“And Moses himself was very humble, more so than any other human being on earth.” (Bamidbar 12:3)

How could Moshe Rabeinu write in the Torah, about himself, that he was the most humble of men? Isn’t that the very opposite of humility?

On Shavuos, we celebrated Kabalas Tatorah. Rav Yosef (Gemara Pesachim 68b) said, “If not for this day on which the Torah was given, which elevated the Jewish people, how many Yosefs would there be in the marketplace?” In other words, without the Torah I would be an ordinary person like everyone else.

Yet Chazal tell us that Rav Yosef later became blind and forgot most of his learning. His students would often remind him of teachings he himself had once taught them. Sometimes he remembered; sometimes he did not. The gemora tells us that the broken pieces of the first luchos were kept in the aron. This teaches us that even a talmud chacham who has lost his learning still should be honored as a full-fledged torah scholar.

With this in mind, we can better understand Rav Yosef’s previous statement. After kabalas hatorah, Rav Yosef was saying, “Even if I were to lose everything, because of the Torah I learned I still retain my title and position. I am not ‘one of the Yosefs in the marketplace.’”

This is one of the great gifts of accepting the Torah: What a person truly accomplishes through it, stays with him through thick and thin.

Rabbi Yaakov Yosef (1840-1902), the famed magid from Vilna, who later served as chief Rabbi of New York City, had a career that to many was a dismal failure. He did not achieve all that he had hoped for in his position as Chief Rabbi. In his final Shabbos Shuva Drasha, he retold the story of Rav Yosef, and he commented that Rav Yosef obviously was genuinely humble because he had lost his earlier greatness and Torah. This is what the gemara means in Sotah (49b when it quotes Rav Yosef saying “There are still humble people in the world because I am still alive.” Rabbi Yaakov Yosef said, “I too came to this city with big dreams, and most of them did not come to fruition. Anyone who looks at me now – old, frail and largely unsuccessful – can see that it is well worth the effort to repent.”

So too with Moshe Rabbeinu. Having visited the heavens, seen the angels, and felt how much closer one can be to Hashem, he realized better than anyone how much further one can still go. The more he understood the vastness of true greatness, the smaller he felt, and the humbler he became. That is why he could write that he was the most humble man on earth.

We, too, have just re-accepted the Torah on Shavuos, and, hopefully, felt a greater closeness to Hashem. Let us try to retain that connection as we forge forward towards Shabbos Shuva. By recognizing how much more there is to accomplish, we can turn this summer into a truly spiritually productive one.