Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

The emphasis on choice, freedom and responsibility is a most distinctive features of Jewish thought.

If G-d does not want slavery, if He regards it as an affront to the human condition, why did He not abolish it immediately?

The genius of the biblical narrative of the crossing of the Reed Sea is that it does not resolve the issue of whether it was a miracle or merely natural, one way or another. It gives us both perspectives-you decide

Judaism is less a philosophical system than a field of tensions – between universalism and particularism, for example, or exile and redemption, priests and prophets, cyclical and linear time, and so on.

According to Maimonides there is not one model of the virtuous life, but two. He calls them, respectively, the way of the saint (chassid) and the sage (chacham).

Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai was a great teacher because five of his students became giants in their own right. The mishnah is telling us how he did it: with focused praise.

These are important fights, good fights, whose outcome will affect more than Jews.

It was the Septuagint, the early Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, that translated tzara’at, the condition whose identification and cleansing occupies much of Parshiyot Tazria and Metzora as lepra, giving rise to a long tradition identifying it with leprosy.

We have moral duties as individuals, and we make political decisions as nations. The two are different.

Do not think that we can survive as a nation among nations, worshiping what they worship and living as they live. If we do, we will be subject to the universal law that has governed the fate of nations from the dawn of civilization to today.

Who am I? What are the most important things in my life? What do I want to be remembered for? If, as a purely...

Most people talk about what. Some people talk about how. Great leaders, though, start with why. This is what makes them transformative.

If you are prepared to learn something new, you can be 103 and still young. If you are not prepared to learn something new, you can be 23 and already old.

A key to help unlock the entire project outlined by Moses in Sefer Devarim, the final book of the Torah, from a most unlikely source...

Of Chukkim “Satan and the nations of the world made fun.” They may appear irrational & superstitious

Simply, for Rambam the number 14 (2x7) was his favored organizing principle.

Keriat haTorah, properly understood, is a performative act. It is a weekly recreation of the revelation at Mount Sinai. It is a covenant ratification ceremony like the one Moshe performed at Sinai:

Sukkot's the only festival sharing the pilgrimage cycle & part of Tishrei sequence-hence, double JOY

A society takes all types... Shabbat Shalom!

The most influential man who ever lived, does not appear on any list I have seen of the hundred most influential men in history. He ruled no empire, commanded no army, His name, of course, is Abraham

What is the logic of kashrut? And why are they placed here in parshat Shemini? AND what is their connection with the sanctuary?

Sadly, we're no longer an edah; We've fissured and fractured: Orthodox & Reform; religious & secular

The sedrah of Tazria begins with the law of circumcision Why this physical mark on the flesh? What does it tell us about the nature of Jewish identity?

There is a fascinating detail in the passage about the king in this week’s parshah. The text says that, “When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he must write for himself a copy of this Torah on a scroll before the levitical priests” (Deuteronomy 17:18). He must “read it all the days of his life” so that he will be God-fearing and never break Torah law. But there is also another reason: so that he will “not begin to feel superior to his brethren” (Kaplan translation), “so that his heart be not haughty over his brothers” (Robert Alter). The king had to have humility. The highest in the land should not feel that he is the highest in the land.

What then does the Torah say about Abraham? The answer is unexpected and very moving. Abraham was chosen simply to be a father.

When Jews are defeated and sent into exile, it is not only a tragedy for them. It is a tragedy for G-d.

The Torah commands us in only one place to love our neighbor, but thirty-six times to love the stranger.

Faith is the courage to take a risk for the sake of God or the Jewish people

The very concept of making a home in finite space for an infinite presence seems a contradiction in terms. The answer, still astonishing in its profundity, is contained at the beginning of this week’s parsha: “They shall make a Sanctuary for Me, and I will dwell in them [betokham]” (Exodus 25:8).

It is simply not the same to put on tefillin or keep kashrut or observe Shabbat in the Diaspora as in Israel. The Torah is the constitution of a holy people in the holy land. Only in Israel is the fulfillment of the commands a society-building exercise, shaping the contours of a culture as a whole. Only in Israel does the calendar track the rhythms of the Jewish year.