The Making of a Koton

Many will remember the controversy of several years ago regarding R' Nosson Kamenetsky's now-banned book, The Making of a Godol.

Yated is often behind the times, so publishing an article on an issue that was a hot-button topic three years ago is really quite normal for them.

Here is Pravda Ne'eman's commentary on a recent Yated article, "On Writing Biographies of Gedolim." Great title, by the way!

"From time to time criticisms are raised about the genre of biographies of gedolim."

And with good reason too! Biographies of Gedolim are often repetitive and boring narrations of the very same story line. Godol X born in Town Y. At age 5, his father/local melamed was unable to teach him anything new, so he went (usually walking the whole way barefoot) to Town Z to continue his studies. He was known there as the "Ilui of Y" and mastered all of Shas and Poskim by his Bar Mitzvah. Repeat ad nauseum. There is nothing there to inspire or assist the common Jew on his personal journey to greatness.

"Although our work is not singled out for criticism..."

Ever seen Pravda Ne'eman? And we know for a fact that you have. But it is good to keep convincing yourselves that you're above criticism.

"In order to fully appreciate the life of a Torah giant, one has to be generally interested in the lives of other people and one must be interested specifically in a Torah life. Many complaints come from critics who lack one of these interests and sometimes both."

Can you say low blow? Ouch. Demonstrated here is a classic Yated strategy: delegitimize your critics by claiming that they are a) not interested in the lives of other people (whatever on earth that means) and b) completely irreligious.

"One who is not particularly interested in a Torah life cannot be expected to appreciate the specific areas of interest and achievement that characterize individual Torah leaders."

Okay okay! Stop insulting the critics and avoiding the issues!

"A related complaint that is sometimes made is that we leave out information."

A related complaint? Many would say that "leaving out information" is the main complaint. But always remember to trivialize the main issues.

"This is true, but the reason is that in our Torah-based scale of values, the harm or embarrassment that can be caused to someone rates much higher than the needs of the historical record or journalistic objectivity."

What embarrassment? There will only be embarrassment if you perceive these "deleted episodes" to have been embarrassing to the Godol in question. If they helped him to grow or develop a more nuanced worldview, nothing could be further from embarrassing! It is only by deleting these vignettes that the Gedolim are embarrassed.

"Even after we take this out, there is always plenty of material for our readers."

There seems to have been a typographical error here, the sentence should actually read as follows: "Even after we take this out, there is always plenty of paper to line our readers' birdcages."

For an interesting and far more complete treatment of this topic, see the introduction to R' Nosson Kamenetsky's The Making of a Godol, available here.