Rabbi David Wolpe: Harvard, Antisemitism, and Resilience - March 18, 2024

After a 25-year career as the Senior Rabbi of Temple Sinai in Los Angeles, a bestselling author, and a national thought leader, Rabbi David Wolpe retired from the pulpit last year, preparing for a quiet capstone as a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School. As we all now know, this year has been anything but quiet. Rabbi Wolpe suddenly found himself at the epicenter of this year’s American antisemitism epidemic. Rabbi Wolpe shares reflections of his experience at Harvard and the resilience he has seen grow around him there.
David Wolpe is the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School. Author of eight books, including the national bestseller “Making Loss Matter,: Creating Meaning in Difficult Times,” Wolpe has been named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek, among the 50 most influential Jews in the world by the Jerusalem Post and and twice named among the 50 most influential Angelinos by LA Magazine. He is the Senior Advisor at Maimonides Fund and the inaugural Rabbinic Fellow for the ADL. Rabbi Wolpe has taught at a number of universities before Harvard, including UCLA, Hunter college, Pepperdine and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and written for The NY Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Jerusalem Post among other newspapers and journals. His resignation from the antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard gained international attention and millions of views on social media. Wolpe’s most recent book, “David: The Divided Heart,” a biography of King David, was a finalist for the National Jewish Book award and optioned for a movie by Warner Brothers.