Jonathan Sacks
ARTICLES BY: Jonathan Sacks
Improbable Endings and the Defeat of Despair
We live life looking forward -- but we understand it only looking back. As we live from day to day, our life can seem like a...
The Struggle of Faith: The Story of Jacob
There are Mozarts and there are Beethovens. Which are you? I have only the most amateur knowledge of music, but the impression one gets about Mozart...
First Build the Future — Then Remember the Past
On August 11, 2017, the world’s oldest man passed away, just a month short of his 114th birthday -- making him one of the ten oldest men...
The Space Between Us
The stories told in Bereishit chapters 21 and 22 -- the sending away of Ishmael and the binding of Isaac -- are among the hardest to understand...
Finding the Courage to Be Different
Is character strictly personal -- either you are or aren’t calm, courageous, charismatic, etc. -- or does culture have a role to play? Does when and where you...
How to Truly Love a Stranger
The story of the first eight chapters of Bereishit is tragic but simple: creation, followed by decreation, followed by recreation. God creates order. Humans then destroy...
The Faith of God Is His Faith in Us
In stately prose, the Torah's opening chapter describes the unfolding of the universe as the effortless creation of a single creative force. Repeatedly we read, “And God said,...
Judaism’s Life-Changing Ideas
What is Judaism? A religion? A faith? A way of life? A set of beliefs? A collection of commands? A culture? A civilization? It is all...
Moses, the Man
That very day the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go up this mountain of the Abarim, Mount Nebo, which is in the land of Moab, opposite...
Why Be Jewish?
In the last days of his life, Moses renewed the covenant between God and Israel. The entire book of Devarim is an account of the covenant:...
Ki Tavo and Our Covenant With God
You have affirmed [he-emarta] this day that the Lord is your God, that you will walk in His ways, that you will observe His laws and...
Antisemitism and the Two Types of Hate
This week's parsha contains a strange, almost incomprehensible law: Remember what the Amalekites did to you along the way when you came out of Egypt. When you...
The Consent of the Governed
The contribution of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible) to political thought is fundamental, but not well known. In this article, I want to look at the institution...
The Limits of Grief in the Jewish Mourning Process
“You are children of the Lord your God. Do not cut yourselves or shave the front of your heads for the dead, for you are...
