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How a Hebrew Letter Can Teach Us the Lasting Power of Humility
Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921. Photo: public domain.
The great Hasidic master, Rav Nachman of Breslov, famously said, “If you believe you can break something, believe you can fix it.” A Hasidic wag later added, “But whatever you do, don’t believe you’re the one who invented the glue.”
There’s something deliciously Jewish about that second line. Yes, you matter and can improve things once you’ve messed up. But no, you didn’t invent the universe — or even the duct tape that holds it together. And in a world full of self-made people loudly proclaiming how fantastic they are, that kind of perspective is rare and precious.
Which brings me to Bern, Switzerland, in the year 1905 — and a young patent clerk who published four scientific papers that would change the world. One of them introduced what he called “the special theory of relativity.” Another explained the photoelectric effect, a physics phenomenon that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize.
Remarkably, the author of these revolutionary ideas was not a prestigious university professor or a celebrated scientific superstar. He was, quite literally, a nobody.
Albert Einstein was painfully aware of his limitations. Famously, he struggled with higher mathematics and had to engage a brilliant mathematician, Marcel Grossmann, to help him navigate the complex geometry needed for his theory of general relativity.
He was also completely uninterested in showmanship. He is purported to have once remarked, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”
That line wasn’t false modesty. It reflected something real: Einstein’s capacity to listen to criticism, to seek help from others, to keep asking questions others thought were too naïve or too basic, and to admit when he was wrong — all of which allowed him to see what others missed.
Einstein wasn’t trying to be the smartest guy in the room. He was simply trying his hardest to understand how the universe worked. And as it turned out, it was that humility — genuine, grounded humility — that was the key to him unlocking the scientific secrets of the universe.
History is full of leaders and thinkers who were intellectually brilliant and enormously talented, but who sabotaged themselves through arrogance. Napoleon — an extraordinarily gifted human being — thought he was invincible. It didn’t end well.
More recently, genius tech entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Holmes believed they could outsmart investors, regulators, and even the laws of science — and they watched their empires crumble.
The thing is, humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking of yourself less. Which will mean you can grow, change, and learn — because you’re not busy defending or projecting your ego.
The greatest people aren’t necessarily flashy. But in the long run, they’re the ones who build greatness that lasts.
Tucked away in the opening verse of Vayikra is a minor detail offering a massive lesson in humility. Vayikra begins with the pasuk: וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר – “He called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying…”
Curiously, in the very first word — Vayikra — there’s a little anomaly. The final letter, the aleph, is written in miniature. Scribes are trained to make it noticeably tiny, almost like it’s embarrassed to be there — too shy to show its face.
The sages of the Talmud explain that this shrunken letter was Moshe’s doing. The word Vayikra denotes affection — it shows that God was calling Moshe with love in a way that indicated He was closer to Moshe than to anyone else.
But Moshe didn’t feel comfortable with that level of attention, even if it came from Heaven itself. So he shrunk the aleph, as if to say, “Yes, I was called — but I’m not interested in the spotlight.”
Here’s where it gets fascinating. The late Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh, Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, raised a powerful question. The Gemara in Menachot (29b) tells us that Rabbi Akiva could derive “mounds upon mounds of laws” from the tagin — the tiny decorative crowns that sit atop certain letters in the Torah.
And if Rabbi Akiva could expound deep halachic insights from something as small as a crown, then surely he could also extract meaning from the letters themselves — from their shape, their appearance, their subtle peculiarities. So how could Moshe shrink the aleph? Wouldn’t that deprive Rabbi Akiva — and, by extension, all of us — of the laws one can learn from a full-sized aleph?
Rav Shach’s answer is simply breathtaking. Sometimes, teaching a human attribute is more important than teaching a law. Sometimes, the example a leader sets through character leaves a deeper and more enduring imprint than any legal lesson.
The lesson of the small aleph isn’t encoded in halacha — it’s etched into the soul. Moshe Rabbeinu was the greatest prophet who ever lived. But he’s remembered not just for what he did, but for who he was, as the Torah tells us: “And the man Moshe was exceedingly humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).
And if that message had to come at the “cost” of a few halachic insights, so be it. Because a Torah without humility might be intellectually dazzling — but it wouldn’t be divine.
Humility isn’t merely a footnote in the story of greatness. It is the story. A few years ago, at a private event for young tech innovators, the keynote speaker was Tim Cook, Apple’s quiet and reserved CEO.
During the Q&A after his talk, someone asked him how he managed to step into Steve Jobs’ shoes without trying to be Steve Jobs. Cook smiled and said, “I learned early on that if you try to emulate someone else’s greatness, you’ll miss your own.” Brilliant.
Then he shared how he asked Apple’s top team to be brutally honest with him when he first took over. “Tell me what you think I’m doing wrong,” he said. “I can’t learn if I’m only hearing what I want to hear.”
That attitude of humility and openness didn’t just preserve Apple’s legacy. It strengthened it. Because Tim Cook wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was trying to do the job as best he could, which meant being honest about what he didn’t know.
This is precisely what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meant when he wrote: “Those who have humility are open to things greater than themselves while those who lack it are not. That is why those who lack it make you feel small, while those who have it make you feel enlarged. Their humility inspires greatness in others.”
Moshe’s small aleph may have taken away a few halachot — but it gave us something even greater: a model of leadership that doesn’t shrink others in order to feel tall. A model of behavior that lifts people up precisely because it doesn’t need the spotlight.
And in a world obsessed with being constantly seen and heard, that might just be the most powerful kind of greatness there is.
The author is a rabbi in Beverly Hills, California.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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