[This week's Toronto Torah is here!]
Did you ever do something by rote rather than consciously, then have someone pick a fight with you over it so that you find yourself defending your action as though it had been intentional in the first place?
Let me explain:
I have a long-standing habit of shorthanding Rabbi into R’. (See, for example, the flyer here.) It makes sense for flyers – “Rabbi Mordechai Torczyner” is just absurdly long, and it kills readability. It makes sense for addressing rabbis in emails, when speed is of the essence. And it says what I need it to say. So I do it, and I’ve done it for years without thinking twice.
Last week someone I respect picked a fight with me about this R’, saying that diminishing the honorific diminishes the honor due to Rabbis. Where some parts of the Jewish community refer to their rabbis with all manner of aggrandizement – haRav haGaon, Adoneinu Morein v’Rabbeinu, and so on – I am reducing my own status, and the status of others I address in this way.
I know this person; he means well, and he has only my best interest at heart. At the same time, this protest bothers me.
This protest leads me to want to say to him, “I write R’ to make a point, to take a stand against the inflated titles that are all too common and all too silly. I davka write R’, and I’ll write R’ whenever I choose. R' R' R' R' R'.”
This protest leads me to want to transcend the R’ and drop the title altogether, and just write “Mordechai Torczyner” on flyers. The name was good enough for me at birth, it’s good enough for me now; this world of titles is too overblown.
Besides, the correct answer to his protest lies in the standard edition of the gemara itself, where Tannaim are routinely termed ר' instead of רבי. Rabbi Akiva is ר' עקיבא, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is ר' שמעון. For that matter, הרה"ג is more common than הרב הגאון, and אדמו"ר usually takes the place of אדוננו מורנו ורבנו. So I’m not an innovator here.
But I believe the answer to this protest is not to allow myself to get carried away in defense of something that was unconscious in the first place. Being a רודף שלום (pursuer of peace) often means that you walk away from fights like this.
Better to write Rabbi for the sake of peace than to write R’ for the sake of a fight.