When my wife and I decided to settle in Israel, we set about to find the "right" apartment. It was a thrilling and challenging experience, as well as a historic process - I'm the first of my family to own property in the Jewish Homeland in two thousand years! We wanted to make the right decision, and so visited and considered many possibilities.

One breezy afternoon, in response to our questions about closing in the balcony and expanding the living room, our realtor remarked with a smile: "You Americans always think BIG. How can I enlarge the apartment? Can I dig out a basement? Can I build on the roof? Israelis almost never ask these questions and with you, they come only a few moments after 'Hi, How are you?'"

We laughed and guessed that perhaps we were spoiled: America is a large country and its private residences are large, while, Israel is a small country and, despite impressive economic growth, average Israeli homes are "cozy."

But later as I reflected on the realtor's comments, I realized that our big-thinking referred to more than just the size of an apartment. The Western World is caught up in Big-Think. We discuss global events. We read about the lifestyles of the rich and famous. We look for high-profile jobs with large and growing companies. Movie stars, politicians, athletes, musicians, and television actors - none of whom would recognize us on the street - are quite central to our lives. The corporate tycoon is, incredibly, more respected in our culture than the high school teacher. After all, the tycoon gets paid big, while a teacher does not.

But is bigger actually better?

Paul Johnson's fascinating book, The Intellectuals, is an amazing expose` on many of the "progressive" intelligentsia, the "greatest minds" of the modern world, including Rousseau, Hemingway, Tolstoy. A famous thinker writes, talks, and preaches about grand ideas; his or her vision would change the world and solve the world's problems; the thinker is "in," radical, and revered, as he/she attracts a huge following, and is proclaimed a visionary against the primitive understandings of ancient traditions; the thinker dies a martyr, or at least a hero, and is resurrected in high school courses, college dissertations, and the entire "intellectual" canon.

Yet Johnson wrote the book to reveal an amazing correlation - often the bigger and more radical their ideas, the more morally bankrupt their lives. These lofty "defenders of humanity" lied, cheated, stole, plagiarized, repeatedly cheated on their spouses, abandoned their children, and so on. Their ideas were big, their vision broad, their sights high, but the kind of people you'd move across town in order to avoid.

How is it that such "great" people could think so big and act so small? Perhaps because they thought so big - or, better, because they only thought so big - that they acted so small! A person who over-focuses on "Important People" or "Important Theories" may under-focus on the little old lady across the street, or the needs of one's spouse. Someone absorbed in the mega-concerns of the corporation might fail to notice their sick neighbor who needs a helping hand to do the shopping.

Judaism teaches that you measure a person by the small things, not the big ones. You measure how big a person is, how refined and developed their personal character traits are, by how they deal with the small things in life. And sometimes one can help many individuals by acting on a grand scale rather than an individual one, but it is easy to focus on big matters concerning humanity as a whole, and ignore small matters such as one's spouse, children, neighbors, and colleagues.

Is a person honest? Caring? Responsible? Is he/she trying to improve their character? Even if their names never appear in the newspaper, and even if their salary is low, they are not small people. In terms of the things that really count, they are even more than big - they are great.