Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe

“When God saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called out of the bush (Ex. 3:4)” Why? What was so special about Moses turning aside to look that only then did God call out? The rabbis teach that the bush had been burning since the beginning of time but only Moses saw that it was special, that it was not consumed. In this Moses teaches us perhaps the most important lesson about contemporary politics and culture.   The word ‘focus’ comes from the Latin, meaning ‘domestic hearth.’ In other words, a fire makes us focus. We all know how…

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“Therefore a man will leave his father and mother and cling to his wife” teaches Genesis 2:24. I have always thought that verse was directed toward parents and even more, in-laws.   It is a familiar scenario. You raise children, feed them, care for their every need, and feel that powerful bond that love and dependency create. You remember their last cold and their first steps. Then one day she comes home and points to a boy you have never met and says, “This is the most important person in the world to me.”   You might feel wounded, but…

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The first mitzvah in the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply. The last mitzvah is to write a Sefer Torah. In some sense, these are the same mitzvah.   Judaism entrusts its adherents with the sacred task of transmission. Never a dominant faith in population, it has often counted on a “saving remnant” to ensure its survival in this world.   Every parent, ever teacher, every writer and student and scribe is an agent of transmission.What is handed on will never be an exact copy of what was. The letters in the Torah remain the same but the implications…

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How can we be commanded not to covet? After all, wanting something is natural. Yet the tenth commandment teaches us not to covet. There are many answers in the Jewish tradition. One points to the idea that you only covet that which you believe you can have. Whatever belongs to someone else should be considered strictly off limits, and if you think of it that way you will not covet it. More radically, one Hasidic response reminds us that in the Torah, they are not called the Ten Commandments, but aseret hadevarim – the ten sayings. The first for example,…

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In the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” God comes out of the sky and growls at the prostrate knights: “Oh, don’t grovel – one thing I can’t stand is people groveling.” Well, Monty Python may be British but their God sounds Jewish. When God first speaks to the prophet Ezekiel, the call begins: “Stand on your feet that I may speak to you (2:1).” In Jewish prayer we bend for a blessing, but we say God’s name once we have returned to an upright position. Falling to one’s knees or on one’s face is very rare, restricted to…

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The medieval poet Moses Ibn Ezra used the following simile: We are like passengers on a ship, believing we are stationary when in fact we are headed toward a destination. Similarly, we do not realize that as we believe our lives to be steady state, we move inexorably toward death. Judaism is neither fixated on death nor in denial about it. We return from a funeral to food; the “meal of transition” affirms that however sad, mourners are alive, and the needs of the living must be addressed. Remembering the dead is a sacred obligation. Those who remember should themselves…

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The cauliflower explains a lot about the Jewish tradition. A fractal is a self-similar pattern, whose scale or size differs. Things in nature display different degrees of such self-similarity — break a cauliflower apart and a piece will look like a whole. Much of the modern interest in fractals is due to the work of Benoit Mandelbrot, a Jewish mathematician born in Warsaw who left before the war and went on to have a very distinguished career. Our sages teach that the deeds of the ancestors are signs for the children. In other words, Jewish history repeats itself, and if…

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Resolutions for the New Year: 1. To laugh often, but in amusement, not in derision. 2. To pray often, but with appreciation, not avarice. 3. To lift my eyes from screens and remind myself of the variety, beauty, occasional savagery and sublimity of God’s created world. 4. To try listening without simultaneously preparing a response. 5. To believe that opinions other than my own, especially on things Jewish and things American, deserve the dignity of serious appraisal. 6. To recognize that as a fortunate person I cannot permit myself the luxury of exhausting my compassion for others. 7. To push…

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In a Talmud seminar Talmud with Prof. David Weiss Halivni we once came across a misquotation from a well known Talmudist. When we questioned Prof. Halivni, he asked us in turn how many had complete sets of Talmud in our homes. We all raised our hands. How many had two, or three? Several kept our hands up. “Well,” he said, “this man did not have an entire set in his town. He quotes from memory.” There was a time in human history when material for learning was scarce and precious. Now it is ubiquitous. It is difficult for a new generation to imagine the reverence that once greeted…

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Years ago I read a brilliant anecdote about George S. Kaufman, prize winning playwright: On the TV show “This Is Show Business” the youthful singer Eddie Fisher complained that girls refuse to date him because of his age. This was Kaufman’s reply: “Mr. Fisher, on Mt. Wilson there is a telescope that can magnify the most distant stars up to 24 times the magnification of any previous telescope. This remarkable instrument was surpassed in the world of astronomy until the construction of the Mount Palomar telescope, an even more remarkable instrument of magnification. Owing to improvements in optical technology, the…

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