Eyes In The Stars Vs. Starry Eyed
When people are vague about things, often they reveal more than they hide. I know prominent educators who went to BMT or Neve Tzion but when you ask them where they learned in Israel they will skirt the issue. The fact that you feel you need to cover up where you learned twenty years ago says more about you than where you learned twenty years ago does.
I recently lent a friend of mine a Charles Grodin memoir. My friend was surprised that Grodin never talks about his hair (he had it grown in). He's the only actor I know that went from having a full head of hair to being bald back to having a full head of hair on a regular basis. He talks openly about a lot of things, but not a word about his hair.
What does it mean when a Rebbe gives a shiur and is vague about his source? Does he not remember or does he not want to say the source? Tonight I heard that you should, "Keep your eyes in the stars and your feet on earth," in the name of Theodore Roosevelt. Years ago in Y.U. a Rebbe of mine quoted that in the name of "The Baalei Mussar." Who are they? Maybe that's just the way he heard it passed on to him. Who knows? It was a nice vort anyway, tied in with the idea that in his dream Yaakov saw a ladder with its head reaching to the heavens and its feet on the ground.
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:59 PM
1 Comments:
What makes these rabbis uncomfortable about having studied at those schools? (Some kind of political or ideological difference?) I find that I emphasize having gone to grad school at Indiana University, over my undergrad education at Barnard. It does say something about me that I am vague sometimes about my undergrad education -- partly that I don't want to be labeled an "East Coast Intellectual," which is a not-so-good thing here in Texas. Partly that I don't feel that I am an East Coast person -- I was happier in the Midwest. We create our identities as we go along.
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