The former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, has come in for some stick over remarks he recently made about religion and politics. In an interview with JTA published in last … more

The Talmud gives an ingenious reading to the line, “Moses commanded us a Torah, as a heritage of the congregation of Israel.” Noting that there are 613 commands, and that the … more

Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, has written dozens of books about religion and politics — but he also believes that mixing the two leads to “terrible politics and … more

Our parsha, Ki Teitse, contains more laws than any other. Some of them have generated much study and debate, especially two at the beginning, the law of the captive woman and that of the … more

In Shoftim, Moses speaks about the great institutions of Judaism: courts, judges, officers, kings, priests, Levites and prophets. In the case of the prophet, Moses says in the name of G-d: I … more

Moses, having set out the prologue and preamble to the covenant and its broad guiding principles, turns in our parsha, Re’eh, to the details, which occupy the greater part of the book of … more

An interesting phrase appears at the end of last week’s parsha and at the beginning of this week’s, Eikev, and they are the only places where it appears in the Torah. The phrase is … more

Near the end of Va’etchanan, so inconspicuously that we can sometimes miss it, is a statement with such far reaching implications that it challenges the impression that has prevailed thus … more

In the last month of his life, Moses gathered the people. He instructed them about the laws they were to keep and reminded them of their history since the Exodus. That is the substance of the … more

There are moments when Divine Providence touches you on the shoulder and makes you see a certain truth with blazing clarity. Let … more