Jonathan Sacks
ARTICLES BY: Jonathan Sacks
Acharei-Mot Kedoshim: Love Is Not Enough — We Also Need Rules
The opening chapter of Kedoshim contains two of the most powerful of all commands: to love your neighbor and to love the stranger. “Love your...
The Power of Praise — Tazria-Metsorah
From time to time, couples come to see me before their wedding. Sometimes they ask me whether I have any advice to give them about how...
When Weakness Becomes Strength
Have you ever felt inadequate to a task you have been assigned or a job you have been given? Do you sometimes feel that other...
The Importance of Giving Thanks
The first words we are taught to say each morning, immediately upon waking, are Modeh/modah and -- “I give thanks.” Note that the normal word order is inverted: Modeh ani, not ani...
We Must Each Answer God’s Calling
It was never my ambition or aspiration to be a rabbi. I went to university to study economics. I then switched to philosophy. I also...
Vayakhel and Pekudei: Making Space for Others to Grow
This week’s double parsha, with its long account of the construction of the sanctuary -- one of the longest narratives in the Torah, taking a full...
Ki Tissa: How Anger Can Help Us — and Harm Us
Comparing two of the most famous events in the Torah, we face what seems like a glaring contradiction. In this week’s parsha, Moses -- on...
Terumah: Why We Value What We Make
The behavioural economist Dan Ariely conducted a series of experiments on what is known as the IKEA effect -- “why we overvalue what we make.” The name comes,...
The Power of Empathy
William Ury, founder of the Harvard Program of Negotiation, tells a marvellous story in one of his books. A young American, living in Japan to study...
The Long Road Is Always the Fulfilling One
At the end of his new book, Tribe of Mentors, Timothy Ferris cites the following poem by Portia Nelson. It’s called "Autobiography in Five Short Chapters": Chapter...
The Story We Tell
It remains one of the most counterintuitive passages in all of religious literature: Moses is addressing the Israelites just days before their release. They have...
God Loves Those Who Argue
I have become increasingly concerned about the assault on free speech taking place throughout the West, particularly on university campuses. This is being done in the...
Joseph: The World’s First Psychotherapist
The phrase “Jewish thinker” may mean two very different things. It may mean a thinker who just happens to be Jewish by birth or descent -- a...
Jews and Economics
We know that Jews have won a disproportionate number of Nobel Prizes -- more than 20% -- for a group that represents 0.2 per cent of the world's...
