Rabbi Wolpe - ADL Impressions

A woman once asked Rabbi Jose Ben Halafta: “If creation was completed in only six days, what has God been doing since?” He answered: “God spends his time building ladders, for some to ascend, and others to descend.” That teaching may have been the inspiration for Kotzker Rebbe, who asked his students: Who was higher, someone on the tenth rung of a ladder or someone on the twenty-fifth? When they responded that the person on the twenty-fifth was higher, Kotzker answered: Who is higher depends upon which way the person is heading. This week in the Torah, we read of…

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On this Thanksgiving, it is time to reflect anew on two kinds of gratitude. Sitting at the Thanksgiving table, we feel grateful for the bounty we were privileged to enjoy. For the abundance of food we enjoy and the enormity of our nation’s gifts, we should offer heartfelt blessings. That alone is not enough; if we express thanks and do no more, that is a feeling that leads nowhere. The second, deeper, gratitude spurs us to give. Motivational gratitude encourages us to help in a needy world. There are food banks and charities that count on donations and volunteers. Don’t…

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In the Torah portion this week, we have the first instance of someone weeping for a person whom they have lost. Abraham weeps at the death of his beloved wife, Sarah. He then purchases a burial cave, Me’orat Hamachpelah, in order to bury Sarah. As commentators have noted throughout the ages, there is something poignant and paradoxical that the first bit of land the Jewish people acquire in Israel is a burial plot. This practice influenced later Jewish communities. Wherever Jews settled, one of the first acts of each community was to establish a Jewish cemetery. The Jewish people are…

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Reeling from the attacks in Amsterdam, our parasha has an important lesson to teach. This week, we read about the city of Sodom. An entire city is consumed by wickedness, and despite Abraham’s attempt to save the city by bargaining with God, there is no righteousness there to save. So when Abraham has to stay in Gerar, he does not trust the King, Abimelech. After all, he has just experienced the complete depravity of Sodom. Why should he believe that the King of another place will be better? Abraham claims that his wife Sarah is his sister, presuming he cannot…

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The silences of the Torah have for centuries moved people to interpretation. This week, we have one of those great silences – God appears to Abraham. But what happened before? How did Abraham have any sense that there was a God in the world? Emerging from a background of idol worship, did he possess a special intuition? The rabbis fill in this gap in several ways, telling stories of Abraham becoming disenchanted with his father’s idols, or realizing that neither the sun nor the moon was the eternal God. Even more poignant is the story that Abraham saw the world…

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Why build a tower of babel? The question has received many answers. One in particular is crucial for our world. Rabbi Obadia Sforno, born in the late 15th century in Italy, argues that the tower was intended to unify the world in a certain practice of idolatry. This explanation may be a product of the world in which Sforno lived, but it also has a great deal to say to our own world. 15th century Italy, unlike anywhere else in Europe, was divided into independent city states. Therefore, it epitomized a condition already present in Europe in general, which is…

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We are a society fond of novelty, but we know that mastery demands repetition. No one is a great golfer with the first stroke or a grandmaster with the first move of a pawn. Human achievements, individual and social, require constant application. We cannot grasp depth on the first pass: “There are no readers,” said the writer Vladimir Nabokov, “only rereaders.” The Torah has been described in many ways: a love letter, a ketubah, one long poem, a mystic message of black-on-white fire, a compendium of law and story, a family diary, the foundation stone of Israel, a written assurance…

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This has been a year of tremendous trauma. I have come to believe that Sukkot is the PTSD holiday. In several ways, it is designed to address the trauma of our lives: 1. The Hebrew name for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is associated with narrowness, “tzar.” After the constriction of slavery and the inability to escape, comes Sukkot. In the desert, there is space. The sukkah is un-claustrophobic by its nature. Since there is no covering on the roof, you can see the outside. You are not hemmed in, which is one of the triggers of trauma. This is what we pray…

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This has been a year of tremendous trauma. I have come to believe that Sukkot is the PTSD holiday. In several ways, it is designed to address the trauma of our lives: 1. The Hebrew name for Egypt, Mitzrayim, is associated with narrowness, “tzar.” After the constriction of slavery and the inability to escape, comes Sukkot. In the desert, there is space. The sukkah is un-claustrophobic by its nature. Since there is no covering on the roof, you can see the outside. You are not hemmed in, which is one of the triggers of trauma. This is what we pray…

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Jewish tradition pairs the holiday of Yom Kippur and the costuming holiday of Purim. It seems a strange pairing, but in fact, the biblical name Yom Kippurim can be translated as, “A day like Purim.” There are many explanations of the connection; Rabbi Jack Riemer explains that on Purim we put masks on and on Yom Kippur, we take our masks off. We all wear masks, professional and personal. Yom Kippur is the day when we explore ourselves and our own souls. It is a time to be ruthless in self-examination: To ask ourselves, what bitterness do we harbor in…

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