by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

According to a recent poll, 31% of teenagers believe “they will be famous when they grow up.” And over 43% of teenage girls said their No. 1 career goal was “celebrity assistant.” “Just being close enough to smell the red carpet is its own reward. Anybody can become famous now. It’s like a disease.”—Ramin Setoodeh, “Fame Junkies,” Newsweek, January 22, 2007.

Everybody, it seems, wants to be famous. But, one may ask, fame for what? For the empty notoreity of waving and smiling and shimmying for a camera, or burbling some banality into a microphone so that millions can take note that you have nothing to say? Is that something to pin your dreams on?

The thinking teenager will agree that it assuredly is not. But Judaism goes farther. Even when the objective is meaningful, when fame is sought for great deeds, for excellence, circumspection is called for.

The twentieth century sage known as the Chofetz Chaim had made plans to leave his home in Poland for Eretz Yisrael. His bags were packed, travel documents and funds had been arranged, a house readied for him in Petach Tikvah, he’d even written a farewell letter. But his departure was delayed again and again for various reasons—a communal crisis requiring his attention, the illness of his wife, then of his daughter—caused the trip to be postponed.

At one point, after his wife recovered from her illness, the Chafetz Chaim renewed his plans, but this time in secret. He wanted no one but his immediate household to know. “It is possible,” he said, “that too much publicity was the factor that caused the disruption of my plans.”

Why should publicity jeopardize his plans? The Torah records that the tablets of stone on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed were smashed by Moses when, upon descending from Mount Sinai he beheld the Jews caught up in idolatrous celebration. He re-ascended the mountain, and returned with a second set of tablets 120 days later. Those remained intact for the rest of their journey through the wilderness and were taken with them into the Land of Israel.

The Midrash tells us that the first tablets were smashed because they had been given amid great sounds of proclamation, of thunder and lightning.” The second set endured because they were spared the publicity.

The Jewish people at Sinai had reached incomparable levels of spirituality. Their greatness was proclaimed for all to know. In the heavenly court, their worthiness for receiving the Torah was questioned, and they were found wanting. They had to lower their profile, call less attention to themselves, in order to receive the Torah a second time.

Inherent in every great moment is the desire to project and promote the self. Our chances of siyata di’shamaya, of heavenly assistance, depends on the purity of our intentions. Publicity, letting the world know how great we are, entails a risk.

The teaching finds expression in Jewish minhag (custom) too. When a father brings his 3 year-old son to the rebbe for his first day of Torah study, the child’s initial encounter with the holy letters of the Torah, the rebbe gives him a little bit of honey to taste. This, so the Torah experience will be forever sweet to him.

It is likewise customary to bring the child that day wrapped in a talit (prayer shawl). Some say it’s so that people won’t notice him on the way, and become jealous of his good fortune. For that is why the stone tablets had to be destroyed at Sinai, because the angels were jealous, and claimed we weren’t worthy of the Torah.

These are things to ponder on Shavuot, the festival of the giving of the Torah.

Sources: The Chofetz Chaim, The Life and Works of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan of Radin, Mesorah Publications, P. 777); Yonason Rosenblum, Rav Dessler, P. 332.

No related posts.