Sometimes you need to play nice, and dumb, and keep your insights to yourself. Sometimes you walk away even when you probably should stay. And you never tell people the answer — they need to get it themselves.

“The ego is the yetzer hara’s most devoted henchman. Often, when we think we’re being humble, that’s when our ego shines brightest.”

—Rabbi Dov Briansky

“Got another advice email,” Dov called across the dining room, hoping he was keeping his smugness in check.

“What does this one say?” Tziporah asked, looking up from matching socks.

“It’s a girl — or woman — I never know the right term.” He frowned at the screen.

“Single, late-twenties?”

“Exactly.”

“What does she want to know?”

“If she should give up on marrying a long-term learner.”

“Ouch, that’s rough.” Tziporah frowned, then went back to the three spare socks she was holding.

“Yeah, I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say.”

“Aren’t you Rabbi Dov Briansky, sage know-it-all?” she teased, moving on to shirts.

Know-it-all, yes, sage, he wished. She had too much confidence in him. He should tell Tziporah what his rebbi had said one Purim years ago; it still made him hesitate.

“I don’t know this woman from Adam. She wrote that she’s listened to all my shiurim, and it’s strengthened her bitachon like nothing else, but there’s so much pressure from everyone around her. Is it kibbud av v’eim to entertain these ideas?”

“Is it?”

“Maybe, I don’t know!” Dov adjusted his yarmulke. “I don’t know her at all — her upbringing, her personality, her hashkafos, nothing. She’s just a name and an email address; I can’t give her advice.”

He looked to his right, the Chofetz Chaim hung there, and Rav Moshe Feinstein was on his left. He was exactly where he wanted to be — and it scared him.

“So, what are you going to respond?” Tziporah stopped folding and looked at him expectantly.

“Some vague suggestion about how to think about the problem.” Dov gestured toward the screen. “Also even if I did know her, I’m not a rebbe, I don’t tell people what to do.” He looked at his wife. “Do they realize I’m in kollel and give a weekly parshah shiur? I can tell them what to think about, but I can’t offer an actual answer.”

Today Dov strongly felt the tension that always ate at him. Was he doing this for the right reasons — was this about Torah, or about himself?

Tziporah took the folded laundry and placed it back in the basket.

“I totally hear you, this is past your pay grade, but she’s gonna be disappointed,” she said. “She’s reaching out to you because she trusts you, because she feels like she knows you.”

Dov frowned, glancing at the gedolim pictures again.

“I’m just someone who gives speeches on the Internet. I don’t think ‘Dear Abby’ is part of the job description of a speaker.”

“But you’re not just a speaker, you’re a rabbi.”

“I don’t have semichah.”

“Shhhh — don’t tell anyone.” Tziporah laughed; she never saw this the way he did. “Besides, you don’t need semichah to be called rabbi these days.”

That’s part of the problem, Dov thought.

Tziporah started walking toward the stairs with the laundry basket.

“Did I ever tell you what Rabbi Teichman told me one Purim?” Dov said, trying to sound casual.

“No, tell me.” She continued walking.

Maybe he had sounded too casual, and she didn’t realize he was about to show his cards.

“I was 22, one of those ‘Rebbi, give me a brachah, Rebbi I want to learn Torah, inspire the world’ kinda drunks.”

Tziporah laughed at that.

“And Rabbi Teichman, who’d had plenty to drink himself, looked at me and said, ‘Dov, you’re already great, your nisayon is that you know it.’ ”

He tried reading Tziporah’s face. She was impassive.

“I don’t get it,” she said. “Just share your Torah, that’s what it’s all about.”

“Never mind.” Dov waved his wife off, and she trekked upstairs. He was relieved and disappointed at her departure.

Tziporah didn’t get it, and didn’t care, too; maybe it was better that she didn’t see the worst of him. The insatiable abyss that always seemed to get in the way, that demanded to be fed. No matter how much he starved it, it didn’t die. People were emailing him questions he had no business answering, yet the ravenous darkness wanted to take a bite out of it all, spit back smart, pithy answers. He was tempted every day.

Dov looked back at the gedolim hanging on the wall. Did they see through him while everyone else thought he was an inspiration?