Our Gemara on Amud Aleph tells us of some unusually difficult behaviors committed by the sage, Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat.
Rav Ashi said to him: And didn’t the Master sit before and frequent the study hall of Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat? Rabbi Yosei bar Avin said to him: Yes. Rav Ashi said to him: And what is the reason that the Master left him and came here? Rabbi Yosei bar Avin said to him: He is a man who has no mercy on his own son, and no mercy on his daughter. How, then, could he have mercy on me?
The Gemara asks: What is the incident involving his son? One day Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat hired day laborers to work his field. It grew late and he did not bring them food. The workers said to the son of Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat: We are starving. They were sitting under a fig tree, so the son said: Fig tree, fig tree, Yield your fruits, so that my father’s workers may eat. The fig tree yielded fruit, and they ate.
In the meantime, his father came and said to the workers: Do not be angry with me for being late, as I was engaged in a mitzva, and until just now I was traveling for that purpose and could not get here any sooner. They said to him: May the Merciful One satisfy you just as your son satisfied us and gave us food. He said to them: From where did he find food to give you? They said: Such-and-such an incident occurred. Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat said to his son: My son, you troubled your Creator to cause the fig to yield its fruit not in its proper time, so too, you will die young. And indeed, his son died before his time.
The Gemara asks: What is the incident involving his daughter? He had a very beautiful daughter. One day Rabbi Yosei from Yokrat saw a certain man piercing a hole in the hedge surrounding his property and looking at his daughter. Rabbi Yosei said to him: What is this? The man said to him: My teacher, if I have not merited taking her in marriage, shall I not at least merit to look at her? Rabbi Yosei said to her: My daughter, you are causing people distress. Return to your dust, and let people no longer stumble into sin due to you.
This story, while unusual, is not unheard of in a sagely personality. We can only conjecture that the single-minded focus on Torah study and its exacting requirements cause a relative loss of perspective. In recent times, we know of a minority of Gedolim who behaved as such. For example, there are stories of the Vilna Gaon, Rav Elyashiv, and the Chofetz chaim who were apparently indifferent and not much concerned with the suffering of their offspring. Some did not know the names or birthdays of their children, and others seemed to have little ability to listen to their concerns and needs. For more about this see Marc Shapiro's article on the Seforim Blog, where all of this is meticulously documented. https://seforimblog.com/2014/01/the-vilna-gaon-part-2-review-of-eliyahu/
I will not even try to explain these behaviors. I will state some points for us to consider :
- These are extreme, non-typical behaviors where are the outgrowth of intense intellectual activity and an ascetic outlook.
- We cannot criticize such great people and at the same time obviously cannot hold such behavior as any kind of paradigm or model. Even in our Gemara, while there is no criticism for Rav Yosei from Yukrat, there is also no rebuttal from Rav Ashi to Rav Yosef bar Avin. That is, when Rav Yosef bar Avin explained that he could not study under Rav Yosei from Yukrat because of how he treated his children, Rav Ashi accepted his explanation without comment. It is also a possible and slight rebuke that the Gemara notes Rav Yosei was delayed in paying his workers due to having been engaged in a “mitzvah”. While theoretically if it was an important mitzvah such as pidyon shevuyyim, he may have had an excuse, but the Gemara doesn’t say which mitzvah. Is that a subtle rebuke for placing the mitzvah over concern for the workers who were starving? Perhaps Rav Ashi’s silence is the only suitable response. You cannot criticize a great and pious sage but you cannot either agree with his behavior.
- The fact that these great individuals are our heroes and have done these kinds of things will have an effect, whether we like it or not. No matter how many smiley rabbis on the internet will get up and say how we need to show unconditional love to our children and portray Torah life as some kind of spiritual Disney Land, it is not the whole truth. There is a darker, more cruel side to Torah life. We cannot pretend this kind of harshness isn’t also a part of our culture. There are places and times where it comes out, and it is part of a legacy, not merely lone, misguided individual thinking. Why am I saying this? Because in today’s times you cannot heal and grow by covering up the truth. Since it’s true it must be said. After that, we can say many other noble and healing ideas, but not built upon falsehoods.
I am hoping my readers and listeners have big enough hearts and minds to absorb this point without becoming disillusioned and going off the derech. We need to know from where we come, what we are, and what our choices are. We cannot use Torah to hide behind our own cruel behaviors or personality disorders. Whatever drove these great sages and how their family members lived or suffered is hard for us to imagine and understand, and we can stop there. It is more important for us to know what we should do, not what they did, for whatever reasons. We must trust ourselves to know the difference between oppressive, rigid, insensitive and cruel adherence to religious principles versus human decency, and love and respect for our family members. And, of course, for every story of extremely unsympathetic behavior for this one Godol, there are twenty stories of decency and human respect from other equally great gedolim such as Rav Moshe Feinstein, Rav Henoch Leibowitz and Rav Avraham Yaakov Pam.
Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation 
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