I judge myself from the inside. I know how I feel, how complex are my own motivations and ideas. My view of others is different. Especially when they do something I dislike, I often attribute a single motive, idea or personality trait to them. Perhaps for this month of Elul we should reverse the process. Try seeing yourself from the outside — how do my actions affect others? How do they appear to them? At the same time, try to judge others from the inside: what could have moved them to do this, or why might they have done something I think is…
Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe
Who Made That?
Two hundred years from now, on a fine spring afternoon, scientists look up at the heavens and tell God that it is all over — humans can stand on their own. The scientist says, “Look, God. You were good in your day but we can do everything ourselves now.” “Really?” says God. “You can make a human being from dust?” “Absolutely” say the scientists. “Let me see” answers God. The scientist reaches down to scoop up some soil, but is interrupted. “Oh no” says God. “You get your own dust.” Human beings have learned a remarkable amount about manipulating the world. But…
Baruch HaShem
When you ask a religious Jew how he or she is doing, the answer is likely to be “Baruch HaShem” – blessed be God. Good news often has “Baruch Hashem” added to it as well, as in, “my children are all well, Baruch HaShem.” Baruch Hashem appears three times in the bible. What may surprise you is that all three times it is spoken by non-Jews: by Noah in Genesis 9:26; by Abraham’s servant Eliezer in Gen. 24:27; and by Moses’ father-in-law Jethro in Exodus 18:10. This cannot be coincidence and it points to a beautiful lesson. Not only is God…
Needs Wheels
From George Prochnik’s award winning biography of Stefan Zweig, “The Impossible Exile”: “One day in the 1920’s when Zweig happened to be traveling to Germany with Otto Zarek, the two men stopped off to visit an exhibition of antique furniture at a museum in Munich. After some desultory meandering around the galleries, Zweig stopped short before a display of enormous medieval wooden chests. “Can you tell me,” he abruptly asked, “which of these chests belonged to Jews?” Zarek stared uncertainly — they all looked of equally high quality and bore no apparent marks of ownership. “Zweig smiled. “Do you see…
Two Rights Can Make A Wrong
Most ethical dilemmas, like most tragedies, are not a conflict of right and wrong but a conflict of rights. People want different, competing and sometimes worthy things that cannot coexist. The authors of the Federalist papers knew this well. When Madison writes that, “the causes of faction cannot be removed and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its effects” he is telling us that there will always be division — there will always be good reasons for division — and we have to be vigilant in not allowing those divisions to destroy us. Work…
Responsibilities and Dreams
This past week all across the world Jews mourned the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. And they blamed themselves. Yes, there are passages in Jewish literature that excoriate the nations who carried out the destruction. There are even passages that express anger at God. But primarily the Jews attribute the catastrophes of their history to their own misdeeds. In that is a danger and a blessing. The danger is clear: when something catastrophic happens that is not at all the fault of the people, such as the Shoah, to blame oneself is a moral monstrosity. No one should feel responsible for the inflicted…
Direct Your Heart To Heaven
From the Talmud: A favorite saying of the Rabbis of Yavneh was: “I am God’s creature and my fellow is God’s creature. My work is in the town and his work is in the country. I rise early for my work and he rises early for his work. Just as he does not presume to do my work, so I do not presume to do his work. Will you say, I do much and he does little? We have learnt: One may do much or one may do little; it is all one, provided he directs his heart to heaven.” Berachot 17a Judaism is a tradition of…
Gifted, but Good?
We are a society geared toward the gifted. We have programs to enhance people’s natural endowments, special training and tutoring, early identification of people with talent or intelligence. Of course it makes sense; innovators and artists and thinkers should be given opportunities to grow their gifts. But moral education has to go hand in hand with ability; those who can make the greatest contribution need the greatest sensitivity to ethical issues. The Torah teaches this with the story of Bilaam. Bilaam was a pagan, but according to the Rabbis, he was the most gifted prophet in the world. In a…
Listen Israel
Deuteronomy is the great book of listening. We live in a visual time; our age is saturated with images. Everyone’s cellphone carries a camera and can document the sights of our lives. But over and over in the first chapters of Deuteronomy we read the word ‘shma’ — listen, until we reach the famous line of the Shma prayer itself (Deut 6:4). Judaism expounds and echoes. In the bare desert there was little to see but much to hear. God does not appear, but speaks. The Talmud is called the Oral tradition, because it was passed down in stories and wisdom…
Doors
Franz Kafka in his famous parable “Before the Law” writes about a man who stands before a door designated only for him, but dies without entering. A very different spirit from Kafka, Ralph Waldo Emerson, nonetheless anticipated the existentialist by writing: “Men live on the brink of mysteries and harmonies into which they never enter, and with their hand on the door latch they die outside.” During the Neilah service of Yom Kippur, the liturgy tells of the gates closing. The origin is both literal and metaphorical: the gates that closed on the ancient Temple at the end of a…
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