יום ראשון, כ׳ תמוז תשפ״וSunday, July 5, 2026
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Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was the former chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth and the author and editor of 40 books on Jewish thought. He died earlier this month.
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By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Moses represents the birth of a new kind of leadership. That is what Korach and his followers did not understand. Many of us do not understand it still.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The antidote to fear, both of failure and success, lies in the passage with which the parsha ends: the command of tzitzit
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Power works by division, influence by multiplication. Power, in other words, is a zero-sum game: the more you share, the less you have.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
In the Torah, God summons His special people, Israel, to take the first steps towards what might eventually become a truly egalitarian society – or to put it more precisely, a society in which dignity, kavod, does not depend on power or wealth or an accident of birth.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Is counting the people an expression of love or does it arouse Hashem’s anger?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
In what sense were the Jews in France and the Jews in Spain responsible for one another? What constituted them as a single nation?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
When Jews are defeated and sent into exile, it is not only a tragedy for them. It is a tragedy for G-d.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
All the high ideals in the world count for little until they are turned into habits of action that become habits of the heart.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
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.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The real contrast here, though, is the difference between Aaron and his two sons. They were, it seems, opposites. Aaron was over-cautious and had to be persuaded by Moses even to begin. Nadav and Avihu were not cautious enough. So keen were they to put their own stamp on the role of priesthood that their impetuosity was their downfall.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
There are times when each of us has to decide, not just “What shall I do?” but “What kind of person shall I be?”
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Politics involves difficult judgments. A leader must balance competing claims and will sometimes get it wrong.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
So the Torah is a unique combination of nomos and narrative, history and law, the formative experiences of a nation and the way that nation sought to live its collective life so as never to forget the lessons it learned along the way. It brings together vision and detail in a way that has never been surpassed.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
There are times when you need someone with the courage to stand against the crowd, others when you need a peacemaker.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The Priest was “holy” and therefore set apart from the people. He had to eat his food in a state of purity, and had to avoid contact with the dead.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
That, I believe, is what the Sages meant when they said, “Call them not ‘your children’ but ‘your builders’” (Brachot 64a). People have to become builders if they are to grow from childhood to adulthood.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Torah means “law.” But it also means “teaching, instruction, guidance,” or more generally, “direction.”
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Israel can learn practical politics from a Midianite but it must learn the limits of politics from G-d Himself.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Look down at the difficulties and you can give way to despair. The only way to sustain energy, individual or collective, is to turn our gaze up toward the far horizon of hope.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Moses’ insight was profound. He knew that you cannot change the world by externalities alone, by monumental architecture, or armies and empires, or the use of force and power.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Leadership, even of the very highest order, is often marked by failure.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Wherever leadership depends on personal qualities and not on office or title, there is no distinction between women and men.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Joseph had, in double measure, one of the necessary gifts of a leader: the ability to keep going despite opposition, envy, false accusation and repeated setbacks.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Both said chattati, “I have sinned.” But their fates were radically different.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
He did so for the butler and baker in prison and, in this week’s parsha, for Pharaoh. His interpretations were neither magical nor miraculous.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
No one has all the strengths. Sufficient if we have one. But we must also know what we lack.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
It is as if the Torah were telling us that so long as there is a conflict within us, there will be a conflict around us.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
It is at these points of maximal vulnerability that he encounters G-d and finds the courage to continue despite all the hazards of the journey.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Isaac never intended to give the blessing of the covenant to Esau. He intended to give each child the blessing that suited them.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Noah fails the test of collective responsibility. He is a man of virtue in an age of vice, but he makes no impact on his contemporaries.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Abraham is the supreme example in all of history of influence without power.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Kayin does not deny personal responsibility. He does not say, “It was not me,” or “It was not my fault.” He denies moral responsibility.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Sukkot celebrates the dual nature of Jewish faith: the universality of G-d and the particularity of Jewish existence.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
This is a doctrine fundamental to Judaism and its understanding of evil and suffering in the world: G-d is just.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
It follows therefore that if vengeance is wrong, it could not have been commanded by G-d – not to Christians, and not to Jews. If it was commanded, we must be able to make some moral sense of it, whether we are Jews or Christians.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Note the inclusivity of the event. It would be anachronistic to say that the Torah was egalitarian in the contemporary sense.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
For me, one of the gifts of this strange, difficult time has been the ability to slow down the prayers so that I am able to listen to them speaking to me. Praying is as much about listening as speaking. And faith itself is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Says the Torah: When love is likely to be the cause of conflict, it must take second place to justice.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
What for the prophets was a dazzling vision of a distant future of peace was, for the Sages, a practical program of good community relations.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The test of a society is not military, political, economic or demographic. It is moral and spiritual.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Chessed has no if-then quality. It is given out of the goodness of the giver, regardless of the worth of the recipient.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Finite games are played to win. Infinite games are played for their own sake. Finite games are usually performed in front of an audience of some kind. Infinite games are participative.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
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.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
When ten of the men came back with a demoralizing report and the people panicked, at least part of the blame lay with Moshe.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Only in Israel can the Jewish people construct a political system, an economy, and an environment on the template of Jewish values.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
We have moral duties as individuals, and we make political decisions as nations. The two are different.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Science deals in causes and effects, not purpose and meaning. In the end, he concluded that only religious faith rescues life from meaninglessness.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Their aim was to discredit Moshe, damage his credibility, raise doubts among the people as to whether he really was receiving his instructions from G-d.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
They were about to enter a land they had not seen. They had no idea what they were fighting for.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
: I was not alone in feeling alone. Other people had been here before me.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
I believe that isolation contains, within it, spiritual possibilities.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Why does this command and no other require love?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The Jewish people had universal compulsory education 18 centuries before England did.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The whole idea contained in the 13 Attributes of Compassion is that G-d’s love and forgiveness are stronger than His justice and punishment.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
There is something very strange about the festival of Succot, of which our parsha is the primary source. On the one hand, it is the festival supremely associated with joy. It is the only festival in our parsha that mentions rejoicing: “And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days” (Lev. 23:40). In the Torah […]
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Kedoshim contains the two great love commands of the Torah. What are they?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood shows how good speech can heal where evil speech harms.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Fasting is of no use if at the same time you do not act justly and compassionately to your fellow human beings.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
They were not criticizing the institution of sacrifices. They were criticizing something as real now as it was in their time. What distressed them to the core of their being was the idea that you could serve G-d and at the same time act disdainfully, cruelly, unjustly, insensitively or callously toward other people.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
What united them was not the dynamic of the crowd in which we are caught up in a collective frenzy but rather a sense of common purpose, of helping to bring something into being that was greater than anyone could achieve alone. Communities build; they do not destroy. They bring out the best in us, not the worst.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
According to the Sages the original act of Divine forgiveness on which Yom Kippur is based came about through the annulment of a vow, when Moses annulled the vow of G-d.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Who knows, was it not for just this moment that you became a Queen, with access to King Achashverosh in the royal palace?” Like Esther--and Eddie Jacobson--God is calling on each of us, saying there is something only we can do.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Tetzaveh is also the first time we encounter the phrase “for glory and for splendor,” describing the effect and point of the garments. Until now kavod, “glory,” has been spoken of in relation to G-d alone. Now human beings are to share some of the same glory.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Why did God command Israel to make a sanctuary for Him? Shouldn't it be unnecessary?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Judaism is a matter of creed as well as deed. But we should allow people great leeway in how they understand the faith of our ancestors.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
I believe that some of the greatest positive changes in our lives come when, having undertaken a challenge, we cross our own Red Sea and know that there is no way back. There is only a way forward.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
When G-d said, “I will be what I will be,” He was telling us something not only about G-d but about us when we are open to G-d and have faith in His faith in us.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Genesis is not a hymn to the virtue of families. It is a candid, honest, fully worked-through account of what it is to confront some of the main problems within families, even the best.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Joseph is helping his brothers to revise their memory of the past. In doing so, he is challenging one of our most fundamental assumptions about time, namely its asymmetry. We can change the future. We cannot change the past. But is that entirely true?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Mikketz represents the most sudden and radical transformation in the Torah. Joseph, in a single day, moves from zero to hero, from forgotten, languishing prisoner to viceroy of Egypt, the most powerful man in the land, in control of the nation’s economy.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
I know of no comparable passage in the Torah: three verses dedicated to an apparently trivial, eminently forgettable detail of someone having to ask directions from a stranger. Who was this unnamed man? And what conceivable message does the episode hold for future generations, for us?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Note, first, that this is not an adjustment of an existing name by the change or addition of a letter, It is an entirely new name, as if to signal that what it represents is a complete change of character. Second, as we have seen, the name change happened not once but twice. Third – and this is the puzzle of puzzles – having said twice that his name will no longer be Yaakov, the Torah continues to call him Yaakov. G-d Himself does so.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
What then are we to make of the phrase, “Pharaoh condemned only the boys to death, but Laban sought to uproot everything”?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Itzchak, having grown up in the household of Avraham and Sarah, had never encountered deception before, and was thus, in his innocence, misled by his son. Rivka, who had grown up in the company of Lavan, recognized it very well, which is why she favored Yaakov,
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The answer again is that to understand a death, we have to understand a life.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
A pattern is beginning to emerge: Avraham was learning that there is a long and winding road between promise and fulfillment. Not because G-d does not keep His word, but because Avraham and his descendants were charged with bringing something new into the world
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Avraham is the father of faith--not as acceptance but as protest
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The Torah is telling us something very powerful. Never think of people as things. Never think of people as types: they are individuals. Never be content with creating systems: care also about relationships.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
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:
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
It is almost as if Sukkot were two festivals, not one.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
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.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
When you cannot see Him, it is because you are looking in the wrong direction. When He seems absent, He is there just behind you, but you have to turn to meet Him. Do not treat Him like a stranger. He loves you. He believes in you.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
A large part of what Moshe is doing in the book of Devarim is retelling that story to the next generation, reminding them of what G-d had done for their parents and of some of the mistakes their parents had made. Moshe, as well as being the great liberator, is the supreme storyteller. Yet what he does in this week's parsha, Ki Tavo, extends way beyond this.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Animals are part of G-d’s creation. They have their own integrity in the scheme of things. This would not have been news to the heroes of the Bible.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Areligious vision is so important, reminding us that we are not owners of our resources. They belong not to us but to the Eternal and eternity. Hence we may not needlessly destroy-even in war
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Israel defies the laws of history because it serves the Author of history. Attached to greatness, it becomes great. Through the Jewish people, G-d is telling humankind that you do not need to be numerous to be great. Nations are judged not by their size but by their contribution to human heritage.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Your life seems to be coming to a tragic end, your destination unreached, your aspirations unfulfilled. What do you do? WWMD?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Moses’ implied rebuke to the tribes of Reuben and Gad is not a minor historical detail but a fundamental statement of Jewish priorities. Property is secondary, children primary.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Dignity is not a privilege of birth. Honor is not confined to those with the right parents. In the world defined and created by Torah, everyone is a potential leader.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Tanach is perhaps the least self-congratulatory national literature in history. Jews chose to record for history their faults, not their virtues.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Why did God choose that Israel be blessed by Bilaam? Surely there is the principl “Good things come about through good people” (Tosefta Yoma 4:12). Why did this good thing come about through a bad man?
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
What made this trial different? Why did Moshe momentarily lose control? Why then? Why there? He had faced just this challenge before.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The story of Korach remains the classic example of how argument can be dishonored. The Schools of Hillel and Shammai remind us that there is another way.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
Whatever the subplots and subsidiary themes of the Chumash, its overarching narrative is the promise of and journey to the land. Jewish history begins with Avraham and Sarah’s journey to it. The four subsequent books of the Torah, from Exodus to Deuteronomy, are taken up with the second journey in the days of Moshe.
By Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks z"l
The spies were not afraid of failure, he said. They were afraid of success.
July 3, 2026 
