WHEN LESS IS MORE

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The great Hasidic master, Rav Nachman of Breslov, famously said: “If you believe you can break something, believe you can fix it.” A Hasidic wag later added, “But whatever you do, don’t believe you’re the one who invented the glue.”

There’s something deliciously Jewish about that second line. Yes, you matter and can improve things once you’ve messed up. But no, you didn’t invent the universe—or even the duct tape that holds it together. And in a world full of self-made people loudly proclaiming how fantastic they are, that kind of perspective is rare and precious.

Which brings me to Bern, Switzerland, in the year 1905—and a young patent clerk who published four scientific papers that would change the world. One of them introduced what he called ‘the special theory of relativity.’ Another explained the photoelectric effect, a physics phenomenon that would eventually win him the Nobel Prize.

Remarkably, the author of these revolutionary ideas was not a prestigious university professor or a celebrated scientific superstar. He was, quite literally, a nobody.

Albert Einstein was painfully aware of his limitations. Famously, he struggled with higher mathematics and had to engage a brilliant mathematician, Marcel Grossmann, to help him navigate the complex geometry needed for his theory of general relativity.

He was also completely uninterested in showmanship. He is purported to have once remarked, “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.”

That line wasn’t false modesty. It reflected something real: Einstein’s capacity to listen to criticism, to seek help from others, to keep asking questions others thought were too naïve or too basic, and to admit when he was wrong—all of which allowed him to see what others missed.

Einstein wasn’t trying to be the smartest guy in the room. He was simply trying his hardest to understand how the universe worked. And as it turned out, it was that humility—genuine, grounded humility—that was the key to him unlocking the scientific secrets of the universe.

History is full of leaders and thinkers who were intellectually brilliant and enormously talented, but who sabotaged themselves through arrogance. Napoleon—an extraordinarily gifted human being—thought he was invincible. It didn’t end well.

More recently, genius tech entrepreneurs like Elizabeth Holmes believed they could outsmart investors, regulators, and even the laws of science—and they watched their empires crumble.

The thing is, humility doesn’t mean thinking less of yourself. It means thinking of yourself less. Which will mean you can grow, change, and learn—because you’re not busy defending or projecting your ego.

The greatest people aren’t necessarily flashy. But in the long run, they’re the ones who build greatness that lasts.

Tucked away in the opening verse of Vayikra is a minor detail offering a massive lesson in humility. Vayikra begins with the pasuk: וַיִּקְרָא אֶל־מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר ה׳ אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר – “He called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying…”

Curiously, in the very first word—Vayikra—there’s a little anomaly. The final letter, the aleph, is written in miniature. Scribes are trained to make it noticeably tiny, almost like it’s embarrassed to be there—too shy to show its face.

The sages of the Talmud explain that this shrunken letter was Moshe’s doing. The word Vayikra denotes affection—it shows that God was calling Moshe with love in a way that indicated He was closer to Moshe than to anyone else.

But Moshe didn’t feel comfortable with that level of attention, even if it came from Heaven itself. So he shrunk the aleph, as if to say, “Yes, I was called—but I’m not interested in the spotlight.”

Here’s where it gets fascinating. The late Rosh Yeshiva of Ponevezh, Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach, raised a powerful question. The Gemara in Menachot (29b) tells us that Rabbi Akiva could derive “mounds upon mounds of laws” from the tagin—the tiny decorative crowns that sit atop certain letters in the Torah.

And if Rabbi Akiva could expound deep halachic insights from something as small as a crown, then surely he could also extract meaning from the letters themselves—from their shape, their appearance, their subtle peculiarities. So how could Moshe shrink the aleph? Wouldn’t that deprive Rabbi Akiva—and, by extension, all of us—of the laws one can learn from a full-sized aleph?

Rav Shach’s answer is simply breathtaking. Sometimes, teaching a human attribute is more important than teaching a law. Sometimes, the example a leader sets through character leaves a deeper and more enduring imprint than any legal lesson.

The lesson of the small aleph isn’t encoded in halacha—it’s etched into the soul. Moshe Rabbeinu was the greatest prophet who ever lived. But he’s remembered not just for what he did, but for who he was, as the Torah tells us: “And the man Moshe was exceedingly humble, more so than any man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3).

And if that message had to come at the “cost” of a few halachic insights, so be it. Because a Torah without humility might be intellectually dazzling—but it wouldn’t be divine.

Humility isn’t merely a footnote in the story of greatness. It is the story. A few years ago, at a private event for young tech innovators, the keynote speaker was Tim Cook, Apple’s quiet and reserved CEO.

During the Q&A after his talk, someone asked him how he managed to step into Steve Jobs’ shoes without trying to be Steve Jobs. Cook smiled and said, “I learned early on that if you try to emulate someone else’s greatness, you’ll miss your own.” Brilliant.

Then he shared how he asked Apple’s top team to be brutally honest with him when he first took over. “Tell me what you think I’m doing wrong,” he said. “I can’t learn if I’m only hearing what I want to hear.”

That attitude of humility and openness didn’t just preserve Apple’s legacy. It strengthened it. Because Tim Cook wasn’t trying to impress anyone. He was trying to do the job as best he could, which meant being honest about what he didn’t know.

This is precisely what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meant when he wrote: “Those who have humility are open to things greater than themselves while those who lack it are not. That is why those who lack it make you feel small, while those who have it make you feel enlarged. Their humility inspires greatness in others.”

Moshe’s small aleph may have taken away a few halachot—but it gave us something even greater: a model of leadership that doesn’t shrink others in order to feel tall. A model of behavior that lifts people up precisely because it doesn’t need the spotlight.

And in a world obsessed with being constantly seen and heard, that might just be the most powerful kind of greatness there is.