Rabbi David Wolpe

Welcome to The Puck, Venture Capital and Beyond, a show that examines the changing landscape of our world. Before we dive in, a quick word about who I am and why we're here. I'm Jim Bier, corporate lawyer and restructuring professional. I've spent the last two decades helping companies navigate their toughest transitions. And about eight years ago, I found myself having fascinating conversations with clients and friends about everything from venture capital to the broader shifts happening in our economy and society.

Those discussions were simply too good, so the puck was born. Now while we started on venture capital, hence the podcast name, the Puck Venture Capital and Beyond, We've naturally evolved to focus more on the and beyond portion of the title. Today, we explore how business intersects with the bigger forces shaping our world. I still run my restructuring practice by day, but now I get to host these conversations by night. It has become one of the most rewarding parts of my life.

Today's guest continues that tradition. If you have a religious attitude towards life, then you understand that you don't understand. There's a certain humility in, like, this world is infinitely mysterious, and I will never figure it out. But I am grateful for the many blessings of my life and have an obligation to try to make life better for other human beings. We live in a world drowning in information and starving for wisdom.

My guest today, Rabbi David Wolpe, has spent a lifetime at that intersection, stunning ancient texts while sitting with people in their most broken and most joyful moments. He's one of America's most prominent rabbis, a former fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School, and someone who resigned from its advisory board in protest after October 7. Today, we talk about what religion actually is and isn't, why gratitude may be the most radical act available to us right now, and why the key to changing how you feel might just be changing what you do first. Rabbi Wolpe, welcome to the puck. Thank you.

Happy to be here. So I wanna try to frame this simply. This isn't gonna be a religious debate or a theological sparring match. It's a conversation about wisdom, how moral traditions shape character, responsibility, and civic life. Now you've spent a lifetime studying ancient texts while living squarely in the modern world, speaking to believers, skeptics, and institutions under pressure.

What I'm interested in today is how wisdom survives stress, and what it still asks of us. So let's start at the beginning. So for listeners who don't know you well, do you wanna take a minute and tell us a little about your journey and how you came to this work and what first drove you towards it? Sure. I'll do that briefly.

I grew up actually in the house of a rabbi, so I'm I was not unfamiliar with the life. I never thought I would do it, but I discovered actually that the people in my life whom I admired most were people who were doing exactly this kind of work and were carrying out the life that they were teaching. Because I was a literature major and I love literature, but nobody lives Middlemarch as much as I think the book is wonderful. But people do try to live the tradition that they espouse. We all fail at it, but some, you know, in Beckett's words, some feel better.

So I thought this would be a really, wonderful way to live one's life, not only because it would teach me a lot, but because I would feel as though I haven't wasted. Whatever the world is really about, you can't waste it if you spend your life trying to figure it out and help other people figure it out. And since part of this job has been to be with people in dying moments and to marry people and to bury people and so on, it's been an extremely meaningful journey filled with all the kinds of mistakes and missteps and joys and surprises that one could hope for. So when you talk about all that you've learned and and mistakes you've made in otherwise, I mean, how has long term study of Torah and the ancient wisdom kind of shaped your sense of what's right and wrong, and and how does it influence you today? I like to think of the tradition the way the Greeks used to speak about Plato.

That is whatever road of life you walk down, you find it on the way back. Like, Plato's been there, and he can tell you about it. That's even truer for a tradition that is an accumulation of thousands of years. We think that there's a lot that is different about modern life, and technologically, that's true. But in terms of human nature and human interactions, you know, people cry and laugh and disappoint each other and delight each other the same way that we did thousands of years ago.

And so I think I've learned a lot about human interactions and also about the way in which lives can be more fulfilled if you reach beyond yourself. And that's what I understand my tradition to be primarily teaching is the way in which you grow your soul by reaching beyond just what you want and who you are. But in this mostly or often described as a more secular world than the past. People don't have a problem talking about philosophy in Plato and Aristotle, for instance. Right.

But when you use the word religion or God, for instance, people start talking about dogma Yeah. And black and white thinking. And what do you think they miss about kind of the role that religion plays where it's complimentary and it's not so divisive? I'm gonna say I mean, I could talk about this a lot, but I'll say two things primarily. One is that religion is enormous an enormously various phenomenon.

And when you talk about religion as though it is one thing that restricts you to one thing, all I can say is, you know, you should meet more Jains and Buddhists and Orthodox Jews and mystical Jews and Christians of all stripes and Muslims of all stripes and Sufi mystics. And what are you talking about when you say religion does this? The second thing is that what I like best about religion as opposed to the ubiquitous spirituality, because people will always tell you they're spiritual but not religious, is when someone tells me that, I always ask them how much they give to charity. Because what religion does is it insists that you act in certain ways, not just that you feel in certain ways. And spirituality makes no demands on you in the world.

But everybody who's inside a religious community knows that if you're in that community, people will take care of you, they will look out for you in a way that does not exist outside religious communities. I mean, we have a family that had a terrible loss. This was years ago. And people brought them, first, they brought them meals for a while, and then they brought them a Friday night dinner for a couple of years. And and these were not people who were close friends, but they're just they're part of the community.

That's what you do. So I think those two things, the variety of it and the insistence on carrying out certain real world goodnesses is what I think they miss. So I love that, and I love the idea of, for instance, are you giving money to charity? Are you getting involved in your community? But again, more and more people are saying, well, let's just increase taxes and do more social spending.

I mean, why does it need to be religious communities that do this? Why can't the government just do all of this? Well, one of the things that religious communities do that no government can do is know themselves better. Like, no one would understand what that family went through. Nobody is gonna be able to provide the way their own community can and to be a warm embrace the way their own community can.

I think about, you know, when was the last time, other than maybe for a second at a baseball game, you sang with other people? We do that every week in synagogue. When was the last time you sat with old and young and together and had the same experience? That again happens in houses of worship all the time. There are unique things that religious communities bring to the world that other people don't, and, you know, taxes are very diffuse.

No one wants to say, you know what? Let's eliminate all the churches and just raise all our taxes. I I can't imagine that's a political platform that's gonna do very well. And inevitably, of course, you're gonna lose a lot along the way of, the largest char most people everybody in your audience has heard of Doctors Without Borders. Probably very few have heard of World Vision, but it is the largest charity in The United States, and it's an evangelical charity, and they do unbelievable work in the poorest countries in the world.

Let me just say this. Well, obviously, there are non religious people who do enormously altruistic and kind work. Religion is by its nature a force multiplier. And so while it's true that if you have a conflict and you add religion, it gets uglier, the goodness that religion brings to the world, which people are not aware of, is really astonishing, remarkable, and uncountable. It's very rare that religion itself causes the conflict.

It's almost always land or resources or political conflict, and then sometimes religion gets added to it. But it's very frequent that religion is the source of the goodness. I am here because I believe that God wants me to do these good things. Like the great story about Mother Teresa, which I hope is true, about a journalist who was watching her clean the wounds of lepers and said, ugh, I wouldn't do that for a million dollars. To which Mother Teresa replied, neither would I.

What when you say it like that, it makes so much sense. And yet with the lack of trust in institutions right now and the defensiveness people seem to have, it's hard to have these conversations. I mean, how do you engage people with different beliefs and different understandings of religion and bring them into the fold so that that we can rebuild a sense of community? Well, one of the things that we suffer from in terms of trusting institutions is that we live in an age of much greater transparency. So people see much more about the institutions that they're a part of than they used to.

And as a result, they see how messed up those institutions are. I mean, think about the Catholic church. It used to be that those things were hidden and now they're clear. That's the maybe the most immediate and widespread example that we can think of. But the same thing with politicians.

You know, there was a time when politicians had affairs and everybody covered up. Now if a politician has affairs, it's all over the Internet. And so I think that we had a very rosy view of what institutions are, and they're run by human beings, which means they're gonna have flaws. If you have a more grown up view and you don't think that dissolution is truth, but you understand that every institution is gonna have flaws, but it's also gonna have reasons why the institution was created in the first place, then maybe you have a better conversation about what the institution can do. Politics is never gonna fix our life.

Religion is never gonna fix everything about your life. Life is gonna be difficult. That's just the reality of it. But the other reality is without institutions, life is much more difficult. And if you think that institutions are bad, just try chaos.

No. It makes sense. But with social media and kind of the ability to attack so broadly, I mean, again, you you've obviously been in the the eye of the storm with respect to things that went on in the college campuses and Harvard Yeah. And, you know, the the rise in antisemitism. I mean, how how do we fight back in terms of getting people to really have critical thinking when it comes to these issues and moving away from this very dogmatic black and white way of thinking?

I think you put your finger on a big problem, which is that human beings have a negative bias anyway. Right? We always, we're gonna always pay attention more to negative things than positive things. That's evolutionarily built into us so that we can protect ourselves from danger. And social media amplifies that enormously.

I know this for myself. If I make a post that isn't all sliding or negative, it gets much more interaction than when I say something uplifting or kind. And so I feel that pull inside myself. I don't know. I think that in time, we're gonna have to figure out as a society how to sort of change our algorithms, both online and in the world, so that we maximize for decency.

And I know that there are efforts in this realm. I'm part of an effort to, for example, teach kindness in schools. And it actually makes different a difference in school when you try to do that. It's just that people's attention spans are very short and you have to focus on that which is good, but it takes effort. And maybe we have not yet quite reached the point where our society collectively throws up its arms and says, we got we have to change something or we're headed for disaster.

I mean, are you seeing room for that improvement? Meaning, when you talk to your colleagues and you look at the direction that things are going, do you get a sense of optimism that people realize this is a real challenge that we have to address? I think so. I think a lot of people are aware of the fact that we're in that we're in trouble. And you hear this all the time, people talking about, like, could there be a civil war?

Is American society falling apart? That kind of thing. And while I think those I hope, I think and hope that those things are exaggerated, I still also believe that the bacillus of negativity and fear is acting through our country and through the world in a way that sooner or later, I have to believe the counter movement is gonna start to push back against harder. And as I said, I always I already see movements in that direction. My friend Daniel Lubetzky has a movement called Builders where he highlights politicians who are non polarizing and tries to encourage them.

And this United States Of Kindness, which goes into schools and corporations and literally teaches kindness. And these things do get results, and they have a grassroots appeal. Part of the problem again is, you know, I I did when I was at Harvard, I did a, a dialogue with Steven Pinker, the evolutionary biologist and writer. And in talking about how hard it is to get positive news to be featured, he said, when I was at Harvard as a student, all anyone talked about was the Vietnam War. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, that was the sole topic of conversation.

He said, but tomorrow, none of you will wake up to a headline that says seventy years of no war in Vietnam. Because things that are good that are happening are elided, ignored, taken for granted. The fact that we have cut extreme poverty by 50% in the past twenty years, which means that there are millions, maybe billions of people who aren't starving, who would have been starving. That should be like the headline every day, but it doesn't it doesn't break through. So from a religious perspective, how does the goodness and the positive message break through?

What what's unique from the religious perspective that helps people focus on kind of gratitude and the glass being half full as opposed to half empty? That's exactly it. I really like the way that you curved around to the gratitude question because that is, I think, the fundamental religious attitude. The first thing I say in the morning is the prayer, which is I'm grateful for being alive, essentially. And if you have a religious attitude towards life, then you understand that you don't understand.

There's a certain humility in, like, this world is infinitely mysterious, and I will never figure it out. But I am grateful for the many blessings of my life and have an obligation to try to make life better for other human beings. I mean, I would say in capsule, that's the religious attitude. Now we all know that living that is much harder than saying it. And all I can say is it's almost like navigating by the stars.

You don't expect to reach them, but you navigate by them. So the same thing. These re ideals are not something we're gonna get to, but it's something that we can live our lives by. So as you said that, it it reminded me, ironically, of the weekly Parsha, which I was reading this weekend. And one of the issues was when you hear something through the ear, the question is, does it does it reach the heart?

Yes. And so you you can say that morning blessing and say, god, I'm grateful for returning my soul. Right. But from a Jewish perspective, how does a person take something that they hear and actually Right. Reestablish the broken tablet, so to speak, and put that wisdom onto their heart?

First of all, I it's, that's really interesting that the, the Kotzker Rebbe asked this question about the Shema, the central declaration of the prayer service. He says, it says these words should be on your heart. He said, but they should be in your heart, right, not on your heart. And his answer is hearts aren't always open. But if you put them on your heart, then at a moment when your heart is open, they'll be there to sink in.

And I think that that's part of the answer is that Judaism has a system of actions called mitzvot. And sometimes you do them in a rote sort of way, but now and again, you do the same mitzvah that you've done many, many, many times before, and it hits you how profound and beautiful it is. And I think that you have to have a life that is combined with, of emotion and action, both what you feel and how you act, But it is the discipline of a lifetime, and it's not the decision of a moment. And is it does it help, for instance, whether or not you're meditating or chanting or doing yoga? Are there are there practices that you can do that actually help open your heart and and make the language more accessible, so to speak?

I think people work differently. And, certainly, I know someone who regularly goes on Jewish meditation retreats. And for her, it seems to really deepen her experience of the world and of her life and her sense of joy. I know other people who go to regular morning minyan. That is morning services where they pray.

And that experience of community and prayer is indispensable for their life work. Other people find it more through study. I think there are many, many, many different avenues that human beings can use, and all of them, to a great extent, center around awareness and attention. Like, are you able to do you live automatically, or are you aware of the world that you're engaging in? And, you know, I just actually, this morning, was, discussing the fact that Simone Weil said attention is a fundamental form of love.

I mean, it's the most precious thing that we have to give to others. And so I wrote on social media something about how you shouldn't lavish too much love on a screen. You should, lavish it on human beings. And I think that that, like, directing your attention and actually seeing other human beings is part of what the whole idea of, at least, the Jewish tradition is about. Let me speak of the Jewish tradition.

And the example that I'll give is the most important figure in the history of the Jewish tradition is Moses. And when Moses dies, it doesn't say Moses did more mitzvot than anyone who ever lived or Moses was the most ethical human being who ever lived. I mean, it may believe that, but if that's not the praise that he gets at the end of his life, the praise that he gets is Moses saw God face to face. In other words, he had the most intimate relationship to God because that's ultimately the goal. The goal is to have relationship with other human beings, with your own soul, and and with your creator and with the world.

So all of those things are possible. So when you see a sunrise and you feel grateful for it, that's also a powerful religious experience. You can do it anywhere. Do you also my recollection is it also says that Moses could no longer go in or out. Right.

And some of the commentators talk about Yeah. That he he got to a 120, and the notion was that he he worked on self improvement so much that he got to a point where he he kind of maxed out, so to speak. And I always found that encouraging, but it it was like this this notion of this life devoted towards self improvement and, you know, never quite getting there. There'll never be another Moses, but the idea that we each can spend our lives growing and improving. There's no question about that.

And just to, to head back to what I was saying before about another way of seeing that Ramban Nachmanides has a beautiful comment on on that Moses could no longer go in and out because it doesn't really say what that means. So it could be self improvement. His comment is that Moses went in and out of the tent of every Israelite to say goodbye. And when he had gone to every tent, he could no longer go in and out because there were no tents left. And after he'd said goodbye to everyone, that's when he went up the mountain to die, which is to reinforce the relationship point.

But, also, I think that's a way of measuring that here was a man who, despite the fact that he was austere and distant in most of his life, he grew in every possible way, including in human relationships to the point where his last act is to say goodbye to everyone. So let's stay with that for a second, this notion of saying goodbye to everybody and opening your heart up to everybody. You know, one of the challenges I think we have in this world today with the issues relating to women's rights Mhmm. How gay people are treated. We've got a we've got people saying, oh, you're not allowed to change one word in the tour, and it says all these negative things that are very patriarchal or also very against alternative sexual lifestyles and so forth.

When when you wanna bring people in and and you wanna have relationships with everybody, how do we take something that in in some ways, from a fundamental perspective, has been so hateful? How do we bring back the notion of love and having a relationship with everybody and and move away from this judgment that has been such a prevalent part of our world? So I tell people this is and I don't wanna, for a moment, suggest that every rabbi you have on would agree with what I'm about to say. Okay? So there's my disclaimer, but this is my approach.

I critique the Torah by the Torah. And what I mean by that is the Torah says you should love your neighbor as yourself. The Torah also talks about loving the stranger. It talks about the fact that every human being is in god's image. So it has in it the principles by which we can understand that those statements in the Torah that we interpret as cruel or exclusionary are not the fundamental philosophy of the Torah.

And that's how I see it. And I think that throughout religious history, religions have always done that. They have always critiqued themselves. There's, I mean, I can give you lots of examples from many, many different traditions, but I think the best example probably is slavery, which all of us, I think, would now understand our religious traditions to be opposed to. And yet, we know that people quoted the Bible to support slavery in previous generations.

So the Bible is a product of the people of its time, and it spoke to the people of its time in a certain way. The genius of it is that it contains the seeds of the growth of the human spirit so that, as I said, whatever road of life you walk down, it's there already and ready to greet you and to expand your soul. And so those principles to me are what the bible is really about. Makes sense. And and, again, everybody is gonna have a different view on these things.

But I know Right. There's been discussion in the past that there's the written Torah, and then there's the oral Torah. Right. And there's this statement that the world was created with strict justice, but it can't survive with strict justice. So mercy and Yeah.

So forth was invented. And I've always looked at, like, things like, killing the, wayward son or Right. On the Sabbath, stoning to death the person walking on the Sabbath. And I've always struggled with why you know, take the Sabbath for instance. We're not gonna stone people to death for violating the Sabbath, but if the whole world was living in a perfect way and somebody was flagrantly violating it, I can see from a strict justice perspective that you'd say, if you're gonna bring the whole community down, we're setting that we're teaching that that that there needs to be real consequences for that.

But in the real world, we we recognize that no one is gonna complete have a perfect Sabbath. I think, in fact, it says if there's two perfect perfect Sabbaths, we're gonna have the Messiah. Messiah. Right. But how how do we get people not to focus on the literal interpretation without throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

So what I would say is, like, the rabbis did struggle with this. And when it came to, for example, stoning a rebellious son, they put all sorts of qualifications on it in the Talmud, and they end the discussion by saying the rebellious son never was and never will be. So there is a filter system that is built into the Jewish tradition, other traditions too, but I'll let them speak for themselves, that moderates the severity of the original decrees and makes them livable now for thousands of years because people have lived by these systems. And if they were impossible to actually sustain a society, we would be long gone. You know, as I often say to when I go out and speak to various audiences, I said, look.

I don't know very much about your city. I'm new here. I haven't been here in a while. But one thing I will tell you for sure, when you go out into the street, you will not meet a Hittite. And that's because certain civilizations, most of them, by far, like, well over 90% of civilizations are not designed to survive long term.

And yet, somehow, miraculously, for thousands of years, the Jewish people, who are a speck of a speck of the world's population, have managed to survive. And I think that's because we have built in in well, one of the reasons is because we have built in to our own civilization not just the statement, but the critiques of the statement. So we're a constantly self revising civilization. So in a country like America where we talk about Judeo Christian values and where a lot of people historically have thought of us as, for instance, a Christian country Right. When you look at Islam, Judaism, Christianity, the different religions, is there more and more opportunity for people to come together and focus on what unites us as opposed to what divides us to find kind of a moral code, so to speak, that can that Americans can relate to?

I mean, when we talk about American culture, for instance, I don't think people like at least in the secular world, certainly have a hard time talking about Christian fundamentalism or Orthodox Judaism for that matter. How do we take the good, the values of all of these religions, and have a shared American culture? The only way that we can do it is, in fact, in a country that has a separation of church and state. And everybody who's here has to buy in to certain fundamental values, and that sometimes means that things that might actually take precedence in other places in your religious life have to be trimmed or put aside because in the public square, there are certain values like pluralism and tolerance that are essential. And you might believe that everyone should believe religiously like you, but that stops at the, you know, at the door of the house of worship.

Because once you walk out onto the street, you're not allowed to insist on that anymore. And that is, I think, part of the tremendous, unprecedented blessing of this place is that it is a country that genuinely has managed with lots of, you know, lots of, backsliding and lots of difficult moments, but it has enforced a pluralism of meaning that is one of the reasons why Judaism has done better here than in any other country in the world outside of Israel, because, I mean, from the very beginning when George Washington wrote the famous letter to the Newport synagogue saying, essentially, if I can say it was much more eloquent in the letter, But he basically said, if you're good citizens, that's all we ask of you, and you should be able to worship in any way you want. And and that was new in human history, and we're still trying to carry that out. But when we do, what an extraordinary experiment in its two hundred and fiftieth year. So during and as part of this experiment we're talking about, when you look at, for instance, your experience at Harvard after October 7.

Yes. And you look at young people today. And and when I talk about young people today, the educated young people that are going to these great institutions, and you look at the anger, for instance, towards Israel and the people that Right. Created Love Your Neighbor as Yourself. How does this moment and how do our institutions survive this?

And and what's your take on on how we get to the next level? Part I mean, it it's a complicated problem. And at least part of it has to do with the fact that human nature is such that you take for granted the blessings you have and focus on the ones that you don't have. And so what they don't realize in part is that the critiques that they're making are critiques that only could arise in the civilization that they're belittling as they make those critiques. Slavery ended in the Christian world, but it did not end outside the Christian world.

And yet people will say, look at the terrible Christians who practice slavery, and it's true. Slavery was a horrendous, brutal, and and unspeakably awful period in human history. But just as I was saying with the Jewish tradition, the seeds of the critique existed in the Western world that did not exist elsewhere, and it did not end in the East. And still today, in absolute terms, there are more slaves in the world than there ever were. But nowhere in any land that is ruled by Christians.

And so or or has a majority Christians, not ruled by Christians, has a majority of Christians in it. And so this Judeo Christian idea of, ideals is really very important and real. And, certainly, the part of the Muslim world that has joined in this great endeavor, we have to remember there was a period in human history when when, the Muslim world was the enlightened world and the Christian world was in darkness. Every religion has the possibility, I think, in it to be part of a growth towards the light. And for young people, my hope in part is as they get older and they mature a little bit, they will understand how much the perfect is the enemy of the good.

And that in tearing down the good with some ethereal vision of the perfect, they're gonna get something that they do not want. And here, a a decent respect for the history of those who have come before you and the enormous effort that it took to create the civilization that you can cavalierly toss aside is something that I hope will come with time and with growth, and with depth. You know, I I like that quote, you know, don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Is that do you think that's something that's built in the human condition that we struggle with? Because I do think a lot of people that are get stuck in black and white thinking, whether that's borderline personality disorder or Right.

Fundamentalism in general, there's something is there something in our psyche that pushes us towards this? And and and if so, if the the more we understand it, maybe we can get out of that box. Yes. It's the old story about a teacher who stands in front of a white wall and puts a black dot in it. And he says to his students, what do you see?

And they say, we all we see that black dot. And he said, no. You don't. You see a giant white wall with one black dot. He said, if you focus on the black dot, then you miss the white wall.

And I think that there's a lot of focusing on the black dot that goes on, but it is part of human nature. That's why people have to be educated into the kind of gratitude that we're talking about. You know, I wrote, for the free press a few months in December, I think it was, for 2025, this essay about Heschel and Emerson, about two thinkers, one American and one American Jewish, one American protestant, one American Jewish, who both of them talked about being alive and awake to the wonders of the universe and the world. And I think that that is very much in the American spirit and the relentless negativity about the country and about its crimes because, obviously, America has committed terrible, offenses throughout its history as every power does because humans are humans. But the focus on that tends, I think, to overwhelm the astonishing achievements that America has brought to the world and also just the beauty and wonder of everyday existence that we are so enormously blessed with, even those of us who live in very difficult circumstances.

Yeah. And it's it's it's interesting because I think, you know, as we learn to forgive ourselves and as we get older and we realize that we aren't ever gonna be perfect Yeah. And we struggle with that and somehow reach our own self forgiveness Yeah. It seems to me that it's easier than to not be as judgmental of other people, but it but it does require that reflection and that ability to appreciate yourself never being perfect and always having people greater than you, but somehow being comfortable with yourself. And that's something that I think every parent learns.

You are much more inclined to forgive your parents once you become a parent. And you recognize that the ideal that you thought was possible is literally impossible. And the question is, how will I mess up my kid? Not will I mess up my kid, but what will they resent me for later? Will the resentment be greater or lesser?

Because life is just extremely complicated and difficult and crowded with motivations and limitations and possibilities. And so you do the combination as best you can. And I agree. It requires in order to live decently in all the meat senses that decently means, it requires a great deal of self forgiveness and forgiveness of the other. And it's funny when you talk about that, when you when you think about the relationships between grandparents and their grandchildren or Mhmm.

You know, children with their parents and otherwise, It seems I mean, as as a as a recent grandparent, it seems so obvious that when you have these relationships with the other generations, that you gain this broader perspective. And yet in America, we we seem to be so focused on youth. Yeah. You know, I I when I was a child, I was taught you stand up when an older person walks into the room. But there's so much ageism right now.

There's so much anger at the boomers for hanging on to power. How how do we kind of bring that wisdom out and and educate young people so that they do understand these different phases of life so that there is a little more self compassion and compassion to others? I would say, first of all, like, it's partly a function of youth. It just is. Youth is, by its nature, more extreme, more ambitious, more idealistic, and I don't think we wanna take that away.

And, also, older people have to understand how much it's important to make way because we all, when we were young, were waiting for the old people to get out of the way so that we can and and and as much as you might have respected them or loved them, you still wanted your own chance. That's just part of the cycle of life. So I think that there has to be understanding both ways. I mean, when I you know, I told this story to my congregation, about the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, that someone came to him and said, my son has left the path, and he's saying and doing all sorts of things I think are terrible and disapprove of. What should I do?

And the Baal Shem Tov said, love him more. And you would think that everybody in the congregation would have loved that story, but they didn't. Some of them were very upset. They're saying, oh, so you're saying we should love people who say this or do this or the other thing. And I said, well, you can actually cut them out of the community.

But, you know, like in the Jewish community, we are a tiny little fraction of the world, and are we gonna be endlessly dividing ourselves when we're already the size of an amoeba? And so, yeah, it's hard sometimes to decide on forgiveness and embrace, especially when the things that people are arguing about are so consequential and so important. And and I wanna give, like, honor to that too. There are things that I will not compromise on. And people might say, well, what about your, you know, what about your sticking points, mister forgiveness and embrace?

And they're right. We all have them. Yeah. No. For sure.

And and we're all as you said, none of us are perfect, and we're works in progress. When you look at education and you look at the value of Torah study, I mean, I hated Sunday school. And when you look at even statements in the Torah about some of the deeper teachings that were not even supposed to be taught until you were 40 Right. And when you look at adult education today and you look at the way people retire and go play golf or the way in which they race to just, again, make as much money as they can or travel, how do we, as the Jewish people, talk about adult education and the the need to, in different stages in your life, reinvigorate yourself in a world of study of the Torah or of wisdom literature in general? Do you think that's something that is missing and it could be increased, for instance?

Yeah. We do offer a lot of, possibilities in different communities, but absolutely, the whole point of the Jewish tradition is actually not what you can learn when you're 13. It's what you can learn when you're 30 and 50 and 80. Because and I I've taught in, in New York and and I do a a class here for which is basically Hebrew school for adults. And it's because the most important lessons that Judaism has to teach about relationships, about sexuality, about death, about pain, about parenting, you're not ready for when you're 13 years old.

So I think that it's very important that people continue to learn and study. And, also, as I say often to, again, Jewish audiences, like, I don't understand an adult Jew who, first of all, masters Chinese or Spanish and never learned a word of Hebrew. That mystifies me. Or travels all over the world but has never been to Israel. Here is the first time in thousands of years where you have the opportunity to see the country that the Jewish people built.

And all it takes is you gotta sit. That's it. You just sit for eleven hours or fourteen hours. And when you stand up next, miraculously, you're in Israel. And so, yeah, I think that it's it's also, by the way, an important model for all those young people that we were talking about before to see that their parents and grandparents take this stuff seriously and love it deeply.

Well, and the irony is there's a lot of Christian bible study. There's a lot of Christian outreach to the promised land and going to Jerusalem and so forth. And then you you meet a lot of Jewish people who the last time they looked at a Torah was after their bar mitzvah. I know. I I mean, we're the ones who gave this message to the world.

We ought to take some pride in it and learn it. I couldn't agree with you more. And what do you what do you think has been the reason it's been so hard to get adults to study this text that obviously is very meaningful to you? I think it's a combination of things. I think post holocaust, a lot of Jews felt an ethnic connection, but they turned off of the religion.

That's one thing. The second is I think a lot of them were really, like many immigrant groups, very focused on making it in America, and it did not seem that Torah study was going to be the path to do that. The third, which is a a kind of irony, is that Torah study actually flourishes, but it flourishes mostly among the very religious, the very traditional. And so I think for people who are not particularly religious or traditional, they feel as though, well, that's the preserve of those people over there, but not mine, when in fact it is sort of the birthright of everybody. And I think those are at least some of the reasons.

And I don't wanna I don't wanna let us off the hook that is the rabbis and teachers. You know, a great rabbi or a great teacher can make a tremendous and positive difference, but rabbis who are not can also sometimes alienate people and push them away. And I think, as you said, like, most people's Hebrew school experience is not a great was not a great experience. Most of the teachers there were not engaging, and most of the students I mean, because also of the structure of it, you went there after school. It's one of the reasons why I think day school is so important.

Because if you go to day school, then it's integrated in some way, and your Jewish studies and your secular studies are all one. But that raises a whole host of other issues. Do you think that with the skepticism and distrust, for instance, of institutions, and in kind of this postmodern world or whatever we now call it, that when people hear things like it's the word of God, but it has these black and white things about how you treat women or, you know, other people of different ethnic backgrounds or sexual orientation, for instance, that once they're so turned off by the g word and and what what they're Yeah. On the surface taught about what the Torah is. And because it is a closed book, so to speak, because it it does require real engagement, that it's hard to overcome their skepticism.

I'm sure that's true for some people that, all they need to hear is one or another statement about something for them to say, well, that's not for me. The thing I think that is worth understanding is no tradition could speak to millions and millions and millions of people over thousands of years if it wasn't more than a statement that you now object to. So it's a little bit like, you know, the old joke about sitting next to an astronomer, and he says, love your neighbor as yourself. That's all I need to know, rabbi, about religion. And the rabbi says, twinkle, twinkle little star.

That's really all I need to know about astronomy. And those two statements are roughly equivalent. In other words, neither one of them actually begins to understand the depth and complexity of the field that the other one has given their life to. That makes sense. And so when you're looking at where we go from here and you look at, again, what's happened in terms of the rise of antisemitism Yes.

In terms of bringing people together, bringing people of different religions together, the How do we do a better job having conversations and otherwise that unite us and move away from such a polarizing world? Granting that people are very bad at predicting the future. So I don't know what's gonna happen, for example, with the march of AI and how that's going to affect, although I have no doubt that it is already affecting and will continue to profoundly affect our world in ways we can't imagine at the moment. I really do believe that we need in public life, first of all, leaders who articulate a general vision and not a particularistic vision. That is something for the entire nation that all Americans can say, I do or don't like this politician, but the ideals that they are enunciating are my ideals too.

And, also, I think it's really important that people have grassroots connections, that we reach out beyond our own small bubble in community and learned that, you know, there's the only way to respond to rupture is through healing. And I do believe that there are lots of efforts in that area, and I hope that they will continue. But we live in a time in which rumors and negativity and gossip and cruelty can be instantly spread across the world in an instant. And that will require new kinds of solutions that really will the burden of which will fall on those to whom the future belongs, who are younger people. So that's why what I saw at Harvard was dispiriting, but I also saw some things that gave me hope.

And I hope that the voices of hope will prevail over those of divisiveness and anger and belittlement. When you say that there were things that kind of gave you a sense of hope Yeah. What were those Those students who were reaching out to the other side, who wanted to hear what other people had to say, who understood that their understanding was limited at the time that, because they were 20, 21, 22, and they were new to this, those who were intellectually honest about it and recognized that this was, you know, a sweep of social media as much as anything else, and also those, which is the majority of campus, that stood aloof and tried to judge and said, I wanna understand more before I join a protest and start telling people how terrible they are. And, of course, the people who protested and the presidents who were just astonishingly unresponsive, let's I'm trying to put it as kindly as possible. That's what got all the press, and that's what got all the attention.

But we have to learn to promote the better voices and the better angels of our nature and and have those be featured at least as much as the voices of division and hatred. So and I couldn't agree more. And when you're seeing other rabbis and clergy from from all all religious Mhmm. Orientations, when you look at politics today, for instance, there's so much demonization of the other, so to speak. And the movement away from truth, and the movement towards exaggeration, and and stigmatizing the other.

Are there areas where you see clergy coming together to talk about the general values of dialogue and and critical I do. Okay. I see interfaith conferences, and I I'm a part of some various interfaith groups. And I certainly see church I actually just spoke to a Jewish Christian group in, Florida, and there are there are efforts in that area. They're not obviously, as I say, they're not the things that make the newspaper.

Nobody says wonderful Jewish Christian get together or wonderful, Muslim interfaith conference, because division is much more exciting and and click baity. But there are absolutely those efforts, on lots and lots of different, levels, political, religious, in business. And I think we might we might have passed the period in which people were enchanted by the crude and, easy division. I hope so because one of the things that you learned if you live long enough is everything that you think will go on forever doesn't go on forever. And so I understand that people think, oh, this division is just gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse.

But I remember, you know, the night before the, the night before the Soviet Union fell, nobody thought the Soviet Union was gonna fall. And, I've seen I mean and and certainly nobody ever thought there would be Abraham Accords in which, Arab nations would have full diplomatic relations with Israel. Some wonderful things can happen in this world unexpectedly. So I would just say that it is good to be hopeful and to work towards the realization of those hopes. So here's something I want to kinda ask you to make a or plug on or or explain.

In in both the Christian religion and and in Judaism, there's this concept of Sabbath. And sometimes it's, you know, you won't do this, you won't do that. Yeah. But it it is an opportunity to take a break Yes. From some kind.

Absolutely. And when you talk about social media and you talk about AI and you talk about the movement away from phones and schools and Jonathan Haidt's work for instance Yeah. Putting aside, you know, all of a sudden becoming super religious, just looking at something as simple as the Sabbath, how can someone that that is, you know, a little put off by religion look at kind of the values of something that shared, you know, historically by a lot of people in a positive way in in a world where we are so inundated with text messages and constant interruptions? I mean, just imagine a day in which you didn't have text messages and calls and emails, and you didn't run out to get the latest bargain at the store, and you spent that day with the people who are closest to you, and you had an opportunity each week to recharge your emotional and spiritual batteries. That's really what the Shabbat provides for us.

And the thing about making it mandatory is everyone knows who goes regularly to the gym or ever practiced piano or any of those things, that if you allow yourself to do it when you feel like it, you never do it. And so the acquisition of the discipline is itself a good thing. So if we can discipline ourselves to have a day where we don't need the constant overwhelming input from the world, what a blessing. Well, and the irony is that you have to experience to really appreciate it. Yep.

It's kinda like, you know, you you you have to try it, so to speak. Yes. You have to try it more than once. You have to try for a little while. I you know, I remember, someone asking me why I should light Shabbos candles, the candles that you light on Friday evening.

And I said to them, do it for a year, and then you won't have to ask me the question. Because sometimes you can only learn from experience. If we could learn from words, we would never have to have experiences. But everybody knows you learn much more from your experience than from somebody telling you about it. So if you observe Shabbat for a while, then you'll understand the beauty of observing Shabbat.

You know, I I I love how you brought that back because we started, we talked a lot about when you hear something, how do you bring it onto your heart? Right. And I think what I'm hearing you say is that one of the reasons Judaism has study, but it also combines it with work Correct. Is that you can hear about how you should love the, you know, the strangers yourself. Right.

You should take care of the sick and have empathy. Yeah. But when you actually go to a hospital and you visit the sick and you hold their hand and you spend time with them, you have an emotional reaction. It becomes real. Exactly.

And so, again, I love how you just brought that back to you do have to that, you know, behavior changes attitude. You have to take the ritual and do the work. Beautifully put. Behavior changes attitude. Sometimes we think you have to feel something and then do it.

But the truth is very, very often, you do something and then you feel it. Yeah. And I can't remember if it was con someone a friend of mine who went to Sarah Lawrence for college was a was a philosophy major, and they came back with that statement, behavior changes attitude. It's William James' it's the James Lang theory of emotion Okay. Which is that, you know, if somebody's depressed and you say to them, let's go dancing, and they go, no.

I don't want to because they're enjoying their depression. They realize if they go dancing, they won't be able to feel the same way that they do now. They just won't. Because when we act a certain way, it just you know, you go out and take a walk, you exercise, you do a mitzvah. It just changes the world.

So there is wisdom in just do it. Yeah. And and and Tony Robbins, for instance, when he does his seminars, for instance, I want years and years ago, he, you know, he will he will have you jump around and change your state so you can actually experience how that behavior does change your attitude. Yeah. And and you're just taking to another level Yeah.

With these kind of religious practices that in a sense, you know, make us better human beings. Yes. Exactly. Well, Rabbi, thank you so so much. Thank you.

The only other thing I would say is that just to have hope is a religious you know? I mean, I know that things are difficult, but, boy, we have faced enormous and difficulties in the past. So the trials are not unprecedented, and neither are a lot of the solutions. We We can do it again. Yeah.

And and it it is funny. You said this when you talked about how many people were raised out of poverty. I mean, people do seem to walk around with this very pessimistic feeling right now. Yep. But when we really objectively look at the world today, I mean, what what period of history would we rather go back to that was supposed to Don't.

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