In Jerusalem at the Sami Rohr book prize ceremony, the winners summarized what they had learned in writing the book. Yehuda Mirsky, author of a beautiful biography of Rav Kook, said movingly: “I was just astonished that such a person could exist. Someone at once so deep and so good.” His comment reminded me of the statement of famed psychiatrist Karl Menninger in his journals, that he didn’t believe in God but he believed in the Tzaddik, the righteous person. Yet a truly righteous person is a path to God; in our tradition God is manifested less in miracles and…
Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe
Learning To Listen
In the Talmud we are told that Rav Eliezer ben Hyrcanos never taught anything that he had not heard from his teacher. Then in Avoth D’Rabbi Nathan we are told that “Rav Eliezer taught things that no ear had ever heard.” The two texts seem to contradict each other; so which is true? Did Rav Eliezer only repeat what he heard or did he innovate new teachings? The answer comes from Rav Kook. He wrote that Rav Eliezer in fact only taught what he had heard from his teacher, but he listened so carefully that he heard things no one…
The Tongue Set Free?
The most frequently cited sins in Jewish tradition are sins of speech. Some are direct, such as gossiping or slander. Others are indirect, such as embarrassing someone in public, which is usually a consequence of saying something callous or unkind. As a result, shemirat halashon, guarding one’s tongue, is a powerful value in Judaism. In part this is because we recognize the potency of words. If I tell you something discreditable about another person, even if it is later disproved, I cannot force you to forget and the faint whiff of scandal sticks to their reputation, even if wholly undeserved….
Without an Appendix
The great chess master Savielly Tartakower used to say that the winner of a game was the one who had made the next to last mistake. Note he did not say the one who makes the most brilliant moves. Tartakower knew that brilliancy depends on error. The biographies of successful people remind us of the prevalence of failure. Twelve publishers rejected the Harry Potter novels although they turned out to be among the best-selling books of all time. Steve Jobs may be remembered as legendarily successful but he was kicked out of Apple. While standing for election in 1922, Winston…
Shaped By Wilderness
The three major Chagim, holidays, of the Jewish year — Pesach, Sukkot and Shavuot — all commemorate deeds that took place in the wilderness. They have agricultural significance as well, tying them to the land, but their origin reminds us that we were shaped by the desert. The Rabbis say one must make oneself as open as the desert to receive Torah. A cramped and walled-in spirit cannot learn the way one should. Best for Torah study is an expansive and questioning mind. In the wilderness one sees not the products of human beings but the vast star studded sky…
What I Learned From the Evil Woman Next Door
When I was a child we lived next door to a very evil woman. At least, that’s what my brothers and I believed. We knew she was evil because when a ball we were playing with sailed over the fence into her yard, she always refused to return it. She was apparently upset that balls from the neighbor’s kids kept landing, splat, right in the middle of her carefully cultivated garden. What my brothers and I did not say is, “Here is a probably nice enough woman who is particularly sensitive about her garden.” In other words, we were kids,…
Wanting What You Want
The mind does not obey itself. My arm will rise if I ‘tell’ it to, but I cannot want what I think I should want. Shelves of self-help books promise to make us desire less junk food, exercise more, release ourselves from obsessive love for the wrong person, renew our affection for the ‘right’ person. But still, we cannot seem to want what we want to want. This problem is as old as humanity. When the Psalmist asks God to direct his heart, he is expressing the same frustration: I know I should want good things, so why do I…
The Mystery of Meaning
In the Jewish tradition a desecration of God’s name is called a “Hillul Hashem.” R. Chaim of Volozhin teaches that ‘Hillul’ comes from the word ‘Hallal’ meaning empty or void. The greatest desecration of God’s name is to believe the world is meaningless, without purpose. Each morning in the service we say that the advantage of the human being over the beast is nothing, “ki hakol havel” — for all is emptiness. The prayer echoes Ecclesiastes, with its refrain that in the face of death all can be seen as empty or vain. But following a suggestion from Rabbi Simon…
Worlds of Childhood
One of childhood’s great pleasures is to populate the world with imagination. It does not require elaborate equipment to engage a child. As the Italian poet Leopardi said, “children find everything in nothing; men find nothing in everything.” Increasingly however, we are putting adult toys in children’s hands. Instead of filling the world with their own images they are presented with characters on screens, entertainment made by adults to hypnotize the attention of children. In place of a quiet and waiting world to be filled with the genius of young fantasy, there is a busy, buzzing, multicolor display ready to…
The Valley of the Shadow
After the death of Aaron’s sons, God instructs Aaron on various rituals, including the atonement ritual on behalf of the people. There are three important lessons about grief in this juxtaposition. You must return to the world. The Seudat Ha’avarah, the meal of passage, that follows shivah, is intended to begin the reclamation of the mourner. In the words of the 23rd Psalm, wewalk through the valley of the shadow of death, we do not stay there. Doing something for others can help you both forget your own trouble and remember that grief is universal. Aaron was instructed on atonement for…
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