Posts Tagged: jonathan sacks
Being a Leader Means Being True to Yourself
I have argued in previous years of Covenant and Conversation that the episode in which the Jewish people acquired its name - when Jacob wrestled...
British Leaders Silent in Face of Anti-Israel, Anti-Semitic Rhetoric
In what's becoming a regular and predictable occurrence, yet another leading British politician recently attacked Israel and the American Jewish lobby. This time it was...
Finding Light in Dark Times: Jewish Leaders Persevere
What is it that made Jacob - not Abraham or Isaac or Moses - the true father of the Jewish people? We are the "congregation...
The Price of Silence
In an earlier Covenant and Conversation, I quoted the Netziv (Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin, 1816-1893, dean of the yeshiva in Volozhin), who made the sharp observation...
The Courage Not to Conform
Leaders lead. That does not mean to say that they don't follow. But what they follow is different from what most people follow. They don't...
Prince Charles Wears Unique Kippah to UK Chief Rabbi’s Induction Ceremony
Britain's Prince Charles celebrated the official induction of the UK's new chief rabbi, Ephraim Mervis, Sunday by wearing a personalized yarmalke bearing his official crest. The Prince of...
Testing Prophecy
In his enumeration of the various leadership roles within the nation that would take shape after his death, Moses mentions not only the priest/judge and...
July 4th: Land of ‘Herut,’ Home of the Brave
JNS.org - Today, July 4, Jewish families all over the United States will join the rest of the country and stare up in wonderment as...
The Hardest Word to Hear
The story of Bilaam, the pagan prophet, begins with a bewildering set of non-sequiturs - a sequence of events that seems to have no...
Why Was Moses Not Destined to Enter the Land?
It is one of the most perplexing, even disturbing, passages in the Torah. Moses the faithful shepherd, who has led the Israelites for forty years,...
How to Develop the Outer Persona and the Inner Person
Our Torah portion, this week's sedra, ends with one of the great commands of Judaism - tsitsit, the fringes we wear on the corner of...
Leadership Beyond Despair
Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, is remarkable for the extreme realism with which it portrays human character. Its heroes are not superhuman. Its non-heroes...
The Chronological Imagination
I want, in this study, to look at one of Judaism's most distinctive and least understood characteristics - the chronological imagination. The modern world...
Faith as a Journey
In its account of the festivals of the Jewish year, this week's parshah contains the following statement: You shall dwell in thatched huts for seven...
