... The same is true with respect to modern man's capacity for authentic experience, which has been harmed by the inroads of secularism, misplaced in a fog of intellectual confusion, and undermined by the breakdown of the chain of living tradition. The Rav has not always been sanguine about the chances of communicating the lost connection to a more robust experiential past. As to the capacity to live and feel deeply, the Rav frequently relies on Torah and Halakha to provide the frame of reference within which healthy emotional responses are to be cultivated. Writing about prayer, for example, he emphasizes that petition, praise, and gratitude are not "exotic feelings available only to the religious virtuoso," but natural experiences with which we should all be familiar.²¹
Unlike the titans of past eras, who expunged virtually all traces of inner autobiography from their writing, and unlike many contemporary Gedolim, whose public posture inspires admirers to romanticize them as a "race apart," immune to the vicissitudes of the human condition, the Rav—reticent Brisker though he may be—has painfully and democratically breached the wall of private solemnity. He has acknowledged the vulnerability that he shares with all men: loneliness, grief, fear of death, old age with its attendant indignities, the delights of creativity, and the anxiety of remorse, to mention a few of his recurrent themes. He has struggled to evoke, and provoke in his audience, the sense of "radical crisis and sheer reality" that nourishes the passionate spiritual life.
Once again, one may protest that there are modern men and women who find the task of recovering even the fundamental building blocks of religious existence too much for their frail endowments, and who therefore feel entitled to an easier way than that suggested by the Rav. And once again, it seems to me, we have no choice. What Iris Murdoch said about the task of contemporary literature is true of our duty as individuals and as educators: in the "battle between real people and images," what is "require[d] now is a much stronger and more complex conception of the former."²³ No contemporary religious feeling can long endure that is unearned.
Alexis de Tocqueville, in his well-known diagnosis of modern Western culture, contrasts historians in aristocratic ages with historians in democratic ages. The former concentrate on the "great personages who hold the front of the stage" and the influence that one man can exercise. The latter discount the importance of individual action, seeking after general causes and ascribing to these an inevitability that makes resistance to the zeitgeist pointless. Paradoxically, it is the egalitarian mentality that dangerously undermines the individual's free will and responsibility.
Judaism teaches that each individual bears a unique destiny. It is not altogether surprising, then, that the modern Orthodox community has allied itself to the modern principle that every individual has equal worth. This would entail that each woman and each man be committed to a life of intellectual adventure and religious excellence, cultivating an authentic and passionate inner life, sanctifying his or her daily existence, and bringing forth that "unique message... [the] special color to add to the communal spectrum."
Instead, we submit all too readily to the siren song of mediocrity. There is a type of basketball coach who promotes the illusion of democratic teamwork, while in reality the entire enterprise revolves around the superstar. In the same spirit (or lack of spirit), we expect the exceptional individual to contend one-on-one with the great problems of the day and the relentless challenges of eternity, while the rest of us are reduced to the role of spectators, cheering the Gedolim on. The Rav wants more for us and consequently asks more of us. Reluctant and disappointed, we summon the popularizers, the politicians, and the polemicists who, with their unfailing affinity for the superficial and the half-truth, bravely try to make him "do," and purvey many anecdotes.
Rather than blame the Rav for demanding too much of us, we would do well to rouse ourselves to take full advantage of what he offers. Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev explains that Israel first confessed the singular greatness of Moses at the parting of the sea, when even the maidservants saw what was denied the prophet Ezekiel. Only because they had reached great spiritual heights themselves could they grasp that a mortal man like Moses might attain a higher level still.²⁶
Until we probe the limits of our own spiritual capacities, we will not appreciate the Rav's, nor will we succeed in coming to terms with the good fortune that made him our mentor. If it is beyond us to soar with the eagle, yet we are not condemned to creep with the snail. Like the eagle, albeit without the eagle's swiftness and sweep, we were made to experience, and act within, a three-dimensional world. In other words, it is not beyond us to be men.
