Healing the emotional and spiritual pain of job loss

A conversation with Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles

June 2, 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | Youtube Music | RSS

We are living in trying times. More than 40 million people have lost their jobs since mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The jobless rate is at the highest level since the Great Depression. For most people, a job is necessary to pay bills and put food on the table. The other side of unemployment is the emotional and spiritual toll it can take on someone without a job.

“In theory, all of our religions teach that a person and their being gives purpose as opposed to their doing,” Rabbi David Wolpe says. “You have to try and remind people of that. And yet, it’s almost impossible for any of us to separate how we feel about ourselves from the role we play in society.”

Rabbi Wolpe is the senior rabbi at the Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. Newsweek magazine has called him the most influential rabbi in America and the Jerusalem Post has called him one of the 50 most influential Jews in America.

In this episode of Work in Progress, Rabbi Wolpe and I discuss the connection between employment and the feeling of purpose in one’s life. He says that some of his congregants have expressed feelings of worthlessness after they’ve lost their jobs.

Rabbi Wolpe says society needs to explore the “nature of employment and what it means to someone spiritually and psychologically, and how we think of it from the outside. I think that that’s essential right now when we’re facing the greatest unemployment crisis in American history.”

“Part of what I think we need to start doing is to understand that, while work is integrally tied to one’s sense of self-worth—the shock we’re about to endure, that we have to take care of as a society—we’re going to have a psychological and spiritual fall that’s going to be even greater than the fall in employment numbers.”

In the podcast, Rabbi Wolpe and I discuss what religious leaders can and should be doing to address the emotional and spiritual crisis that is accompanying this unemployment crisis. We also explore how society’s notion of what is and is not an essential job has shifted in light of COVID-19.

You can listen to to the full podcast here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks for listening, And please consider subscribing.

Episode 136: Rabbi David Wolpe, Sinai Temple, Los Angeles
Host: Ramona Schindelheim, Editor-in-Chief, WorkingNation
Producer: Larry Buhl
Executive Producers: Joan Lynch, Melissa Panzer, and Ramona Schindelheim
Music: Composed by Lee Rosevere and licensed under CC by 4.0.

You can check out all the other podcasts at this link: Work in Progress podcasts

John Colborn, executive director, Apprenticeships for America, on Work in Progress podcast with Ramona Schindelheim, editor-in-chief of WorkingNation

Making the case for more apprenticeships in America

Wendy Chun-Hoon, director, Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, on Work in Progress podcast with Ramona Schindelheim, editor-in-chief of WorkingNation, discussing women in the workforce

Women in the workforce are making strides, but there is still work to do

Consumer Technology Association CEO Gary Shapiro discusses what's new at CES and how the technology is impacting the way we work on the WorkingNation Work in Progress podcast

CES 2025: AI is transforming the workforce, but it’s not the only tech we should be watching

Lightcast EVP Joshua Wright on the WorkingNation Work in Progress podcast discusses The Rising Storm report on the projected labor shortage

Needed steps to head off a labor shortage in the U.S.

Get the latest from WorkingNation

Our Mission

Dana Beth Ardi

Executive Committee

Dana Beth Ardi, PhD, Executive Committee, is a thought leader and expert in the fields of executive search, talent management, organizational design, assessment, leadership and coaching. As an innovator in the human capital movement, Ardi creates enhanced value in companies by matching the most sought after talent with the best opportunities. Ardi coaches boards and investors on the art and science of building high caliber management teams. She provides them with the necessary skills to seek out and attract top-level management, to design the ideal organizational architectures and to deploy people against strategy. Ardi unearths the way a business works and the most effective way for people to work in them.

Ardi is an experienced business executive and senior consultant who leverages business organizational transformation through talent strategies. She uses her knowledge and experience to develop talent strategies to enhance revenue and profit contributions. She has a deep expertise in change management and organizational effectiveness and has designed and built high performance cultures. Ardi has significant experience in mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, IPO’s and turnarounds.

Ardi is an expert on the multi-generational workforce. She understands the four intersecting generations of workers coming together in contemporary companies, each with their own mindsets, leadership and communications styles, values and motivations. Ardi is sought after to assist companies manage and thrive by bringing the generations together. Her book, Fall of the Alphas: How Beta Leaders Win Through Connection, Collaboration and Influence, will be published by St. Martin’s Press. The book reflects Ardi’s deep expertise in understanding organizations and our changing society. It focuses on building a winning culture, how companies must grow and evolve, and how talent influences and shapes communities of work. This is what she has coined “Corporate Anthropology.” It is a playbook on how modern companies must meet challenges – culturally, globally, digitally, across genders and generations.

Ardi is currently the Managing Director and Founder of Corporate Anthropology Advisors, LLC, a consulting company that provides human capital advisory and innovative solutions to companies building value through people. Corporate Anthropology works with organizations, their cultures, the way they grow and develop, and the people who are responsible for forming their communities of work.

Prior to her position at Corporate Anthropology Advisors, Ardi served as a Partner/Managing Director at the private equity firms CCMP Capital and JPMorgan Partners. She was a partner at Flatiron Partners, a venture capital firm working with early state companies where she pioneered the human capital role within an investment portfolio.

Ardi holds a BS from the State University of New York at Buffalo as well as a Masters degree and PhD from Boston College. She started her career as professor at the Graduate Center at Fordham University in New York.