…eternal people. How is it that these supreme Prophets of doom also became supreme Prophets of hope? Because they relied on God’s promise in parshat Bechukotai that “even when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not so despise them as to destroy them, thus invalidating My covenant with them.” (Vayikra 26:44) God says ‘I will keep…
…Bechukotai, God says: “Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them: I am the Lord their God.” God will never break the covenant, even if we do, because of His chessed. Tanach describes the relationship…
…Torah. In the midst of the curses, the Rebuke in the weekly Torah reading of “Bechukotai“, God says through Moses these words, “And yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly” (Leviticus 26:44). God says, “Even in the land of their…
Twice in the Torah – once in the sedra of Bechukotai, the second time in today’s sedra – Moses gives voice to a series of prophecies of the sufferings that will befall the Jewish people if they fail to honour their mission as the people of God. They are terrifying passages. To this day we read them so quietly that…
As I was writing this essay a newspaper headline caught my eye. It read: “The UK’s richest people have defied the double-dip recession to become even richer over the past year.” Despite the fact that most people have become poorer, or at least seen their real income stay static, since the financial crisis of 2008. As the saying goes, “There’s…
This week we read the Tochecha, the terrifying curses warning of what would happen to Israel if it betrayed its Divine mission. We read a prophecy of history gone wrong. If Israel loses its way spiritually, say the curses, it will lose physically, economically, and politically also. The nation will experience defeat and disaster. It will forfeit its freedom and…
The Parsha in a Nutshell This summary is adapted from this week’s main Covenant & Conversation essay by Rabbi Sacks, available to read in full via the left sidebar (or below, if you are viewing this on your phone) In this week’s parsha, we repeatedly read of social halacha that is couched in the language of family. For example, “When…
One of the greatest Jewish contributions to the civilisation of the West is the idea of hope. Not all cultures give rise to hope. To the contrary: at the heart of many cultures is the idea that time is cyclical. What has been, will be. History is a set of eternal recurrences. Nothing ever really changes. Life is tragic. One…
I want, in this study, to look at one of Judaism’s most distinctive and least understood characteristics – the chronological imagination. Sometimes a modern discovery so changes our ways of looking at things that it allows us to revisit ancient truths that had become deeply obscured and see them with pristine clarity as if for the first time. That is…
The book of Vayikra ends with one of the most terrifying passages in literature. It describes what will happen to the Israelites if, having made their covenant with God, they break its terms: “If in spite of this you still do not listen to me but continue to be hostile toward me, then in my anger I will be hostile…