I was listening to a shiur in which the lecturer proudly enumerated all the gedolim he had gone to visit in Eretz Yisrael when he was there with his son for his son's becoming a bar mitzva. It was a list of at least ten people which included :
R' Landau
R' Berel Povorsky
the Pinsk-Karlin Rebbe
R' Yaakov Meir Shechter
R' Yitzchok Scheiner
R' Gamliel Rabinowitz
R' Meir Soloveitchik
the Belzer Rebbe
R' Aron Leib Shteinman
and he said he even paid someone to "get him in" to see a certain gadol.
Now it's a mitzvah to see one's Torah teacher on a Yom Tov, and any time one needs advice or to discuss things, but to go to random rabbis, i.e. these are not your Torah teachers, and to make them into "tourist attractions," is disturbing. Disturbing to me hearing about it and certainly disturbing to the rabbis being visited. Why does he think it's okay to take away from their time in order to meet with him?
Oddly enough, later in the talk he referred to being a nudnik who bothered them. But that didn't stop him from getting those brachos he wanted. I picture a scorecard with the names of a variety of gedolim on it and a box to check off if a bracha was successfully elicited.
What a contrast to the hero of the book I wrote about here in which he seeks out actual relationships with great people and does so by seeing what he can do for them.
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Indeed. On a similar note, in this letter, the Previous Lubavitcher Rebbe says that blessings are fulfilled on account of the personal devotion and improvement of the one requesting the blessings, and once they are fulfilled, they demand further self-improvement.
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