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February 13, 2012
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Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
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Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
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Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
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Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
January 18, 2012
January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
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January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
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January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
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Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
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January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
April 27, 2005
/ 18 Nissan, 5765
A Yalie on his knees
By
Jonathan Rosenblum
Reflections on what matters most
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
A few years back, my wife came upon me scuttling about the kitchen on my hands and knees before Passover vigorously attacking the floorboards in an effort to remove the encrustration of several months. "Did you ever imagine yourself doing this when you were in Yale Law School?" she asked.
Her question caught me off guard. Though I happen to delight in this particular activity, as I watch the transformation of the kitchen under my ministrations, I had to admit that cleaning floorboards had not been part of my career plan when I graduated.
On a deeper level my wife's question set off a sort of reverie, as I contemplated the enormous changes in my life in the last two decades.
Despite my share of prizes and honors in law school, today I lead my classmates in only two categories — least money earned since graduation and most children. The fame and fortune that I once assumed awaited me as a matter of course have somehow eluded me.
My law professors included many of the finest legal minds in America. I admired virtually every one of them — this one for his sharp wit, another for his civil rights work in Mississippi in the early '60s, yet another for his ability to force us, with his gentle prodding questions, to think harder that we had imagined ourselves capable.
And yet I never thought of any of them as a model for what a human life could be. I admired individual traits, not the whole individual. Had I asked myself then what I found lacking, I could not have answered, for I had never yet seen the quality that I sensed was missing. That would not come until years later when I was first privileged to be in the presence of a Torah scholar.
That elusive quality, which I could not even describe, but which I found lacking in everyone I knew (most of all myself), I would now call integrity.
By integrity I do not mean the usual dictionary definition of honesty. Rather I mean the quality of living a life that is integral, of a piece — a life not characterized by the familiar modern dichotomies of work and play, work and family, public morality and private morality. That quality can only come from one source: the knowledge that all life, whether we are in solitude or among a multitude, is lived in front of G-d.
Not for us Emerson's dictum — "A false consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Any lack of consistency in our lives reflects a failure to "set G-d before me, always."
I had many friends in law school — friends with whom I enjoyed discussing both ideas and trivia (often within such a short space of time that I now wonder whether the ideas were not just another form of trivia.) Though these friends had emerged victorious in what is arguably America's most rigorous academic selection process, and many possessed gifts that seemed to me truly formidable, I never envied them or thought to myself, "When will I reach their level?"
In part, I suppose, this was because few of us had yet done anything, though this in no way diminished our confidence in our innate superiority, both intellectual and moral. We started with the assumption that we were among the world's elite. Law school was just to provide us with the tools to force the fools and wicked of the world to conform to our vision of right and wrong.
There is no time today to maintain the number of friendships of those years. Yet I know many people, contemporaries and those much younger, of whom I am in awe, people whose very presence makes me acutely aware of my many failures. And I am not talking about well-known scholars or tzadikim (saints).
The awe that those friends inspire has nothing to do with their superior minds (though many possess such minds.) I have finally learned that G-d's gifts do not confer merit. They are just that — gifts — to be judged by what we do with them. Two qualities stand out about those I'm referring to: self-sacrifice and humility.
I will never forget a former study partner from Jerusalem's Mirrer Yeshiva rabbinical school. Only two months from completing his master's degree in classics at Oxford, he was advised by the greatest Torah leader of the generation to return to Oxford. But he could not. "My soul thirsts only for Torah," he explained.
In his youth, he had garnered just about every prize one could receive for intellectual brilliance. Yet after 16 years of learning day and night, he still humbled himself before his teachers and chased after them with the same eagerness he had shown as a rank beginner. Graduates of the world's elite universities, full of their own importance, were often sent to talk to him. They came away humbled. Not by his brilliance, but by his distance from all their obsessive self-ranking.
Sensing how little he thought of himself, they were ashamed to think so highly of themselves.
They had never before met a contemporary they could truly look up to. For the first time, they were forced to acknowledge someone who through his discipline, sacrifice and genuine concern for others had raised himself to a qualitatively different level of being. His example alone brought many to a life of Torah and mitzvos (fulfilling religious duties).
The reverie triggered by my wife's question is over and I ask myself: Any regrets about the path not taken? Well, there is still a momentary twinge when I read about a friend who has just been appointed Solicitor General of the United States or that some fellow a few classes ahead is president. But that usually lasts no longer than it takes the next child to walk through the door.
And I bet Bill doesn't get to do floorboards.
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JWR contributor Jonathan Rosenblum is Israeli director of Am Echad. Click here to comment on this column.
© 2005, Jonathan Rosenblum
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