Sadly, so many of these sages (?) don't practice what they preach. Rabbi David Hartman was obese,which is a known threaten to life, and many so called "sages' smoke. Both the above are however in direct contradiction to Pikuach nefesh. If I'm wrong about the commandment, then please correct me. You must not knowingly do something that endangers your health. Several rabbis slimmed down and stopped smoking as soon as it was proven that obesity and smoking threatened their health.

Baruch Dayan haemet. He was a great man, kind gentle with a sermon of fire. Knew him since my bar mi in Montreal.

Hartman had just received his Ph.D.* at McGill University in Montreal (focusing on the works of Maimonides). The Director at the campus Hillel recommended that I go to a lecture he was giving at the local JCC, that I'd be "in for a treat". She was right. I subsequently heard him only once for a minor lecture, read his "Israelis and the Jewish Tradition". If, rather than the haredi version, the Judaism most Israelis experienced was closer to that of Hartman, Israel would be a more Jewish place. * Most Israeli rabbis never set foot in a college, much less get an advanced degree.

Is it a Jewish value to diagnose people you haven't ever met? Do you know for a fact that the rabbi's weight affected his health? Are you his personal physician? Shame on you. Rabbi Hartman was the Jew so many Orthodox refuse to acknowledge exists: traditionally educated in yeshiva, an orthodox rabbi, then educated in western studies, having higher education and degree, still practicing a halachic lifestyle while adapting to modernity, and a fully well adapted human being. The world is poorer for his absence.