Wise Words
Writings of reflection by the Stephen Wise Temple clergy.
Each Monday morning, members of our mailing list receive the weekly email “This Week at Wise,” and on Fridays, a “Shabbat Shalom” email from Rabbi Yoshi which include messages of thought, inspiration, and contemplation from our clergy, along with a schedule of events. Sign up and don’t miss out!
Shabbat Shalom – Friday, July 17, 2026
Every year we tell the story, again and again. This week we add another layer as we begin the last book of the Torah, Devarim, "words," or "things." It opens: "These are the devarim that Moses spoke to all Israel." This is Moses's last address to our people, and in it he retells the last forty years to a generation that didn't live it themselves. Like all retellings, some details change. The emphasis shifts. Certain incidents disappear. New ones surface. In this moment of rising antisemitism, I've noticed that the way I remember, and retell, my own past has changed too. When people hear I'm from Omaha, they usually say, "I didn't know there were Jews there." I tell them the community is small and that it was a lovely place to grow up Jewish. When people ask about antisemitism, I usually say I grew up with almost none. That was true. Mostly, [...]
Wise Words – Monday, July 13, 2026
I love summer. I love the pace, the longer days, and the feeling that time stretches just a little further than usual. The dry heat doesn't bother me—I'm a California native who spent a year living in Israel, so this is my natural habitat. And despite the mosquitoes, I love being outside in the evenings, hearing the birds settle down as the neighborhood grows quiet. Most of all, I love that summer seems to create extra time for reading—or at least puts me in a rhythm where I make more of it. I am almost always reading both fiction and non-fiction, and this week I devoured Sarah Hurwitz's remarkable book As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us. It may not sound like a typical summer read, but I found it unexpectedly comforting. Hurwitz writes with honesty, wisdom, and much-needed self-compassion about [...]
Shabbat Shalom – Friday, July 10, 2026
We Jews are a lunar people — our calendar is driven by the cycle of the moon. The new Hebrew month begins with that tiny sliver of the new moon, and next week, on Tuesday evening, we will welcome the month of Av. It's a strange phenomenon. Our custom on the Shabbat preceding the new moon is to recite a blessing — one of hope and gratitude — for the month to come. But the month of Av begins with sadness, so even as we say the blessing, we know what's coming: the nine days of traditional mourning culminating in Tisha B'Av, our day of commemoration for the multiple national disasters that have befallen our people at this time of year. And this year, of all years, we say those words of blessing knowing full well what Av holds. This year, we journey toward Tisha B'Av with an even [...]
Wise Words – Monday, July 6, 2026
Recently we rediscovered a few items of jewelry that Becky’s parents left us. There were two 1903 gold nickels transformed into neck pendants, each encircled by a delicate gold filigree. Over 100 years old, clearly gold, valuable enough that they were turned into jewelry we thought maybe they should be insured. An internet AI search revealed that a 1903 nickel in mint condition was likely worth $4.50 and that gold nickels were never minted by the United States. Most likely, said our helpful AI platform, those items were gold plated. Which led to another question, why would Becky’s father, Aaron, have bothered to have two relatively worthless items (likely worth five cents at the time) coated in gold? Aaron Sobelman’s father was an immigrant from Poland who made a living as a housepainter. After the death of his first wife, he remarried Becky’s great-grandmother and she gave birth to [...]
Shabbat Shalom – Friday, July 3, 2026
Consider for a moment the purpose of a birthday celebration. We gather to rejoice in the being of the person whose birth we are commemorating. We are grateful and happy that this person came into the world and into our lives. Tomorrow we celebrate the birthday of our nation, born 250 years ago. On birthdays, it is appropriate and expected that we celebrate the one whose birth we are commemorating. We share kind words and often gifts and eat something sweet. On the eve of this 250th birthday of our nation though, many Americans are carrying real worry about the state of our country. That sense of concern is reflected in a recent Gallup poll that demonstrates that Americans' optimism about their own future has fallen to its lowest point since Gallup began asking the question nearly twenty years ago. And a second poll from Emerson College, replicating a question first asked in [...]