[Avodah] walk humbly

[Isaac Balbin]


> On 1 Sep 2024, at 12:51 PM, R’ YG Bechhoffer
> wrote:
> 
> To be melamed zechus on RYBS, I think he may mean that the individual
> (the lonely man of faith) should be able to find satisfaction in his one
> internal sense of accomplishment, whether he is applauded or not. But
> the use of the term "anonymity" is imprecise.

I’m not sure why you are trying to do a Tosfos on the Rav’s prose … was it not both R Chaim and the Chafetz Chaim (and others) who were quite comfortable being anonymous on a train with those accompanying them only discovering later (to their horror) with whom they had been conversing (in tones they would otherwise never have assumed?) Wasn’t it the Rav himself who was visiting his wife’s Tziyun and someone asked him to say “the prayers” at another Kever and that someone never knew who it was despite offering successively larger dollar amounts until he discovered later that it was the Rav (and subsequently made a big donation to the Yeshivah)?  It seems Pashut, that unlike perhaps *some* of the Rebbes who either don’t or could not manage to adopt a level of anonymity, the Brisker lonely man of faith saw this type of anonymity as desirable!