Personality
Rabbi Ziv was known for his humility, lovingkindness, thoughtfulness, and focus on order.
At Rabbi Ziv’s funeral, his friend and colleague Rabbi Eliezer Gordon, the Rabbi and Rosh Yeshiva of Telz, said that aside from Rabbi Ziv’s greatness in Torah, he had never heard a single word from him that was not related to Torah and to fear of Heaven.
Rabbi Ziv was not only great in Musar but also in his knowledge of Torah and Talmud. Rabbi Gordon, who was known as a fiery and tempestuous genius, would repeat his Talmudic thoughts to Rabbi Ziv and seek his opinion on them, for he valued Rabbi Ziv’s scholarship highly. Rabbi Gordon said that his friend had been fluent in three orders of the Talmud, to such a level where he knew every comment of Rashi and Tosafot word for word. He was also fluent in all four divisions of the Shulchan Aruch and could locate any given Halacha within it with pinpoint precision.
Read more about this topic: Simcha Zissel Ziv
Famous quotes containing the word personality:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection.”
—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)