Black and White

I just got off the phone with a good friend of mine in the Mir. He suggested that in the charedi world, there are several qualities that are seen as necessarily connected - meaning, that if somebody possesses one of them, they are seen as automatically possessing all the others. They are:

• Great Torah scholarship

• Righteousness

• Spiritual powers (e.g. berachos)

• and I forget the fourth.

In other words, anyone who is a great Torah scholar is automatically also considered to be a tzaddik, and so on.

I have an elaboration of this concept which relates to the comments in the previous discussion about yeridas hadoros. Intelligence and wisdom themselves have several components. There are analytical skills and there is retention of knowledge. There are different types of wisdom and intellectual acument - Talmudic expertise and philosophical expertise are very different. And there are many other divisions that could be mentioned. But my impression is that many people assume that anyone who excels in any one of these, also excels in all of them.