Jonathan Sacks
ARTICLES BY: Jonathan Sacks
To Be Jewish Means to Give
It was the first Israelite house of worship, the first home Jews made for God. But the very idea is fraught with paradox, even contradiction....
Why We Must Each Reach Out to God in Our Own Way
One of the most famous phrases in the Torah makes its appearance in this week’s parsha. It has often been used to characterize the Jewish...
To Be Happy, Thank Before You Think
The Ten Commandments are the most famous religious and moral code in history. Until recently, they adorned American courtrooms. They still adorn most synagogue arks....
The Serenity of Shabbat
The first translation of the Torah into another language -- Greek -- took place in around the second century BCE, in Egypt during the reign of Ptolemy...
Hope Is Born in the Home
The American writer Bruce Feiler recently published a best-selling book entitled The Secrets of Happy Families. It’s an engaging work that uses research largely drawn from...
To Improve People’s Spirituality, Improve Their Standard of Living
The Torah sometimes says something of fundamental importance in what seems like a minor and incidental comment. There is a fine example of this near...
How to Turn a Curse Into a Blessing
Genesis ends on an almost serene note. Jacob has found his long lost son. The family has been reunited. Joseph has forgiven his brothers. Under...
If We Reframe Our Emotions, We Can Achieve Anything
Maimonides called his ideal type of human being -- the sage -- a rofe nefashot, a “healer of souls.” Today we call such a person a psychotherapist, a word...
How to Wait Without Despair
Something extraordinary happens between last week’s parsha and this week’s. It is almost as if the pause of a week between them were itself part...
Every Single Person Can Make a True Difference in This World
In his Laws of Repentance, Moses Maimonides makes one of the most empowering statements in religious literature. Having explained that we and the world are judged...
We Should Feel Fear, But We Must Never Given In to It
It is one of the most enigmatic episodes in the Torah, but also one of the most important, because it was the moment that gave...
How the Light Gets In
Why Jacob? That is the question we find ourselves asking repeatedly as we read the narratives of Genesis. Jacob is not what Noah was: righteous,...
A Father’s Love
“The boys grew up. Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a mild man who stayed at home among the...
We Must Look to the Future, and Move on From the Past
He was 137 years old. He had been through two traumatic events involving the people most precious to him in the world. The first involved...
