In a recent Inbox letter a reader observes that the special tribute issue of Mishpacha marking the yahrzteits of Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky and Rav Moshe Feinstein zt”l is one antidote to the problem of weakened emunah that has been aired recently in these pages. The articles showed in his words “how two men of flesh and blood rose to the level of angels. You took us into their world and showed us what Torah does to a person and what those people in turn can do for the world around them. Thank you.”
And thank you dear reader with whom I concur wholeheartedly. The fact that throughout Jewish history our nation has consistently produced the individuals of towering moral excellence whom we refer to as gedolei Torah is for me a powerful demonstration perhaps the most compelling one of the truth of Torah. It is a bedrock of my worldview one I share with my family at every opportunity and that informs my writing.
People all people have a need to live lives of meaning and of goodness — although that’s actually redundant for only goodness and giving provide authentic maximal meaning. And so when we see people whose entire lives are ordered around and bound up with fulfilling every last jot and tittle of Torah and emerge thereby as ethically exalted as we know them to be that conveys two lessons to those who are open to learning them.
One is that whosoever is the author of this Torah had peerless insight into what precisely it is that makes us humans tick. He knows what we need to do to achieve rarified ethical heights and the happiness that awaits those that scale them. That Torah is such a unerring guidebook for man’s inner workings strongly commends it as the handiwork of not just another author but an Author.
Create a free account to keep reading.
