From pain to humility. David Brooks, in his new bestseller, the road to character,

draws a sharp distinction between what he calls the resume virtues, the achievements and skills

that bring success, and the eulogy virtues, the ones that are spoken about in funerals,

the virtues and strengths that make you the kind of person you are

when you're not wearing masks or playing roles,

the inner person that friends and family recognize as the real you.

Brooks relates this distinction to the one made by Rabbi Soloveitchitz Thal in his famous essay,

The Lonely Man of Faith. There he speaks of Adam I, the human person as creator, builder,

master of nature imposing his or her will on the world, and Adam two, the covenantal personality,

living in obedience to transcendent truth, guided by a sense of duty and right in the will to serve. Adam 1 seeks success.

Adam 2 strives for charity, love and redemption. Adam 1 lives by the logic of economics, the pursuit of self-interest and maximum

utility. Adam 2 lives by the very different logic of morality where giving matters more than receiving

and conquering desire more important than satisfying it. In the moral universe success, when it leads to pride, becomes failure.

Failure, when it leads to humility, becomes success. In that essay first published in

1965, Rabbi Soloveitch wondered whether there was a place for Adam 2 in the America of his day.

So intent was it on celebrating human powers and economic advance.

Fifty years on, David Brooks echoes that doubt.

We live, he says, in a society that encourages us to think about how to have a great career, but leaves

many of this inarticulate about how to cultivate the inner life.

That is a central theme of Balotachar.

Until now we've seen the outer Moses, worker of miracles, mouthpiece of the divine word, unafraid to confront

Pharaoh on the one hand, his own people on the other, the man who shattered the tablets engraved

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