Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

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

Recently, an entirely new scientific basis has been given to morality from two surprising directions: neo-Darwinism and the branch of mathematics known as Games theory. As we will see, the discovery is intimately related to the story of Noah and the covenant made between G-d and humanity after the Flood.

For once Moses, the hero, the leader, the liberator, the lawgiver, is off-stage in the only instance where the name of Moses is not mentioned at all in any parsha since the first parsha of the book of Shemot. Instead our focus is on his elder brother Aaron. The story of Aaron and Moses, the fifth act in the biblical drama of brotherhood, is where, finally, fraternity reaches the heights

We must never forget that when Aaron was left to lead, the people made a golden calf. But never forget that Moses needed an Aaron to hold the people together. In short, leadership is the capacity to hold together different temperaments, conflicting voices and clashing values.

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.

Without belief in the covenant, there would be no State of Israel or any significant Jewish history after the Holocaust. Jews kept hope alive; Hope kept the Jewish people alive.

The idea that one might worship “the work of men’s hands” was anathema to biblical faith. More generally, Judaism is a culture of the ear, not the eye. As a religion of the invisible God, it attaches sanctity to words heard, rather than objects seen. Religious art is never “art for art’s sake.” Unlike secular art, it points to something beyond itself.

That is why a society based on rights NOT responsibilities, on what we claim from, not what we give to others, will always eventually go wrong.

The word “Torah” means “teaching” or “instruction,” and it is difficult to teach ethics through stories whose characters are fraught with complexity and ambiguity.

Vayakhel is Moses’ response to the wild abandon of the crowd that gathered around Aaron and made the golden calf.

Age brings the reflection and detachment that allows us to stand back and not be swept along by the mood of the moment or passing fashion or the madness of the crowd.

The moment when all we can say is gevalt. All we can do is cry out. That’s what the shofar was on Rosh Hashanah and will be at the end of Yom Kippur: The sound of our tears... The sound of a heart breaking. No more excuses. No more rationalizations and justifications. Ribbono Shel Olam, forgive us.

The search for perfect justice is not for us, here, now. It is – as Moses taught the Israelites in the great song he sang at the end of his life – something that faith demands we leave to G-d, who alone knows the human heart, who alone knows what is just in a world of conflicting claims, and who will establish perfect justice at a time, and in a way, of His choosing, not ours.

How do you restore moral order – not just then in the days of Moses, but even now? The answer lies in the first word of today’s parsha: Vayakhel.

Shabbat Shalom

At the heart of Judaism is a twofold understanding of the nature of God and His relationship to the universe.

Aaron, according to the most favored explanation, realized that he could not stop the people directly by refusing their request, so he adopted a stalling maneuver.

Why not paint Jacob in more attractive colors? It seems to me that the Torah is delivering, here as elsewhere, an extraordinary message: that if we can truly relate to God as God, in His full transcendence and majesty, then we can relate to humans as humans in all their fallibility.

Forgiveness does not appear in every culture. It is not a human universal, nor is it a biological imperative.

Moshe wasn't the last of the prophets. How would Israel discern his true successors from the false?

There's no obligation TO wear tzitzit; opting to wear them symbolizes free acceptance of the mitzvot

In Judaism, monarchy had little or no religious function.

The family had reached deadlock.

Here is a short message as we head towards Tisha B'Av and will be marked in strange and difficult circumstances because of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

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

Lena told the families with whom she was working that every day they must notice each member of the family doing something right, and say so – specifically, positively and thankfully.

six heroines, six courageous women without whom there would not have been a Moses.

There are important features of the moral life that are not universal but have to do with specific circumstances and the way we respond to them.

Had G-d not told the first humans: ‘Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves in the ground’? That is why Abel brought an animal sacrifice.

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...