Parshat Naso contains the laws relating to the Nazirite, an individual who undertook to observe special rules of holiness and abstinence: not to drink wine or other intoxicants … more

One of the most amusing scenes in Anglo-Jewish history occurred on Oct. 14, 1663. A mere seven years had passed since Oliver Cromwell had found no legal bar to Jews living in England (hence the … more

A best-selling book in 2014 was French economist Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the Twenty-First Century,” a dense 700-page-long treatise on economic theory backed by massive … more

In recent years we have often felt plagued by reports of Israeli and Jewish leaders whose immoral actions had been exposed. A president guilty of sexual abuse. A prime minister indicted on … more

S omething fundamental happens at the beginning of this week’s parsha, Kedoshim, and the story is one of the greatest, if rarely acknowledged, contributions of Judaism to the world. Until … more

On Dec. 20, 2013, a young woman named Justine Sacco was waiting in Heathrow airport before boarding a flight to Africa. To while away the time, she sent a tweet in questionable taste about the … more

Pesach is the oldest and most transformative story of hope ever told. It tells of how an otherwise undistinguished group of slaves found their way to freedom from the greatest and longest-lived … more

The laws of sacrifices that dominate the early chapters of the Book of Leviticus are among the hardest in the Torah to relate to in the present. It has been almost 2,000 years since the Temple … more

There is a verse so familiar that we don’t often stop to reflect on what it means. It is the line from the first paragraph of the Shema, “You shall love the L-rd your G-d with all … more

What do you do when your people have just made a Golden Calf, run riot, and lost their sense of ethical and spiritual direction? How do you restore moral order — not just then in the days … more