Musings

Prayer And Presence

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:48:00 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

The Midrash teaches that when the Israelites left Egypt, God enveloped them in “clouds of glory.” When they wished for bread, God provided manna. When they craved meat, God sent quails. Once these wishes had been granted, the people began to doubt, saying, “Is God among us, or not?”
The point of the Midrash is that Israel could only feel God’s presence when they were receiving gifts. This is a common malady; many people pray for something and if they do not receive it assume that there is no God.

Midrash

Blunting The Poisoned Pen

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 15 May 2012 21:01:00 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

A favorite weapon in the world of scholarship is the review. Some of the sharpest words ever spoken by one scholar about another are offered not over claret in the sitting room but in the pages of learned journals where each can prove his or her essential superiority to the one who wrote the offending book.

Alexander Marx Solomon Schechter

Sacred Spaces

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 08 May 2012 22:32:00 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Kadosh, the Hebrew word for “holy,” also means separate. Yet kiddushin, the word for the sanctification of marriage, comes from the same root. How can togetherness come from separateness?

holy kadosh

From Loss, Understanding

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:11:00 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

Why does God command Abraham to sacrifice his son, only to countermand the command at the last moment?

Abraham Rabbi Jonathan Sachs

The Evidence Of Things Not Seen

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 23:34:00 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

Each Shabbat evening we turn toward the door during “Lecha Dodi” to greet the “Sabbath Bride.” This tradition harkens back to the hills of 16th-century Safed and reminds us that Judaism cherishes what we cannot see.

Face Time

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 22:07:28 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas talks about the “meaningful world into which the face of the Other has introduced me.” For Levinas, our ethics are a result of appreciating the existence of another human being, a human face, before us. By ignoring others we shirk our abiding responsibility.

The Limits Of Certainty

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 20:28:33 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

We are surrounded by certainty. After a lifetime of finding out how wrong I can be about things I used to be sure of — including myself — I am amazed by the tub-thumping certainty of people around me. From politicians to pundits to preachers to — well, everyone — people seem incapable of entertaining the possibility they may be wrong. No wonder the Talmud tells us, “Teach your tongue to say ‘I don’t know.’”

What If You Were An Egyptian?

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 21:17:14 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Recently I read an article citing studies that the more power one attains inside an organization, the less empathetic one becomes to those who have less power. Power, in other words, dulls our compassion. So permit me to slightly reframe a message I wrote about Passover several years ago: This Passover, don’t only imagine yourself a slave — imagine yourself an Egyptian.

Joy Spring

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:21:08 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

I know of many descriptions of the Jewish people: talented, beleaguered, stiff-necked, enduring — but rarely “joyous.” Most people don’t say — “Jews, now there is a happy people!” Our holidays reinforce this. On Pesach we celebrate leaving slavery — to go to a desert. On Purim we rejoice because we were not killed. Not exactly gleeful.

David Wolpe

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Musings

There are some colorful anecdotes about “helicopter parenting,” the practice of parental hovering to monitor children’s every movement. Colleges complain that when students matriculate, they are often lost — they don’t know how to budget their time, handle disappointment, cook their own meals, and even laundry defeats them.

Spirit Of Competition

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 22:22:13 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

Special To The Jewish Week

‘The jealousy of scholars increases wisdom.” (Talmud Bava Bathra 21a.)

Spirit Of Competition

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:53:40 +0000

Musings

Rabbi David Wolpe

‘The jealousy of scholars increases wisdom.” (Talmud Bava Bathra 21a.)

New Age, New Reality

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 22:21:43 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

When asked if he wanted the King of Rome one day to replace him, Napoleon declared, “Replace me? I could not replace myself! I am the child of circumstances.” That idea was dramatized by Stephen Vincent Benet in his story “A Curfew Tolls,” in which an Englishman residing on the Mediterranean coast of France meets a retired, frustrated French artillery major. It turns out to be Napoleon, born a few decades too early to conquer.

Grace Notes

Dani Shetrit — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:46:25 +0000

Musings

Rabbi David Wolpe

In Vasily Grossman’s vast, magisterial novel of World War II, “Life and Fate,” he pauses for a moment to speak of the power of music:

“People in camps, people in prisons, people who have escaped from prison, people going to their deaths, know the extraordinary power of music. No one else can experience music in quite the same way. What music resurrects in the soul of a man about to die is neither hope nor thought, but simply the blind, heart-breaking miracle of life itself.”

Want What You Have

Dani Shetrit — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:21:47 +0000

Musings

David Wolpe

After the opening declaration of the Ten Commandments, “I am the Lord your God,” we get action. All the commandments mandate some behavior: keeping the Sabbath, honoring parents and so forth. Then comes the final commandment — “Do not covet.” This is not a behavioral prescription. How can the Torah tell us what to feel?