Jews are commanded to open their homes to visitors, particularly the poor and the learned. Jews are not to convert their homes into fortresses protecting the nuclear family from invasion, but to sensitize their children to other people by inviting visitors regularly into their homes. The house is not to be a refuge but a bridge – if the analogy can be imagined, a kind of spiritually self-aware hotel.
Suggested Discussion Questions:
1. Why would you think Jews are encouraged to invite people into their home? According to Rabbi Wolf, what is the purpose of opening one's home?
2. Why do you think Jews are encouraged to invite the poor? The learned? Are they invited for the same reasons?
3. What does it mean to construct a "spiritually self-aware hotel?"
Time Period: Contemporary (The Yom Kippur War until the present-day)