Why shouldn't I try to be like someone I admire?

Rabbi Landau teaches that “God wants you, not your friend. He already has him for that.” So why work so hard to become someone else?

He brings a striking law about the Levi'im in the Temple. There were singers and there were gatekeepers, and each one had his place. A singer who stepped into the gatekeeper's job was liable to death. Why so severe?

“Simply because you're not needed there,” Rabbi Landau explains. “You are here and alive to do your own assigned mission.” Holiness is not becoming someone else. It is becoming fully who you were created to be.

“Don't trade your purpose for someone else's,” he says. “The holiest person is the one who stands in his own place.”

Also answered in this teaching

How does comparing myself to others hurt me?

Rabbi Landau teaches that comparison makes you abandon your own place while trying to stand in someone else's. Your mission, your gifts, and your responsibility are yours, and no one else can do your part for you.

Going deeper: Rabbi Landau's teaching, level by level

Surface claim

Hashem does not need you to be someone else. He already made that person.

Fear, vulnerability, or tension

The world spends so much time comparing, copying, and competing that people forget a simple truth: their place is theirs.

Underlying need or longing

In A Soul at Peace, Rabbi Landau writes that when you try to be your friend, you do not become more than he is. You leave yourself behind, and two roles are left empty: his and yours.

What may be behind it

The singer at the gate was not doing something unholy. He was out of his place. In the book, Rabbi Landau explains that outside your mission you are cut off from what gives you life.

Deepest human truth

Hashem needs your friend, but He needs you too, and no one else can fill your place.

More questions from this teaching

• Why was a Levite singer punished for doing a gatekeeper's job?