Jonathan Sacks

Is character strictly personal – either you are or aren’t calm, courageous, charismatic – or does culture have a part to play? Does when and where you live make a difference to the kind of person you become? That was the question posed by three great Amer...

The great challenge is: Can I see a trace of G‑d in the face of a stranger?

Were He not to create humanity there would be no-one in the universe capable of understanding that he or she was created and that G‑d exists.

Jacob was on his death-bed. He summoned his children. He wanted to bless them before he died. But the text begins with a strange semi-repetition: “Gather around so I can tell you what will happen to you in days to come. Assemble and listen, sons of Jacob;...

To bless, we must love, and to be blessed is to know that we are loved by the One vaster than the universe.

Right at the end of the book of Shemot, there is a textual difficulty so slight that it is easy to miss, yet – as interpreted by Rashi – it contains one of the great clues as to the nature of Jewish identity: it is a moving testimony to the unique challen...

In the immensely lengthy and detailed account of the making of the Tabernacle, the Torah tells the story twice: first as Divine instruction, Exodus 25:1 – 31:17. then as human implementation. Exodus 35 – 40. In both cases, the construction of the building...

For once, Moses, the hero, the leader, the liberator, the lawgiver, is offstage. Instead our focus is on his elder brother Aaron who, elsewhere, is often in the background.

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? Why did He allow it to continue, albeit in a restricted and regulated way?

The portion of Yitro, which contains the account of the greatest Divine revelation in history, at Mount Sinai, begins on a note that is human, all too human. Yitro, priest of Midian, has come to see how his son-in-law Moses and the people he leads are far...