Jonathan Sacks
ARTICLES BY: Jonathan Sacks
The Hardest Part of Love is Letting Go
There is a mystery at the heart of the biblical story of Abraham, and it has immense implications for our understanding of Judaism. Who was Abraham...
In Judaism, We Stand on the Shoulders of Previous Generations
Mark Twain said it most pithily. “When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the...
The Courage to Live With Uncertainty
For each of us there are milestones on our spiritual journey that change the direction of our life and set us on a new path....
Judaism Is a Religion of Listening, Not Seeing
What exactly was the first sin? What was the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil? Is this kind of knowledge a bad thing --...
Be Like Moses, Serve a Cause Greater Than Yourself
And so Moses dies, alone on a mountain with God – as he had been all those years ago when as a shepherd in Midian,...
If God Is Just, Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?
In majestic language, Moses breaks into song, investing his final testament to the Israelites with all the power and passion at his command. He begins...
The Torah Is the Music of the Soul
Moses’s long and tempestuous career is about to end. With words of blessing and encouragement, he hands on the mantle of leadership to his successor,...
Why Do We Choose Judaism? Because We Choose Life
This week’s parsha raises a question that goes to the heart of Judaism, but which was not asked for many centuries until raised by a...
Judaism Is Defined by Joy
Happiness, said Aristotle, is the ultimate goal at which all humans aim. But in Judaism it is not necessarily so. Happiness is a high value. Ashrei, the...
Children Do Suffer the Sins of Their Parents
There is, on the face of it, a fundamental contradiction in the Torah. On the one hand we hear, in the passage known as the...
Judaism’s Environmental Responsibility
Some commands in the Torah were understood so narrowly by the sages that they were rendered almost inapplicable. One example is the ir ha-nidachat, the city...
The Second Tithe and the Making of a Strong Society
Biblical Israel from the time of Joshua until the destruction of the Second Temple was a predominantly agricultural society. Accordingly, it was through agriculture that...
The Power of Gratitude Can Literally Save Your Life
In the early 1990s, one of the great medical research exercises of modern times took place. It became known as the Nun Study. Some 700...
The Right and the Good
Buried among the epic passages in Va-etchanan – among them the Shema and the Ten Commandments – is a brief passage with large implications for...
