RABBI ARYEH WOLBE
TORCHWEB.ORG RABBI WITH HEART AND SOUL
Rabbi Aryeh Wolbe was blessed to grow up in a family deeply rooted in Torah scholarship. Born in Jerusalem, and raised in New York, he is grateful for the opportunity to have learned in some of the most prominent and respected Torah centers, including Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem, and Beth Medrash Gevoha in Lakewood, New Jersey. Rabbi Wolbe holds Rabbinic ordinations from the former Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu z"l, and from Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits of the Jerusalem Kollel.
Inspired by the desire to connect Jews with their heritage, Rabbi Wolbe has been involved in outreach efforts since 1996, serving communities across the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Canada, and Israel. Rabbi Wolbe has published numerous books in Russian, and has distributed over 12,000 copies to the multitude of Jewish communities in which he has served.
Much of Rabbi Wolbe's approach to teaching is influenced by his grandfather, the revered Mussar Master, Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe, z"l. He feels privileged to teach Mussar classes throughout the Houston community, hoping to share the wisdom he learned from his grandfather and pass on the message of meaningful and inspiring Judaism.
Rabbi Wolbe lives in Houston with his incredible wife, Zehava, feeling fortunate to be raising their eight children. Since 2005, he has been grateful to work with TORCH (www.torchweb.org), where he currently serves as the CEO, President, and Executive Director, contributing to Jewish education in that community and beyond.
You Hold The Golden Key
RABBI ARYEH WOLBE
Why should we expect assurance that God exists? Who are we to understand why God does things? We have only a tiny view of a finite and miniscule sliver of life. What kind of world would it be if everything made perfect sense to us?
The answer is that the proof we seek is supposed to be challenging to find and difficult to understand. That is the way God created the world, deliberately ensuring that the consequences of our actions are not immediate or perfectly obvious, or that the righteous always get rewarded and bad people are punished. If that were the case, and it were so clear, it would take away our ability to exercise free will.
Mankind can never understand God’s ways. God is all-merciful, but we don’t understand how mercy works. We must infer that because God is perfectly just, God chose the best possible world for us. If you took away everything that is unfair or bad, you would have a world quite different from the one in which we live. It would be like trying to bake chocolate chip cookies without chocolate chips. We can’t understand all the random, horrible things that happen (like earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, sickness, and shootings) because of the limitations of our minds. But God’s higher, infinite mind can. The bottom line is that some bad must be necessary in God’s world in order for it to be the kind of world that accommodates the greatest amount of goodness.
So the first thing we need to accept is that we are limited and don’t know everything, and that therefore, it is important to investigate and ask questions, even if life does not offer instant answers. In the process of looking for those answers, we will gain valuable wisdom. Make sure that whenever you find wisdom, you extract what is relevant to your life, and try to live it, so as to make your life better. Aim to learn something every day; if you haven’t learned, you haven’t grown.