The Summary This summary is adapted from this week’s main Covenant & Conversation essay by Rabbi Sacks. When twelve men were sent out from Bnei Yisrael to scout the land of Canaan, ten of them returned with a very misleading report. In truth, they were afraid of the Canaanites, not realising that the Canaanites were fearful of Bnei Yisrael too….
In Philadelphia there lives a gentle, gracious, grey-haired man, by now in his late-90s, whom Elaine and I have had the pleasure of meeting several times and who is one of the most lovely people we have ever known. Many people have reason to be thankful to him, because his work has transformed many lives, rescuing people from depression and…
…Shelach Lecha: Confidence Core Questions Why is it important for a leader to have faith in her/his followers? Can you think of other times Moses displayed a lack of faith in the people? What values can you conclude are central to Jewish leadership from this principle of Jewish leadership? 6. Leaders Need a Sense of Timing and Pace Bamidbar 27:15-17…
Whose idea was it to send the spies? According to this week’s sedra, it was God. The Lord said to Moses, “Send some men to explore the land of Canaan, which I am giving to the Israelites. From each ancestral tribe send one of its leaders.” So at the Lord’s command Moses sent them out from the Desert of Paran. Numbers…
In March 2020, whilst launching a new book,[1] I took part in a BBC radio programme along with Mervyn King, who had been governor of the Bank of England at the time of the financial crash of 2008. He, together with the economist John Kay, had also brought out a new book, Radical Uncertainty: decision-making for an unknowable future.[2] The…
It was perhaps the single greatest collective failure of leadership in the Torah. Ten of the spies whom Moses had sent to spy out the land came back with a report calculated to demoralise the nation. “We came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people…
Our Torah portion ends with one of the great commands of Judaism – tzitzit, the fringes worn on the corners of our garments as a perennial reminder of our identity as Jews and our obligation to keep the Torah’s commands: God spoke to Moses, telling him to speak to the Israelites and instruct them to make for themselves fringes on the…
…tomorrow and which, very often, gets disillusioned because, you know, you try and change the universe and the universe doesn’t change. I give you the obvious example of this. The spies in parsha Shelach Lecha: Out go the spies. They come back – and ten of the twelve say: We can never do it! So Moses tones God down a…
…an opportunity to be seized and a temptation to be resisted. NASO: You are as important as you make other people feel. BEHA’ALOTECHA: We tend to become what our friends are. So choose friends who are what you aspire to be. SHELACH LECHA: Never let negative emotions distort your perceptions. To see the world as it is, not as you…
…books in all of literature about what Nelson Mandela called “the long walk to freedom.” Bamidbar Naso Beha’alotecha Shelach Lecha Korach Chukat Balak Pinchas Matot Masei Devarim (Deuteronomy) With the book of Deuteronomy, Devarim, the entire biblical project becomes lucid and reaches its culmination. Deuteronomy is the last act of the Jewish people’s drama before becoming a nation in its…