How virtues change! Moses, the greatest Jewish hero, is described as "a very humble man, more humble than anyone on the face of the earth."

By today's standards he was wrongly advised. He should have hired an agent, sharpened up his image, let slip some calculated indiscretions about his conversations with G-d and sold his story to the press for six figures.

With any luck, he may have landed his own talk show, dispensing wisdom to those willing to bare their soul to the watching millions. He would have had his fifteen minutes of fame. Instead he settled for the consolation prize of three thousand years of moral influence.

Humility is the orphaned virtue of our age. Its demise came with the threatening anonymity of mass culture alongside the loss of neighborhoods and congregations.

A community is a place of friends. Urban society is a landscape of strangers. Yet there is an irrepressible human urge for recognition. So a culture emerged out of the various ways of 'making a statement' to people we do not know, who, we hope, will somehow notice.

Beliefs ceased to be things confessed in prayer and became slogans emblazoned on T shirts. A comprehensive repertoire developed of signaling individuality, from personalized number-plates, to 'in your face' dressing, to designer labels worn on the outside, not within.

Today's creed is, "If you've got it, flaunt it." Humility, being humble, didn't stand a chance.

What a shame.

True humility is one of the most life-enhancing of all virtues. It does not mean undervaluing or underestimating yourself. It means valuing other people. It signals an openness to life's grandeur and the willingness to be surprised, uplifted, by goodness wherever one finds it.

I learned the meaning of humility from my late father. He came to this country at five, fleeing persecution in Poland. His family was poor and he had to leave school at age fourteen to support them.

His education was largely self-taught. Yet he loved excellence, in whatever field. He had a passion for classical music and for painting, and his taste in literature was impeccable.

He was an enthusiast. What I so cherished in him most was his capacity to admire. I think the greater part of humility is the capacity to be open to something greater than oneself. False humility is the pretense that one is small. True humility is the consciousness of standing in the presence of greatness, which is why humility is the virtue of prophets, those who feel most vividly the nearness of G-d.

As a young man with questions about faith and religion, I traveled to the United States to learn from outstanding rabbis. I met many, but I had the privilege of meeting the greatest leader of my generation, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn.

Heir to the dynasty of a relatively small group of Jewish mystics, the Rebbe escaped from Europe to New York during the War and had turned the tattered remnants of his flock into a worldwide movement. Wherever I traveled, I heard tales of his extraordinary leadership, many verging on the miraculous. I was told that he was one of the outstanding charismatic leaders of our time.

I resolved to meet him, and was utterly surprised. He was certainly not charismatic in any conventional sense. Quiet, self-effacing, understated, one might hardly notice him if not for the reverence in which he was held by his disciples.

That meeting changed my life. He was a world-famous figure. I was an anonymous student from abroad. Yet in his presence I seemed to be the most important person in the world. He asked me about myself; he listened carefully; he challenged me to become a leader, something I never contemplated before.

He believed in me more than I believed in myself. As I left the room, it occurred to me that it had been full of my presence and his absence.

Perhaps that is why listening is considered as a religious act. I then knew that greatness is measured by what we efface ourselves towards. There was no grandeur in his manner; nor any false modesty. He was serene, dignified, majestic; a man of transcending humility who took you into his embrace and taught you to look up.

True virtue never needs to advertise itself. That is why I find the aggressive packaging of personality so sad. It speaks of loneliness, the profound, endemic loneliness of a world without relationships of fidelity and trust. It testifies ultimately to a loss of faith - a loss of that knowledge, so precious to previous generations, that beyond the visible surfaces of this world is a Presence who knows us, loves us, and takes notice of our deeds.

Secure in that knowledge, what else, could we need? Time and again, when conducting a funeral or visiting mourners, I discover that the deceased had led a life of generosity and kindness unknown to even close relatives. I came to the conclusion, one I never dreamed of before I was given this window into private worlds, that the majority of saintly or generous acts are done quietly without public recognition. What a glorious revelation humility is of the human spirit.

Humility is more than just a virtue: it is a perception, a language in which the 'I' is silent so that I can hear the 'Thou,' the unspoken call beneath human speech, the Divine whisper within all that moves, the voice that calls me to redeem its loneliness with the touch of love.

Humility opens us to the world. And does it matter that it no longer fits the confines of our age? The truth is that moral beauty, like music, always moves those who can hear beneath the noise. Virtues may be out of fashion, but they are never out of date.

The things that call attention to themselves are never interesting for long, which is why our attention span is so short. Humility - the polar opposite of 'advertisements for myself' - never fails to leave its afterglow.

© Office of the Chief Rabbi 2001