Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe

Yes, I also read the health studies that advise eating this and avoiding that. I don’t always adhere to the recommendations but I follow them as if, well, as if my life depended on it. At the same time, I know that you cannot savor life if I worry constantly about extending it. Living is not a contest for duration but a pageant of meaning. Grateful as I am for the drugs that put my cancer in remission, and the studies that made my eating healthier (sometimes), and the devotion of experts in all fields, I am also aware that everyone’s days…

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“From the child of five to myself is but a step,” wrote Leo Tolstoy. “But from the new-born baby to the child of five is an astonishing distance.” Modern research validates Tolstoy’s insight. The first years are formative. For most of history, the teacher in those early years was a child’s mother. Even though women were often voiceless in public, their influence was unparalleled in shaping the generations. We see a clear example of this in the Torah. Abraham has several children. Isaac and Ishmael of course, but after Sarah’s death, he marries again and has six more children (Gen. 25:2). None of…

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Why does the Torah so often tell the tales of siblings? From Cain and Abel, the Genesis stories and on to Moses and Aaron, we are being told something important about human nature. Ultimately, our lives are shaped by our choices. Yes there are differences in families and circumstances; some people undoubtedly have a much more difficult road than others. Yet the Torah teaches that even when people grow up in the same family and have similar experiences and opportunities, who they become is who they choose to be.  Everything, says the Talmud, is in the hands of heaven except the fear of…

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Identity is largely memory. When asked who we are, we respond with the past — I am someone who was born here, worked there, is tied to this family and community. A painful effect of Alzheimer’s is that in wiping out memory, it erases identity as well.             What is true for individuals is true for a people. Jewish identity is shaped by Jewish memory. The less we know about who we were, the less we understand who we are.             Jewish memory includes tragedy of course, but there is much more to our tradition than catastrophe. We have been badly hurt, but we have…

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Good is more laborious than bad. One wrecking ball can destroy a structure it took months to build; one driver can snarl traffic for hours in spite of thousands of good drivers; as Napoleon said to his brother, “Remember, it takes ten campaigns to create esprit de corps which can be destroyed in an instant.” That is why we should marvel at the tremendous progress human beings have made. Yes, we have a million problems, and a single terrible war can wipe out centuries of advance (see the first sentence above). Nonetheless child mortality and extreme poverty have been cut…

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Guests are invited to our sukkah, some of whom are alive and some of whom are historical. The Ushpizin, biblical characters who traditionally visit the sukkah, remind us that we all live in two communities. There is a horizontal community. They are our contemporaries, who surround us: family and friends, teachers, work associates, and even those whom we watch or listen to and help shape our opinions about the world. Our horizontal community has the advantage of being immediate and alive; it has the disadvantage of limitation — you can only choose it from people who happen to be upright when you are….

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Sukkot is a magnificent holiday. It involves building, dwelling outdoors, recalls the harvest, a journey through the ages and a memory of the desert sky. Right after Yom Kippur, with its ethereal echoes, it returns us to the earth. Sukkot is the Jewish enactment of low hanging fruit. It is a reason to invite your friends and neighbors over, without the bother of having to clean your house (before or after!) And you have a place to put up all those cards and kids drawings. Genius. The sukkah is a mitzvah you can do with your entire body. Even better,…

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Early in his career Lawrence Olivier was playing Sergius in George Bernard Shaw’s “Arms and the Man.” When English director Tyrone Guthrie came to see the play he asked Olivier: “Don’t you love Sergius?” Olivier answered that he didn’t, and Gurthrie said to him, “Well, of course, if you can’t love him, you’ll never be any good in him, will you?” Olivier later called this the “richest pearl of advice in my life.” As an actor, Olivier understood that love was the entree to the character’s soul. What is true in acting is surely true in general. The best way…

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The Psalmist insists that God has removed our sins “as far as east is from west.” (Ps. 103:12). How far is east from west? The Kotzker Rebbe explains – as far as a turn of your head. We think of changing as a remote, difficult task. But sometimes it requires only a small turn. Veer slightly on the road, and over time one’s destination is quite different. Adding to one habit, or diminishing another, is a small turn that over time becomes a major change. We read in Deuteronomy that Israel will be “Only high and not low” (28:13). Rabbi…

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My father once explained the character of the biblical Isaac by citing Abraham Mendelssohn. He was a successful banker whose father was the great philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and whose son was the great composer Felix Mendelssohn. Late in life he lamented, “The first half of my life I was the son of my father; the second half of my life I was the father of my son.” Isaac was the son of Abraham, founder of the Jewish faith, and father of Jacob, source of the twelve tribes. But Isaac had his own special virtues. He re-dug the wells of his…

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