Top Jew: Renaissance Rabbi: Joseph Telushkin Makes Jewish Wisdom Accessible

by Mark Pearlman of JInsider

When an individual is truly making a difference, it shouldn’t go unnoticed.   This week we are presenting a new way to showcase those get-it-done, do-it-right, think-it-through people in our community. We call them “Top Jews” and our categories for them run the gamut from Thinkers and Activists to Leaders and Artists. We will feature them here in The Jewish Week and on JInsider.com. Is there a Top Jew we should know about? Tell us by e-mailing connect@JInsider.com.

To inaugurate this effort, our choice for this week is Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, an acclaimed author, screenwriter and speaker. His newest book, published this week, is A Code of Jewish Ethics: Volume 2: Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. Traditionally, a code is a systematic compilation of Jewish law. Unlike previous codes, Telushkin fills his new book with stories and modern anecdotes. Rabbi Telushkin serves as a senior associate of CLAL, and on the board of the Jewish Book Council. To understand more about Rabbi Telushkin, check out his JInsider Vital Stats below. You can also watch his videos on JInsider or best of all read any of his books.

Vital Stats

Favorite Jewish Food : My mother made the greatest potato latkes I’ve ever tasted, but recently I’ve had some that come pretty close.

Favorite Jewish or Yiddish phrase: Pirkei Avot (The Ethics of the Fathers) teaches, “Who is rich? One who is happy with what he has.” Halevai (if only), I could really live by that teaching.

Favorite ritual: Blessing my children on Friday night.

Motto: “It is not your obligation to complete the task, but that does not free you from doing what you can.”
Guilty pleasure: The New York Post

Favorite movie: Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Favorite book: A Tzaddik in Our Time: The Life of Rabbi Aryeh Levin
Major professional goal: To try to bring together Jewish ethical teachings in a way that I hope can inspire people, myself included, to be kinder and fairer, and to help the Jews go back to their mission of transforming the world for the better.

11th commandment: Honor your children

Greatest regret: Not living in Israel. A second regret: Not buying an apartment in NYC when it was affordable.

Bar mitzvah Parsha: Vayeira

Telushkinisms: How to Love your Neighbor As Yourself (based on the Rabbi’s new book)
-    Make acting with love something you think about at least once a day.
-    The explicit command in “Love your neighbor as yourself” is to love your neighbor; the implicit command is to love yourself. Self-love is important. I wonder if there has been an abusive parent in history who had a decent self-image.
-    If you make personal prayers to God, then first pray for others before you pray for yourself.
-    The Torah commands, “Don’t hate your brother in your heart.” Tell the other person directly how he or she has hurt you,“ It might lead to an apology and peace between you.
-    The reason the Torah commands us to love our neighbor, and not “Love humanity,” is because it’s easier to love humanity than to love the person who lives next door. .

Touched By An Angel

“Touched by An Angel” came about when Kirk Douglas, with whom I had the good fortune to become friendly, said to me, “Before I die I want to be in a movie in which I put on tefillin.” The show’s plot is about a man who has been estranged from Judaism since his early teens, and because of a whole series of events that happens in a one-week period he comes back to his faith.

The Practice

I did writing for “The Practice” (with my friend Allen Estrin), because David Kelley, the show’s creator and producer, had read my murder mystery An Eye for An Eye and had wanted to make a feature film out of it. He ended up basing four episodes of “The Practice” on it.

Third Party Endorsements

Professor Ari Goldman, Columbia University and Author of The Search for God at Harvard.

Rabbi Telushkin is a scholar who has raised the importance of ethics and morality within our community, and that’s a reminder that we need. His code of ethics is a very important roadmap for getting through this difficult time both in focusing us back on the essential ethics of Judaism, and also the compassionate nature of Judaism that needs to be emphasized now. We all have to depend on each other a little more right now in terms of charitable giving, in terms of looking out for each other. And I think that his books have a lot of important lessons about all those things

Carolyn Hessel , Executive Director of the Jewish Book Council

[Telushkin] is one of the few people I know who lives what he writes. In this day and age when you read about all the corruption and all the bad things that are going on, this is a good person who’s doing good things and bringing good into the world. I really think the world is a better place because of him.