Human 34: Rabbi David Wolpe

Senior Rabbi of the Sinai Temple, Los Angeles

David Wolpe is the Max Webb senior Rabbi of the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Newsweek Magazine named him as the most influential Rabbi in America, and the Jerusalem Post cited him among the 50 most influential Jews in the world. His teaching career has spanned the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA.  David regularly contributes to many publications including Time.com, The LA Times, the Washington Post’s On Faith website, The Huffington Post, and the New York Jewish Week.

David is a human mammal. Here are his thoughts:

What brings you the most joy in life?

The variety of things that bring me joy.

What does success mean to you?  

To work well, to love well, achievement and kindness in all its glorious multiplicity. 

What do you see as your greatest achievement?

Being a good father. 

What are you most grateful for?

The family I was born into and the life that was given me. 

What is something most people don’t know about you?

I sold women’s shoes in Urban Outfitters in college to help pay for room and board.

Who or what has had the biggest influence on your life? 

My father. I don’t wish to slight my mother’s influence, but my father was the most powerful model in my life. 

What do you regret?

So many things. The times I hurt people, missed opportunities, didn’t do what I could, or what I ought, or did what I ought not to have done. Some mistakes were indispensable to learn; others were just wasted and painful. 

Has there been a defining moment in your life? Can you tell us about it?

Many. No single moment. Birth was pretty big. 

As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A writer. Once I stopped wanting, at age 5, to be a cowboy.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Less fear. Less hesitancy. Bad feelings won’t kill you.

What is the most important thing we can teach kids in school?

Courage of your convictions and the openness to change them. 

If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would you choose and why?

My great grandparents who made the fateful choice to brave the seas and leave all they knew to come to America, to thank them on bended knee for saving all of us. As a Jew, had my family stayed in Europe, they would likely all have been slaughtered. 

What do you doubt most?

The wisdom of humanity to appropriately use the genius of humanity.

When did you last have a significant change of mind?

This past year when I went from thinking that technology was overall a force for liberation to thinking it may be a greater tool for enslaving.

What is the role of luck in our lives?

Tremendous. Beyond what most people wish to credit. I didn’t earn my brain or my parents or being born in the richest country in the world in the 20th century. I have been very, very lucky. Others, less so; not less deserving, just less lucky. 

Do you have a favourite quote? What is it? Why do you like it?

“My moods don’t believe one another.” From Emerson.  I treasure quotations and have endless numbers in my Rolodex of a brain, but that one seems aptly to capture our variability. And I love Emerson.  

What would you do with your life if you had unlimited financial resources?

Support the causes I think worthy and read and travel, and travel and read. 

If you could have the definitive answer to a single question, what would you ask?

What kind of life after death is there?

What concept/fact/idea should every human on the planet understand?

That we are all children of God, that every person is not of equal ability or worthiness, but every person is of equal worth. 

Do human beings have free will?

Yes, but to say so is an act of faith. Scientifically, rationally, no. With God, yes. 

Do you believe in God?

Yes. Although I do not necessarily intend what others do by that word. I believe there is a spirit, other than us, from which we come and to which we return. And that human beings are more than stuff. 

Could we be living in a simulated universe?

“Could we?”… loading the dice. Anything is possible. Are we? Almost certainly not.

Will the continual development of technology have a net positive or negative influence on humanity?

See above. Medical advances are miraculous and wonderful. Other kinds of technology, at best the jury is out.

What is the single greatest achievement of humanity?

Literacy. The unfathomable magic of a symbol written hundreds or thousands of years ago enabling me to read Middlemarch, to understand what was in the mind of Aristotle, Moses, Shakespeare. 

What do you see as the biggest existential threat to humanity?

Our action, whether in despoiling our environment or deploying our massive weaponry. 

What does it mean to live a good life?  

To be kind, to contribute from the world that gives us so much, to live in gratitude and in goodness. To reduce sentient suffering as much as possible (this may imply vegetarianism - longer conversation.) 

What is a good death?

One not attended by great pain, loss of faculties or unwanted aloneness. Ideally, the culmination after many years of a good life. 

What question should I have asked you?

Depends what you wish to know…

Thanks for your time, David!

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