A Soulful Journey

Midrash Sifre Devarim shares the tale of a group of rabbis who were at a banquet held in honor of the nasi Rabban Gamliel in honor of his son.  Rabban Gamliel made a point of preparing and serving the wine himself, which one of the subordinate rabbis refused, not wanting to compromise the stature of the nasi.  His colleague, Rabbi Yehohsua responded, “Let him serve.  After all, Abraham, our father, one of the great ones of the world, served the ministering angels when he thought they were merely passersby… If Abraham served those whom he thought were idolaters shouldn’t Gamliel serve us?” Rabbi Zadok went further: “You have ignored God’s honor in order to deal with the honor of flesh and blood. If the One who spoke and the world came into being causes winds to blow, brings up clouds, brings down rain and raises vegetation, thus setting the table for everyone, should not Gamliel serve us?” Give it to Him Who deserves our awe and respect.

Rabban Gamliel was moved to tears whenever he read the list of the 11 qualifications specified by the Psalms as a prerequisite for living on God's holy mountain. He would explain his sorrow like this, “Only one who has all these qualifications and does all these things would not be rejected; but one who does only one of them will be rejected.  His colleagues reassured him. “Does the verse say,” they argued, “that one who does all these things will not be rejected? The verse merely states, “One who does these things.”  The verse refers not to all of the 11 qualifications, but to any one of them. There are good people, fine leaders, who dwell in the House of the Lord, but among them are few who filled with equal perfection every one of the requirements listed by the Psalms. They fulfill with some distinction and some adequately. Perfection  is not demanded; only  that  we do  our best. 

Rabban Gamliel was noted as saying that a person’s interior and exterior should be mirror images of each another.   Perhaps this is what he meant about such consistency: “There are those who preach and act accordingly; Some act correctly and do not preach well; And you have good preachers who do not practice.”  - Yevamot 63b