When I was a teenager, two strangers came to our home. They were Russian, and I learned that they visited to thank my parents, who had helped them escape from the Soviet Union. I have since learned many stories of Jews who helped other Jews, risked their own safety, smuggled goods in and people out, in an attempt to help. Such benevolence is not new. In the 15th century, some 250 Portugese Jews captured at African seaports were sold as slaves throughout the kingdom of Alfonso V. The Jews of Lisbon formed a committee and through the beneficence of…
Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe
Dinner Table Topic?
For years I have been asking students of various ages if they ever had a discussion about God around the dinner table. Once the smiles abate, I ask why not. The reasons are usually the same: everyone has different opinions; nobody really knows; what is there to say – you believe or you don’t. Of course people have different opinions about almost everything. Of the three topics one is not supposed to discuss in polite company – sex, politics, and religion – the first two comprise most of our conversation and only the last is rarely mentioned. Yet what…
Enough!
When the brothers meet, Esau tells Jacob “I have much.” Jacob responds by saying “I have enough” (lit. I have everything.) The scholar and ethicist Meir Tamari calls this “the economics of enough.” We always want more; as Koheleth teaches, “the eye never has enough of seeing nor the ear of hearing” — we might add, nor the hand of grasping. Yet beyond a certain point money and possessions are not what you need or even what you can use, but about salving the ego with more and more and more. …
A New Year Of Prayer
Those who are new to traditional Jewish prayer often hear it as a parade of gibberish. There are moments when the congregation sings together but then it is like boxers retreating to their corners, each becoming newly occupied with his or her own stream of chants or mumbles. Rabbi Simon Greenberg used to say that Jews pray alone together. Individual hearts, each with its own sorrows and dreams, also join in a collective aspiration that takes flight at certain moments in the service. Mumbling, although it is the recitation of words, is closer in sound to the babbling of…
An Eye For Beauty
There are many different ways to understand beauty, of course, and Judaism often speaks of character attributes as beautiful. Yet despite the caution in Proverbs that beauty is vain, physical splendor too is acknowledged and prized in the tradition: Berachot 58b teaches us to offer a blessing when seeing a beautiful creature or a beautiful tree. When concluding study of a tractate of Talmud, we say “hadran aloch” – we will return to you. The same root that means ‘return’ can mean “beauty.” Beauty is a durable quality, something that can give delight again and again. Beauty is attributed to the natural…
End Goals and Goals Without End
There is a problem with the word “toldot.” It usually means children, or perhaps generations. But when the Torah says “These are the toldot of Jacob: Joseph” (Gen. ch 37) it does not list all of Jacob’s children. There are two different kinds of life goals. One is achievable and has an ending. If your wish is to buy a certain house or to get a certain job, once it is accomplished your goal is complete. Many people, especially in mid-life, suffer a crisis less because they haven’t achieved their goals and more because they have, and the pursuit…
The Right Kind Of Silence
The Talmud tells the story of Rav Safra, who was offered a price for some goods but could not respond as he was in the middle of prayers. The buyer kept upping the price. When Rav Safra concluded, he told the buyer he would accept the initial offer since his silence was misinterpreted, and he would have accepted the initial offer had he not been in the middle of prayer. Rabbi Leo Jung told the story of the once formidable company Beer, Sondheimer and co. In 1870 just before the Franco-German war, Mr. Beer left his office for the…
What’s In The Forest
In this week’s Torah reading, Jacob runs away from home and has a dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder. Upon waking he exclaims: “There is God in this place and I did not know it.” The most common explanation of Jacob’s words is that he did not know that God was in the place where he lay, that God was everywhere – the young man is discovering for himself that religious truth. But we might also understand him to be talking about his internal place. In a time of displacement, or fear, or simple confusion, he discovers…
Thanksgiving
The first words we say in the morning are “Modeh ani”– I am grateful. When the Amida is repeated the prayer leader recites everything on behalf of the congregations save the modim passage — the prayer of thanks. Our lives are filled with blessings to recite — over food, over experiences, over nature, over one another — and each is an expression of thanks to God. Gratitude is not an expression of satisfaction: you can be grateful and still believe that things are broken. Being grateful is not a state reserved for the good times of life alone. It is…
Inner-Directed Truth
Much of our kindness comes from fear — if I do not act this way another person or group of people will think less of me or be angry at me. This is not necessarily a bad motivation; we are social creatures and a ‘decent respect for the opinions of mankind’ is written into our founding document. But it is not the highest motivation either. Kindness that arises from a sense of sympathy or of justice is stronger and surer. Abraham does not greet the strangers because he fears they will disdain this inhospitable nomad if he stays in his…
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