I want to be Like Reb Yitzchok Dovid Grossman, the rabbi in the picture. He is one of the most authentic people I know. He is at home with any chassidic group, with any stream of Judaism, with any Jew, learned or not, observant or not. I don’t know him personally, but I’ve had the chance to observe him up close, once on a flight back from Uman-Rosh Hashanah, and once when he turned up at a shul in my neighborhood in Jerusalem a number of years back.

Patience, respect, a warm smile, dignity, no compromise on Torah values or observance, and a love for his fellow Jews—real people, with all their warts, not just in the abstract. The other day, my nephew e-mailed the photo below and I felt I had to let people know what a Jew can be. Rabbi Grossman is so humble he won’t mind having his picture on the Internet and he won’t mind if it’s not on the Internet.

© Copyright 2013 O. Bergman