When you read the Pesach story, you come across something so remarkable and counter-intuitive, which has an important lesson for us today.

Chazal, our Sages, asked a strange question in the Gemara of Chullin (39b): Esther min haTorah minayin?“Where do we find a hint in the Torah to the book of Esther?”, the last book of Tanach to be canonised. The Gemara answers with the words, v’anochi haster astir panai, “I will hide my face on that day.” Hashem’s most […]

“We will never forget you, we will never cease to mourn you, we will not let you down.” At the end of the book of Genesis, Joseph makes one deeply poignant request. Though I die in exile, God will bring you back to the land, and when he does so, vehaalitem et atzmotai mizeh, “Carry […]

To launch the new Koren-Sacks Shavuot machzor, Rabbi Sacks delivered a keynote shiur in London on 7 June 2016 to a packed room in Finchley United Synagogue. Rabbi Sacks talked about the similarities between Ruth and Tamar, and what we can learn from their experiences about our identity as a Jewish people. The event was […]

Hanukkah is the festival on which Jews celebrate their victory in the fight for religious freedom more than two thousand years ago. Tragically that fight is no less important today, and not only for Jews, but for people of all faiths. The Jewish story is simple enough. In around 165 BCE Antiochus IV, ruler of […]

God doesn’t expect us to be perfect, but when we err He expects us to do Teshuva. Free will can lead us to make a mistake but it can also lead us to repent. As we approach Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, join Rabbi Sacks on an intellectual journey to explore the concept and deep […]

Bamidbar takes up the story as we left it toward the end of Shemot. The people had journeyed from Egypt to Mount Sinai. There they received the Torah. There they made the Golden Calf. There they were forgiven after Moses’ passionate plea, and there they made the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, inaugurated on the first of […]

Many commentators, among them the Vilna Gaon, have drawn attention to the influence of the number four in connection with the Haggadah. There are four fours: The four questions The four sons The four cups of wine The four expressions of redemption: ‘I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians and […]

I don’t know whether you ever noticed, but teshuvah, the whole cycle of repentance and forgiveness, plays no part in the early dramas of humankind. It doesn’t in the story of Adam and Eve. As for Cain, God mitigates his punishment but he doesn’t forgive him for his crime. There is no call to repentance […]