But what I don’t get is this- let’s say there is a hierarchy (which I’m not saying there isn’t). The issue that people keep brushing aside, which is how you GET on the upper rungs of the hierarchy, is really not irrelevant at all- it’s crucial to this discussion. Why is R’ Ovadia a gadol EVEN THOUGH he called a fellow Jew evil? What checkboxes must you be able to fill in on the Gadlus Form in order to qualify? Is bekiyus in Torah enough that you don’t need menschlichkeit as well? What about the other way around?
Like I said above, what if this attack had been against a different gadol whom you also respected? What would your opinion have been then? With whom would you have sided?
My grandfather was a talmid of R’ Moshe Feinstein, and my father met him many times, including when he was little and didn’t yet speak Yiddish. He says that the one thing that sticks in his mind from then, when he was little and saw only an unfamiliar man, was his kindness and menschlichkeit, and even once they were able to communicate and my father really understood his gadlus in Torah, the thing that really struck him about R’ Moshe was his smile, his goodness.
Honestly, nothing in here is meant to be snarky or rude or anything- it’s actually filled with pain. I genuinely don’t understand how someone who is considered a gadol can say such things any more than anyone else- call me defective (though in my heart, I’m really not sure I am) but I just can’t take it on trust.