Jonathan Sacks
ARTICLES BY: Jonathan Sacks
Parshat Vayishlach: No Longer Shall You Be Called Jacob
One fact about this week’s parsha has long perplexed the commentators. After his wrestling match with the unnamed adversary, Jacob was told: “Your name shall...
Parshat Vayetse: The Story of Laban the Aramean
The events narrated in this week’s parsha -- Jacob’s flight to Laban, his stay there, and his escape, pursued by his father-in-law -- gave rise...
Parshat Toldot: Love Heals the Lover and the Loved
It’s a haunting question. Why did Isaac love Esau? The verse says so explicitly: “Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebecca...
Finding the ‘Why’ of Life Will Ease Your Suffering
The name of our parsha this week seems to embody a paradox. It is called Chayei Sarah, “the life of Sarah,” but it begins with...
Parshat Vayera: The Need to Live With Uncertainty
I have written about the binding of Isaac many times in these studies, each time proposing an interpretation somewhat different from the ones given by...
Parshat Lech Lecha: Fight the Flames of Evil
Why Abraham? That is the question that haunts us when we read the opening of this week’s parsha. Here is the key figure in the...
Noah: Finding the Light in the Ark
Amid all the drama of the impending flood and the destruction of almost all of creation, this week we focus on Noah building the ark,...
Parshat Bereishit: The Genesis of Love
In The Lonely Man of Faith, Rabbi Soloveitchik drew our attention to the fact that Bereishit contains two separate accounts of creation. The first is...
The Torah Is a Way to See the World
When I was Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, I had wonderful friendships with other religious leaders, not least the two...
The Message of the Torah: ‘Out of the One, Many’
In the glorious song with which Moses addresses the people, he invites them to think of the Torah -- their covenant with God -- as...
The Torah as God’s Song
At the end of his life, having given the Israelites at God’s behest 612 commandments, Moses gave them the final mitzvah: “Now therefore write down...
Why Do Jews Drift Away From Judaism?
When I was a student at university in the late 1960s -- the era of student protests, psychedelic drugs, and the Beatles meditating with the...
The Jews Are a Nation of Storytellers
Howard Gardner, professor of education and psychology at Harvard University, is one of the great minds of our time. He is best known for his...
Animal Welfare in Judaism
The parsha of Ki Teitse is about relationships: between men and women, parents and children, employers and employees, lenders and borrowers. Strikingly, though, it is...
