Rabbi Sacks zt’’l prepared a full year of
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
The book of Bamidbar begins with a census of the Israelites. That is why this book is known in English as
Numbers. This raises a number of questions: what is the significance of this act of counting? And why here at the beginning of the book? Besides which, there have already been two previous censuses of the people and this is the third within the space of a single year. Surely one would have been sufficient. Additionally, does counting have anything to do with leadership?
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
In the final parsha of the book of Leviticus, in the midst of one of the most searing curses ever to have been uttered to a nation by way of warning, the Sages found a fleck of pure gold.
Moses is describing a nation in flight from its enemies:
Just the sound of a windblown leaf will put them to running, and they will run scared as if running from a sword! They will fall even when no one is chasing them!
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
Embedded in this week’s parsha are two of the most fundamental commands of Judaism commands that touch on the very nature of Jewish identity.
Do not desecrate My holy name. I must be sanctified among the Israelites. I am the Lord, who made you holy and who brought you out of Egypt to be your God. I am the Lord.’ (Leviticus 22:32)
Rabbi Sacks zt’’l prepared a full year of
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
It was a unique, unrepeatable moment of leadership at its highest height. For forty days Moses had been communing with God, receiving from Him the Law written on tablets of stone. Then God informed him that the people had just made a Golden Calf. He would have to destroy them. It was the worst crisis of the wilderness years, and it called for every one of Moses’ gifts as a leader.
Covenant & Conversation for 5781, based on his book
Lessons in Leadership. The Office of Rabbi Sacks will carry on distributing these essays each week, so people around the world can continue to learn and be inspired by his Torah.
It should have been a day of joy. The Israelites had completed the Mishkan, the Sanctuary. For seven days Moses had made preparations for its consecration.[1] Now on the eighth day – the first of Nissan – one year to the day since the Israelites had received their first command two weeks prior to the Exodus (Ex. 40:2) – the service of the Sanctuary was about to begin (Lev. 9:1 – 24). The Sages say that in Heaven it was the most joyous day since Creation (Megillah 10b).