Reb Shlomo Zalman Auerbach zt”l, whom I was privileged to know, was one of the most outstanding halachic authorities of our time. He surpassed (in my opinion) the extreme level of humility that we expect from all gedolei Yisrael. Many referred to him as the posek hador (halachic authority of the generation) and no other expression could cause him more anguish.
When a local religious newspaper referred to him as posek hador, he dashed off a furious letter to the publisher threatening to cancel his subscription if the offense were ever repeated! (From that day on there was a banner poster in the paper’s newsroom, “NEVER REFER TO THE POSEK HADOR… AS THE POSEK HADOR!”) And although “posek hador” was the title that irked him the most, he was allergic to all titles and appellations. If he received a letter with honorifics appended to his name he became so incensed that he refused to even open the envelope.
He deplored the numerous titles with which people addressed him or referred to him and did not hesitate to express his low opinion of the popular practice. Reb Shlomo Zalman believed that the titles of honor that were bestowed upon him were unnecessary and he even considered some untrue. When his son Reb Baruch wrote a sefer and referred to his father as Maran, Reb Shlomo Zalman was irate. “You’re my own son,” he exclaimed, “and look what you are doing to me. If you do not take this term out of your sefer, I shall remove my letter of approbation!”
Someone once brought a sefer he had written to Reb Shlomo Zalman’s house. When the Gaon opened it up he saw that the author had inscribed it with extremely lavish and, to his mind, bombastic and pompous honorifics. As soon as the man departed, Reb Shlomo Zalman ripped out the page with the grandiose titles, and only then did he place the volume in his bookcase alongside his other sifrei kodesh.
Reb Shlomo Zalman’s nephew once wrote him a letter asking him four halachic questions. The Rav responded to each of the queries, and then closed with these words: “It is ‘very not nice’ of you to write all these titles to me, especially on the envelope.”
The nephew later asked his uncle to explain what he meant by “very not nice.” “Is there a difference between ‘not nice’ and ‘very not nice’?” he inquired.
Reb Shlomo Zalman explained himself. “Do you think it matters or interests the mailman if I am a Rav or a Gaon, or the other exaggerations you wrote? The poor man sweats in the summer, gets drenched in the winter, and, if that isn’t enough, you have to complicate his job by making him struggle with all these acronyms and fancy titles to decipher whom the letter is for. It is inexcusable gezel zman, the robbery of someone’s time. It is strictly forbidden to write all of this on the envelope and it is really not nice! All that is necessary and all that should be written is the name. Period.”
In his later years, when it became difficult for Reb Shlomo Zalman to read, he would ask his devoted disciple Reb Avigdor Nebanzahl to read his letters for him aloud, insisting that Rav Nebanzahl read only the body of the letter and skip any praise or titles.
This remark prompted Rav Nebanzahl to relate to his Rebbe the story of how Rabbi Akiva Eiger once received a letter from a simple Jew, addressed to Ha-Rav Ha-Gaon Rashkebehag, and Rabbi Akiva Eiger responded to the letter-writer addressing him with the very same title. When this unsophisticated fellow eventually met Rabbi Akiva Eiger, he complained that he was not a Gaon, and certainly not a leader of world Jewry! Rabbi Akiva Eiger innocently replied, “I saw that this is what people write in letters to me, so I assumed it must be the customary form of address in every letter.”