Posts by Rabbi David Wolpe

In Jacob’s dream, why do the angels who ascend and descend need ladders? Aren’t angels supposed to be able to fly? The angels teach us that realizing dreams requires a step-by-step approach. While they take a moment to conceive, dreams demand effort and time to achieve. Ascent is not easy. As the Kotzker Rebbe said, “there is nothing straighter than a slanting ladder.” Stand a ladder upright and it falls. The sloping climb of gradualism best serves even the noblest of dreams. Ladders point in both directions. Rabbi Jose ben Halafta was once asked what God has been doing since…

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In his essay on Sir Walter Scott, C.S. Lewis paints a remarkable picture of a man in distress. Scott was in poor health. His wife had died three weeks before. He was under great financial pressure to finish his book. His diary records a “throttling sensation” which impelled him to tears. To make it all worse, he was kept up all night by a howling dog. Lewis’ point is not about Scott’s distress but about his reaction. In his journal, he writes: “Poor cur! I dare say he had his distress, as I have mine.” It is difficult enough to…

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In the 15th century book Eine Haqore, Joseph ibn Shem Tov tells of a self-regarding preacher. He began by telling the congregation that his talk would be divided into three parts: the first both he and they would understand. The second, only he would understand. The third, neither of them would understand. Shem Tov adds that most of the sermons he hears fall in the third category. Sermons (or drashot) are as old as faith, and criticisms about sermons as old as sermons. “A bad preacher, like the good rain, does not know when to stop,” complained Emerson, voicing a…

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Jewish events are notorious for starting late. As The Zionist leader Nahum Goldmann once said, “I tried my whole life to come late to a Jewish meeting and never succeeded.” Conversely, Jewish law depends upon precision in time. Sabbaths and holidays have specific starting and ending times. Ritual observances such as mourning, have definite, time-bound cycles. We seem caught between the rigor of ritual and the languor of social occasions. Perhaps each clock is a counterbalance to the other. After all, centuries of wandering do not always permit a fixed and insistent attitude towards time. Flexibility and patience are virtues…

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The God of Israel became real to the Israelites in the desert. A seemingly barren world gave birth to a people and a mission. To some however, the desert is not charged with meaning, but empty and frightening. Naturalist Edward Abbey from his book Desert Solitaire: “Alone in the silence, I understand for a moment the dread which many feel in the presence of the primal desert, the unconscious fear which compels them to tame, alter or destroy what they cannot understand, to reduce the wild and prehuman to human dimensions. Anything rather than confront directly the antehuman, that other…

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Why is it customary for a mourner to lead the prayer service? In his book Kaddish, Leon Wieseltier quotes Solomon Luria’s opinion that a mourner should lead because “the King of Kings prefers broken vessels.” This lovely formulation is based on a striking passage from the Midrash: “Rabbi Alexandri said: ‘If a person uses broken vessels, it is considered an embarrassment. But God seeks out broken vessels for His use, as it says, ‘God is the Healer of Shattered Hearts.’” (Leviticus Rabbah 7:2). That we are more whole when broken is the paradox embodied in the Kotzker’s famous phrase that…

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On Yom Kippur, the people of Sharon, a region subject to earthquakes, pleaded with God that their houses not become their graves. One way to understand this prayer is that our blessings not become our curses. Wealth is a great blessing. When it brings with it ostentation, rapacious competition, empty acquisition, we have allowed a blessing to become a curse. Freedom is a blessing. When we allow that freedom to lead to the unmooring of our values and character, it has become a curse. Passion for the causes of the world is vital. When that passion for the causes outside…

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Ludwig Wittgenstein, perhaps the premier philosopher of the twentieth century, led a difficult and often tortured life. In his biography, The Duty of Genius, Ray Monk quotes Wittgenstein explaining to his disapproving sister why despite his fabulous talents, he decided to become a teacher in a rural school: “You remind me of somebody who is looking out through a closed window and cannot explain to himself the strange movements of a passer-by. He cannot tell what sort of storm is raging out there or that this person might only be managing with difficulty to stay on his feet.” The Baal…

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Which is true: • “Nothing ventured nothing gained” or “fools rush in where angels fear to tread?” • “He who hesitates is lost” or “look before you leap?” • “Out of sight out of mind” or “absence makes the heart grow fonder”? Two things, as Samuel Johnson said, imputed to the human heart may not both be logical, but they can both be true. Human beings embrace paradox, which is why faith is often paradoxical. Judaism understands the wisdom enunciated last century by Oscar Wilde, that a deep truth is anything the opposite of which is also a deep truth….

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The scholar of ancient Greek thought, F. Cornford, summarized Socrates claim to greatness as twofold. First, because of his discovery of the soul, and second, because Socrates fashioned a morality of spiritual aspiration, to take the place of the current morality of social restraint. Before him, the Sophists and others explained how to limit oneself, and live in harmony with what existed. Socrates, according to Cornford, reached far beyond that. As we read the Torah, we see that the biblical characters indeed embody both ideals — that of social restraint and spiritual aspiration. The laws of the Bible are intended…

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