because at least at some stage you noticed it and are trying to examine and correct it. See the latest column (488) about the Mizrahi singer (and even more so the talkbacks that followed it) regarding the biases in our judgment.

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