Q:
How can we recognize if a man is a gadol hador, one of the great Torah leaders who we must follow?
A:
The answer is how can you know who is a good doctor? You ask the ladies on the block? No. You ask your local doctor. The local physicians will tell you, go to this man. You have nobody else to rely on. Whether he knows or not, you have to obey him. So you ask physicians and they tell you. If you want to know who is a gadol baTorah, you have to ask people who are proficient in the Torah. And who are proficient in the Torah in America — the same as all over the world — the roshei yeshivah. The roshei yeshivah are the most proficient.
Not the synagogue rabbis. Because rabbis are not chosen today for proficiency in Torah. A rabbi is chosen by the ladies auxiliary. You think I’m joking? When I went to my first rabbanus thirty-three years ago, I was met in Boston at the station by a committee, a man representing the committee. “Shalom aleichem Rabbi,” he said. He spoke Yiddish to me; it was an old-time synagogue. And the first thing he said was instructions for my first talk. I should talk about Sarah and Rivka because the ladies want to hear it. It’s the ladies who are important, he told me. That was my first baruch haba in the rabbanus — instructions what to say.
I didn’t! I didn’t do it.
And so don’t ask your local rabbi. He’s not chosen for proficiency in Torah.
December 1972
