Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

In Bereishit Rabbah, it is indicated that the division of the sea was, as it were, programmed into Creation from the outset. It was less a suspension of nature than an event written into nature from the beginning, to be triggered at the appropriate moment in the unfolding of history.

The great leaders of Israel were the great defenders of Israel, people who saw the good within the not-yet-good. That is why they were listened to when they urged people to change and grow. THat is how it was in the time of Moses; that is how it remains today

Maimonides insists that it is not so. “It is not right to alienate, scorn and hate people who desecrate the Sabbath,” he said. “It is our duty to befriend them and encourage them to fulfill the commandments.”

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

Speaking of the three pilgrimage festivals – Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot – Deuteronomy speaks of “joy.” But it does not do so equally.

The account in Deuteronomy is about society. Moses at the end of his life told the next generation where they had come from, where they were going to, and the kind of society they were to construct.

The story of Korach has much to teach us about one of the most disturbing phenomena of our time: the rise of populism in...

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

That is the context in which we should read the story of Pharaoh and his advisers. This is one of the first recorded instances of the march of folly. How does it happen?

The stories of Judah and of his descendant David tell us that what marks a leader is not necessarily perfect righteousness. It is the ability to admit mistakes, to learn from them and grow from them. The Judah we see at the beginning of the story is not the man we see at the end.

All human authority needs checks and balances if it is to remain uncorrupted. In particular, political and religious leadership, keter malchut and keter kehunah, should never be combined.

By wisdom, we come to understand G-d via creation; By Torah we understand G-d through His revelation

Your life seems to be coming to a tragic end, your destination unreached, your aspirations unfulfilled. What do you do? WWMD?

No one has all the strengths. Sufficient if we have one. But we must also know what we lack.

Israel shows the world that a people does not have to be large in order to be great.

Judaism turns life into a work of art. It consecrates the love between husbands and wives, and parents and children. It sanctifies our most physical acts, through the laws of kashrut and family purity.

The Sanctuary as a human construct, mirrors the Divine creation of the universe. Each creation culminates in the Sabbath placing the sanctity of place in subordinate position to the holiness of time.

Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. Jacob, in this parsha, finds himself trapped in such a conflict: on the one hand, he ought not allow himself to be killed; on the other, he ought not kill someone else; but he must do one or the other.

Albert Einstein said it was the ‘almost fanatical love of justice’ that made him thank his lucky stars that he was born a Jew.

Admittedly, the Talmud questions how free the Israelites actually were, and it uses an astonishing image.

It is through the word – speaking and listening – that we can have an intimate relationship with G-d as our parent, our partner, our sovereign, the One who loves us and whom we love.

Laban’s behavior is the paradigm of anti-Semites through the ages. It was not so much what Laban did that the Haggadah is referring to, but what his behavior gave rise to, in century after century.

Hope is one of the very greatest Jewish contributions to Western civilization, so much so that I have previously called Judaism “the voice of hope in the conversation of humankind.” Without this, Jews and Judaism would not have survived.

Issues of the heart

The test of a society is not military, political, economic or demographic. It is moral and spiritual.

The aspect of G-d that appears in the days of Moses and the Israelites is radically different, and it’s only because we are so used to the story that we find it hard to see how radical it was.

In Judaism, to be without questions is a sign not of faith, but of lack of depth.

Tanach, the Hebrew Bible, is remarkable for the extreme realism with which it portrays human character. Its heroes are not superhuman. Its non-heroes are not archetypal villains. The best have failings; the worst often have saving virtues. I know of no other religious literature quite like it.

Judaism was and remains unique in its combination of universalism and particularism. We believe that God is the God of all humanity. He created all. He is accessible to all. He cares for all. He has made a covenant with all. Yet there is also a relationship with God that is unique to the Jewish people. It alone has placed its national life under His direct sovereignty

Maimonides holds there is not one model of the virtuous life, but two. He calls them, respectively, the way of the saint and the sage. It is this deep insight that led Maimonides to his seemingly contradictory evaluations of the nazirite