Rabbi Wolpe - ADL Impressions

Blessed are You O Lord our God, who has sanctified us with Your commandments and commanded us to eat bitter herbs. We sit in ease at the Seder table and eat bitter herbs to recall the hardships of our ancestors...

Throughout Jewish history, the Passover has operated on two levels of time. The Haggadah recounts the past, the story of both the Exodus and the Talmudic Rabbis who expound on it. The words make all of the ideas come alive...

This week’s Torah portion describes an uninspired procedure – the Priest examining an afflicted person’s skin disease. Yet it contains an essential truth about life, and a critique of our word. In Leviticus 13:3, the Priest is deciding if the...

In Leviticus, Aaron is ordained as the High Priest. This week we are told (Leviticus 9:1): “On the eighth day, Moses called Aaron and his sons and the elders of Israel.” Why was the eighth day chosen? Eight is a...

Anyone familiar with a Jewish wedding has to be shocked by the reading from this week’s haftorah. The prophet Jeremiah declares bleakly to the people in God’s name: “Then will I silence, in the cities of Judah and the streets...

Purim is a holiday of masks. A mask doesn’t fully change you, but it obscures identity, distorting who you are. The boy who dresses as Mordechai can act old and wise, but everyone recognizes him as a boy playing a...

At the very end of the book of Exodus, we read that a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night led the Israelites “in all their encampments.” The word for “encampments” is Masa, which refers to travel...

In our parasha for the very first time, Moses calls the people together. He does not do so in the face of Amalek or another enemy. War is not Moses’s method of unity. Rather, he calls upon all of Israel...

Coming down from Sinai with the carved tablets from God, we can understand Moses’s anguish at witnessing the Israelites worship the golden calf. Still, it is hard to understand why Moses then takes the tablets and smashes them on the...

Prophets are dramatic. Everyone loves a prophet (so long as the prophet is not angry at them.) The prophetic voice is rich with indignation, laced with scorn and elevated by righteousness. By contrast, no one loves a bureaucrat. The person...