Tag Archives: people

A D’var Torah by Rabbi Sacks on Vayikra in the age of the coronavirus pandemic

TRANSCRIPT – Click here to download as a PDF Friends, I’m speaking to you in isolation, from my home in London. I wanted to express our thanks to all those who are fighting on the frontline of COVID-19. The doctors, the nurses, the keyworkers, the support staff, the teachers, the people filling the shelves in […]

The Prophetic View of Sacrifice (Vayikra 5780)

Sacrifices, the subject of this week’s parsha, were central to the religious life of biblical Israel. We see this not only by the sheer space devoted to them in the Torah, but also by the fact that they occupy its central book, Vayikra. We have not had the sacrificial service since the destruction of the […]

Rabbi Sacks on the coronavirus pandemic (Extended Newsnight interview)

On Tuesday 17th March, Rabbi Sacks was interviewed by Emily Maitlis on BBC Newsnight about how the themes of his new book Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times* relate to the current Coronavirus situation. Please find the full interview below. * You can buy a copy of Rabbi Sacks’ book here (except in the United States or Canada where the […]

Communities and Crowds (Vayakhel-Pekudei 5780)

Melanie Reid is a journalist who writes a regular column for The (London) Times. A quadriplegic with a wry lack of self-pity, she calls her weekly essay Spinal Column. On 4 January 2020, she told the story of how she, her husband, and others in their Scottish village bought an ancient inn to convert it […]