Rabbi Wolpe - ADL Impressions

For decades, I’ve penned a weekly column, and for the past two years, a parashah commentary for the ADL, as the inaugural rabbinic fellow. As that term comes to an end, I want to thank Jonathan Greenblatt, Gail Cohen, and the ADL for all their work and all their help. I will be taking a break to work on a book about the spiritual crisis in America. This week’s parashah is a pretty good jumping-off point to think about that crisis. Korach is in rebellion against Moses, and a lot of Israelites are motivated to join him. Why did they…

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We do complain. It is an ancient art, and Jews have developed something of a specialty in it. The ‘kvetch’ – the indignant half-whine that expresses a real grievance, has long been a constant in the Jewish rhetorical arsenal. Like our ancestors, we also have things to complain about. In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites are complaining, but can we really blame them? Yes, they were liberated from slavery, but wandering in the desert is not a pleasant task, and for all of the wonders – the cloud by day, the pillar by night, even the manna – who…

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These days we are witness to an enormously difficult and tense time in Israel: The Iran war (if it is over, say ‘the aftermath of the Iran war’) the continuing fighting in Gaza, the hostages, the international pressures surely we understand these days why 10 of the 12 spies said “We cannot conquer this land.” But we can also understand their mistake and Joshua and Caleb’s courage by examining a single word. Moses instructs the spies “latur ba’aretz” – to travel in the land. Many commentators note this is the same verb we know from the Shema – “v’Lo taturu”…

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It may be the most poignant question in the entire Bible, though asked by someone not distinguished for his wisdom. In the Haftorah this week, after an angel appears to a barren woman and promises a child, her husband Manoah begs for another appearance of the angel, for he wishes to know, “What shall we do with the child to be born to us?” (Judges 13:8) What parent has not wondered the same, looking at a child and trying to understand how to raise that child to adulthood responsibly and well? Here, the child born is Samson. Samson is a…

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This weekend begins the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday on which we celebrate the giving of the Torah. If you read about the event in the Torah, however, the people were not only celebratory; they were fearful. They trembled, and according to one legend, the terror was so great that their souls left their bodies and had to be restored. Fear arises when the future is uncertain. Our imaginations rush in with frightening images. For the former slaves, revelation was a shattering event, and they could not know what it meant or where it might lead them. A very different…

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Mark Twain was one of the great writers of American literature, and surely one of the funniest. He was also a famously obscene conversationalist. Helen Keller reports being shocked by how many vulgarities Twain used in everyday speech. Twain’s wife devised a strategy to cure her husband of this tendency: one day, she surprised him by letting loose a stream of curses herself to show him how it sounded. “Honey,” said Twain, “You have the words, but you ain’t got the music.” In Jewish tradition, there are words one is not supposed to say. In this week’s Torah portion, we…

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This week’s Torah portion begins: “After the death of Aaron’s sons.” But Aaron’s sons died back in Leviticus 10. Now we are in Leviticus 16. After a long detour through laws of skin disease and impurity, the narrative resumes with a jolt—reopening Aaron’s wound—just as Moses is instructed to teach Aaron the ritual of Yom Kippur. Why revisit Aaron’s grief before introducing the Temple ritual? First, Aaron understands that even after heartbreak, life continues. This truth, bitter as it is, underlies the seudat havra’ah, the mourner’s first meal after burial. The mourner often doesn’t wish to eat, but the meal…

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If you want to understand Tazria-Metsorah on a deep level, do what I did last week — walk the grounds of Auschwitz with March of the Living. There you will see barracks where life was not only extinguished, but systematically degraded. Life in the camps was not only designed to murder Jews; it was designed to make them murderable. It is not always easy, even for people steeped in a hateful ideology, to kill other human beings. It takes a terrible alchemy: a process of stripping them — of clothes, of all hair on their bodies, of their own names…

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Two of the most resonant words in all of the Torah are recorded after the death of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Evihu. The Torah says, “Vayidom Aharon” — and Aaron was silent. Many years ago, I wrote a book called In Speech and in Silence: The Jewish Quest for God. Part of the book explored how expressive and important silence could be in the Jewish tradition. It was my mother who taught me this lesson: in her early fifties, she had a stroke that rendered her aphasic, unable to speak. Yet, her silences spoke as eloquently as anyone I have…

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The special reading for this Shabbat (Deut. 15:9-16:17) concludes by telling us that one should not appear before God during the holiday with empty hands, “but each with his own gift.” Not appearing empty handed is symbolic of a greater truth – there is no person who does not have a gift to give. One of the explanations for Jewish wedding ceremonies including a ring is that one cannot be married to another without giving a gift. Love itself is a gift, and the ring is the physical instantiation of one’s love. On Purim, we are mandated to give gifts,…

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