Glory is not usually considered an important Jewish value. The ancient Greeks and Romans built whole cultures around the pursuit of individual glory and eternal fame, and much of the Western ethos of competitive individualism can be traced back to those classical sources. The biblical kings of Israel, too, were no strangers to the desire for glory: David strove to kill more Philistines than Saul, an achievement the people celebrated in the song, “Saul has killed his thousands, but David his tens of thousands.” The Temple that Solomon built was in honor of God, but also in honor of Solomon himself, a demonstration of his wealth and power.More on the theme of rabbinic scholarship and martial glory here.
In rabbinic Judaism, on the other hand, such considerations are virtually absent. This was for a good reason: In the centuries after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kochba revolt, there was simply no worldly arena in which Jews could win the old-fashioned kind of military or political glory. But as Daf Yomi readers saw in a telling passage this week, this does not mean that Jews stopped dreaming of achievement and reputation. Instead, the rabbis, the elite of the Jewish community, imagined a different kind of fame: the reputation of being a subtle and penetrating interpreter of Torah. And when it came to this kind of fame, the Talmud makes clear, the rabbis were every bit as competitive as any Greek wrestler.
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Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.
