Let My People Know

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: “A balanced person.”

Caring for others is the problem of every great teacher, because when he gets in contact with other people, he is destroying his own balance.

If you make a connection with someone else, then you become, at least for the time being, a unit with that person.

But this new unit is not balanced, and to try to balance this new unit requires a very, very different effort on the part of the person who is, by himself and on his own, a balanced person.

That is why so many people, including most of the prophets, did not want to be teachers—not because they were blemished, but because they did not want to destroy their balance.

–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz