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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.
The post How a Hebrew Letter Can Teach Us the Lasting Power of Humility first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Iran Criticizes Arab-Islamic Summit Statement, Flags Objections After Doha Meeting
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir of Qatar, attends the emergency Arab-Islamic leaders’ summit in Doha, Qatar, Sept. 15, 2025. Photo: Hassan Bargash Al Menhali / UAE Presidential Court/Handout via REUTERS
Iran has criticized the final statement of the Arab-Islamic Summit held in Doha on Monday as insufficient, in the wake of last week’s Israeli attack targeting the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Qatar.
In a statement released shortly after the summit, Iran reaffirmed its “unwavering support for the Palestinian people and their right to self-determination,” while arguing that a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot adequately address the Palestinian issue.
According to the Iranian delegation, “the only real and lasting solution is the establishment of a single democratic state across all of Palestine, through a referendum involving all Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories.”
On Monday, Qatar held a summit of Arab and Islamic nations in the aftermath of last week’s Israeli strike on Hamas, with leaders gathering to express support and discuss regional responses.
The Sept. 9 strike targeting leaders of the Palestinian terrorist group in Doha marked a significant escalation of Israeli military operations, reflecting Jerusalem’s broader efforts to dismantle the terrorist group amid the ongoing war in Gaza.
Expressing solidarity with Qatar, summit leaders condemned Israel’s strike, labeling it “cowardly, illegal, and a threat to collective regional security.”
In the final statement, the heads of state declared that “an assault on a state acting as a neutral mediator in the Gaza crisis is not only a hostile act against Qatar but also a direct blow to international peace-building efforts.”
Alongside the United States and other regional powers, Qatar has served as a ceasefire mediator during the nearly two-year Gaza conflict, facilitating indirect negotiations between the Jewish state and Hamas.
However, Doha has also backed the Palestinian terrorist group for years, providing Hamas with money and diplomatic support while hosting and sheltering its top leadership.
During the summit, Arab and Muslim leaders called for a review of diplomatic and economic relations with Israel while firmly opposing any attempts to displace Palestinians.
In the final statement, the heads of state also emphasized resisting Israel’s efforts to “impose new realities on the ground,” urged enforcement of International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for Israeli leaders over war crime allegations adamantly denied by Jerusalem, and coordinated actions to suspend Israel’s UN membership.
Although Iran participated in the summit and endorsed the declaration, its delegation issued a separate statement shortly afterward clarifying that doing so “must in no way be interpreted, explicitly or implicitly, as recognition of the Israeli regime,” reaffirming its rejection of the Jewish state’s right to exist.
Iranian leaders regularly declare their intention to destroy Israel, the world’s lone Jewish state.
The statement also stressed that the Palestinian people have the right to employ “all necessary means to achieve their inalienable right to self-determination,” emphasizing that backing this cause is “a shared duty of the international community.”
As the heads of Arab and Islamic states convened for a summit on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned he did not rule out further strikes on Hamas leaders “wherever they are.”
During a diplomatic visit to Israel, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed strong support for Israel’s position, even as Washington previously voiced concerns over the strike in Qatar, a US ally.
Speaking alongside Netanyahu, Rubio said the only way to end the war in Gaza would be for Hamas to free all hostages and surrender. While the US wants a diplomatic end to the war, “we have to be prepared for the possibility that’s not going to happen,” he said.
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“Your Name Was Included”: UC Berkeley Cooperating With Trump Administration, Admits to Disclosing Names
Students attend a protest encampment in support of Palestinians at University of California, Berkeley during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Berkeley, US, April 23, 2024. Photo: Carlos Barria via Reuters Connect
The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is cooperating with the Trump administration’s inquiry into campus antisemitism, providing materials containing the names of some 160 people identified in disciplinary reports and other official documents.
As first reported by The Daily Californian, UC Berkeley’s official campus newspaper, the university’s Office of Legal Affairs notified every person affected by the mass disclosure, writing to them on Sept. 4.
“Last spring, the [US Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, or OCR]] initiated investigations regarding allegations of antisemitic harassment and discrimination at UC Berkeley. As part of its investigation, OCR required production of comprehensive documents, including files and reports related to alleged antisemitic incidents,” chief campus counsel David Robinson wrote. “This notice is to inform you that, as required by law and as per directions provided by the UC systemic Office of General Counsel, your name was included in report as part of the documents provided by OGC [Office of General Counsel] to OCR for its investigations on Aug. 18, 2025.”
He added, “These documents contained information about reports or responses related to antisemitic incidents.”
Anti-Israel activists told the Californian that the university is helping the Trump administration hunt witches.
“I think the message was sent to anybody has who has ever been accused of antisemitism, which of course, includes a lot of Palestinians,” one said, claiming that he has been falsely accused. “Whenever we teach about Palestine, it usually leads to an investigation. I think they flagged and sent all of that information to the federal government.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, infamous for its ties to jihadist terror organizations, also criticized the move, charging that the administration had promised to conceal their identities and thereby obstruct the government’s inquiry.
“Chancellor Rich Lyons should not have given assurances that he wouldn’t be giving our information to the federal government,” the group said. “Beyond that, he should never have bowed down so easily. I would think that a university that prides itself on being this liberal haven would at least stand up to a fascist like Donald Trump.”
UC Berkeley came under scrutiny in 2024 after a mob of hundreds of pro-Palestinian students and non-students shut down an event at its Zellerbach Hall featuring Israeli reservist Ran Bar-Yoshafat, forcing Jewish students to flee to a secret safe room as the protesters overwhelmed campus police.
Footage of the incident showed a frenzied mass of anti-Zionist agitators banging on the doors of Zellerbach. The mob then, according to witnesses, eventually stormed the building — breaking windows in the process, according to reports in The Daily Wire — and precipitated the decision to evacuate the area. During the infiltration of Zellerbach, one of the mob — assembled by Bears for Palestine, which had earlier proclaimed its intention to cancel the event — spit on a Jewish student and called him a “Jew,” pejoratively.
Other incidents, including the university’s employment of a lecturer who tweeted antisemitic images — one of which accused Israel of organ harvesting, a blood libel — the rewarding of academic benefits for participating in anti-Zionist activity, and the banning of Zionist speakers from Berkeley Law, have raised concerns about anti-Jewish hated on campus. In 2017, The Algemeiner ranked UC Berkeley as number five on “The 40 Worst Colleges for Jewish Students.”
In August, an Israeli professor sued the university, alleging that school officials denied her a job because she is Israeli — a claim its own investigators corroborated in an internal investigation, according to her attorneys at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law.
Filed in the Alameda County Superior Court, the complaint is seeking justice for Dr. Yael Nativ, who taught in UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies as a visiting professor in 2022 and received an invitation to apply to do so again for the 2024-2025 academic year just weeks after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre across southern Israel.
A hiring official allegedly believed, however, that an Israeli professor in the department would be unpalatable to students and faculty.
“My dept [sic] cannot host you for a class next fall,” the official allegedly told Nativ in a WhatsApp message. “Things are very hot here right now and many of our grad students are angry. I would be putting the dept and you in a terrible position if you taught here.”
Berkeley’s Office for the Prevention of Harassment and Discrimination (OPHD) later initiated an investigation of Nativ’s denial after the professor wrote an opinion essay which publicly accused the school of cowardice and violations of her civil rights. OPHD determined that a “preponderance of evidence” proved Nativ’s claim, but school officials went on to ignore the professor’s requests for an apology and other remedial measures, including sending her a renewed invitation to teach dance. After nearly two years, the situation remains unresolved.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel Issues Travel Warning Ahead of Jewish Holidays Amid Rising Attacks, Discrimination Targeting Israelis Abroad
A flag is flown during a protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, outside the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, Nov. 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Yves Herman
Israel has issued a travel warning ahead of the upcoming Jewish high holidays and the second anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities, alerting citizens of heightened terrorist threats against Israelis and Jewish communities abroad.
On Sunday, the National Security Council (NSC) urged travelers to stay alert, cautioning that the two-year anniversary of the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel could trigger attacks by Iran-backed or Hamas-linked terrorist groups targeting Jews and Israelis abroad.
“The recent period has been characterized by continued efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against Israeli and Jewish targets by the various terrorist organizations (most of them led by Iran and Hamas),” the NSC said in a statement.
“Oct. 7 may again serve as a significant date for terrorist organizations,” the statement read.
Israeli officials warned that the threat mainly stems from Iran and its terrorist proxies, which have increasingly targeted Jews and Israelis beyond Israel’s borders.
In recent months, the NSC reported that dozens of plots have been thwarted, even as violent incidents — including physical attacks, antisemitic threats, and online incitement — have continued to rise.
“With the war ongoing and the terror threat growing, we are witnessing an escalation in antisemitic violence and provocations by anti-Israel elements,” the NSC said in its statement.
“This trend may inspire extremists to carry out attacks against Israelis or Jews abroad,” it continued.
According to the NSC, Iran remains the leading source of terrorism against Israelis and Jews worldwide, acting both directly and through proxies such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
“Iranian motivation is growing in light of the severe blows it suffered in the framework of ‘Operation Rising Lion’ and the growing desire for revenge,” the NSC said in a statement, referring to the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Amid rising tensions over the war in Gaza, Israeli officials have previously warned of Iranian sleeper cells — covert operatives or terrorists embedded in rival countries who remain dormant until they receive orders to act and carry out attacks.
In light of this reality, the NSC also warned that social media posts revealing ties to Israeli security services could put individuals at risk of being targeted.
“We advise against posting any content that suggests involvement in the security services or operational activities, including real-time location updates,” the statement read.
This latest updated warning comes amid a growing hostile environment and a shocking surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes targeting Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Across Europe, Israelis are facing a disturbing surge of targeted attacks and hostility, as a wave of antisemitic incidents — from violent assaults and vandalism to protests and legal actions — spreads amid rising tensions following recent conflicts in the Middle East.
On Saturday, a 29-year-old Israeli and his sister were attacked by three Palestinian men while on vacation in Athens, Greece.
According to local media reports, the two siblings were walking through the city’s center when three unknown individuals carrying Palestinian flags approached them, shouting antisemitic slurs.
The attackers assaulted the Israeli man, a disabled Israel Defense Forces (IDF) veteran, scratching him, throwing him to the ground, and striking him with their flagpoles, while his sister attempted to intervene and protect him.
October 7 is a global war against Jews & Israelis.
Pro-Palestinian radicals just attacked an Israeli man in Syntagma Square, Athens. via @N12News https://t.co/IZR2IdNrUI pic.twitter.com/9S2o4IjtO6
— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) September 14, 2025
Greek authorities arrested all five individuals involved in the incident. According to the Israeli man’s father, his son was placed in a cell with 10 Arabs, where he was reportedly beaten again and feared for his life.
In a separate antisemitic incident earlier this year, a group of Israeli teenagers was physically assaulted by dozens of pro-Palestinian assailants — some reportedly armed with knives — on the Greek island of Rhodes.
After leaving a nightclub, the teens were followed to their hotel, where they were violently assaulted, leaving several with minor injuries.
In another example of rising anti-Israel sentiment and hostility toward Jewish communities, one of Britain’s most prestigious military academies, the Royal College of Defense Studies, announced Sunday that it will bar Israeli students from enrolling next year, citing concerns over the war in Gaza.
In Belgium, two IDF soldiers attending the Tomorrowland music festival were arrested and interrogated by local authorities following a complaint from the Hind Rajab Foundation (HRF), an anti-Israel legal group that pursues legal action against IDF personnel, accusing them of involvement in war crimes.
According to HRF, the soldiers were seen waving the flags of the IDF’s Givati Brigade, which they claimed has been “involved in the systematic destruction of civilian infrastructure in Gaza and in carrying out mass atrocities against the Palestinian population.”
In France, a 34-year-old Algerian man was sentenced to 40 months in prison for threatening passengers with a knife and making antisemitic death threats after boarding a train at Cannes station.
In another incident earlier this year, a Jewish man wearing a kippah was brutally attacked and called a “dirty Jew” in Anduze, a small town in southern France.