This collection makes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' brilliant essays on the weekly Torah portion available in book form for the first time. Rabbi Sacks fuses Jewish tradition, Western philosophy and literature to present a highly developed understanding of the human condition under God's sovereignty. This first volume in the five-volume series includes several concise essays for each parasha of Bereshit.

'Aims to define nothing less than a basis for religiously sensitive civilisation.'Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury'The Dignity of Difference has a central and compelling vision: the magnificence and inspiring human diversity of our world ... The Chief Rabbi has made a convincing case for respecting people of different faiths and creeds.' Jewish ChronicleThis r...

This collection makes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ brilliant essays on the weekly Torah portion available in book form for the first time. Rabbi Sacks fuses Jewish tradition, Western philosophy and literature to present a highly developed understanding of the human condition under God’s sovereignty. This final volume of the series contains several concise essays for each parasha of Deuteronomy.

We are living through a period of cultural climate change. We have outsourced morality to the markets on the one hand, and the state on the other. The markets have brought wealth to many, and the state has done much to contain the worst excesses of inequality, but neither is capable of bearing the moral weight of showing us how to live.This has had a profound impact on society and the way in which we interact with each other. Traditional values no longer hold, yet ...

Rabbi Sacks argues that preoccupation with self is a mistake and that ethics are concerned with the life we live together, talking with as much authority about Sigmund Freud or Karl Marx as he does about the Bible. With a new foreword by Rowan Williams.'The only force equal to a fundamentalism of hate is a counter-fundamentalism of love.'Jonathan Sacks was an outstanding moral authority of our time and bestselling author of The...

Rabbi Sacks' thesis on the future of British society and the dangers facing liberal democracy. With a new foreword by Daniel Finkelstein.Arguing that global communications have fragmented national cultures and that multiculturalism, intended to reduce social frictions, is today reinforcing them, Sacks argues for a new approach to national identity, making the case for "integrated diversity" within a framework of shared political values.Brit...

Writing with his usual grace and fluency, Jonathan Sacks moves beyond the tired arguments of militant atheists such as Dawkins and Hitchens, to explore how religion has always played a valuable part in human culture and far from being dismissed as redundant, must be allowed to temper and develop scientific understanding in order for us to be fully human. Ranging around the world to draw comparisons from different cultures, and delving deep into the history of language and of western civili...

Faith in the Future addresses some of the major themes of our time: the fragmentation of our common culture, the breakdown of family and community life, the lack of moral direction and the waning of religious belief. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks asks: How can we construct a humane social order that honors human dignity and difference, one in which we can be both true to ourselves and a blessing to others? In the turbulent state of the modern world, can we give those who come after us a cohere...

What is Judaism? A religion? A faith? A way of life? A set of beliefs? A collection of commands? A culture? A civilization? It is all these, but it is emphatically something more. It is a way of thinking about life, a constellation of ideas. One might think that the ideas Judaism introduced into the world have become part of the common intellectual heritage of humankind, at least of the West. Yet this is not the case. Some of them have been lost over time; others the West never fully under...

Time and again, in the midst of troubled times or facing difficult decisions, I’ve found the words of the weekly parasha giving me guidance – or, conversely, the events themselves granting me deeper insight into the Torah text. For that is what ‘Torah’ means: teaching, instruction, guidance. Torah is a commentary on life, and life is a commentary on Torah. Together they constitute a conversation, each shedding light on the other. So wrote Rabbi Sacks in the introduction to his first collec...

A newly designed edition of this collection of Jonathan Sacks' favourite "Thoughts for the Day".Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was a regular voice frequently heard on the UK's most popular morning BBC radio news show. He regularly presented a "Thought for the Day" in which he addressed a current issue with characteristic brevity and clarity. His clear, calm voice brought hope and encouragement to all of us struggling to come to terms with modern, turbulent times....

Why was Abraham ordered to sacrifice his son? Was Jacob right in stealing the blessings? Why were we commanded to destroy Amalek? What was Moses’ sin in hitting the rock? And how did the Ten Commandments change the Jewish people, and humankind, for good?Essays on Ethics is the second companion volume to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s celebrated series Covenant & Conversation. Believing the Hebrew Bible to be the ultimate blueprint for Western morality, Rabbi Sacks embarks upon an ethical e...