The Second Mountain What do you do when you have achieved it all, when you have risen to whatever career heights fate or providence has in store for you? What do you do as age lengthens its shadow, the sun sinks, and the body is no longer as resilient or the mind as sharp as […]
The World is Waiting for You Something remarkable happens in this week’s parsha, almost without our noticing it, that changed the very terms of Jewish existence, and has life-changing implications for all of us. Moses renewed the covenant. This may not sound dramatic, but it was. Thus far, in the history of humanity as told by […]
The Story We Tell The setting – Jerusalem some twenty centuries ago. The occasion – bringing first fruits to the Temple. Here is the scene as the Mishnah describes it[1]: Throughout Israel, villagers would gather in the nearest of 24 regional centers. There, overnight, they would sleep in the open air. The next morning, the leader would […]
Social Capital & Fallen Donkeys Many years ago, Elaine and I were being driven to the Catskills, a long-time favorite summer getaway for Jews in New York, and our driver told us the following story. One Friday afternoon, he was making his way to join his family in the Catskills for Shabbat when he saw […]
To Lead is to Serve Our parsha talks about monarchy, “When you enter the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘I will set a king over me, like all the surrounding nations’, set over you a king whom the Lord […]
On Not Being a Victim Making a series of programs for the BBC on morality in the twenty-first century, I felt I had to travel to Toronto to have a conversation with a man I had not met before, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. Recently he has become an iconic intellectual for millions of young people, […]
Listen, Really Listen Some 20 or so years ago, with the help from the Ashdown Foundation, I initiated a conference at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, on the future of Jewish peoplehood. I feared the deepening divisions between secular and ultra-orthodox in Israel, between the various denominations in the Diaspora, and between Israel and the Diaspora […]
Making Love Last Over the past few months I’ve been having conversations with leading thinkers, intellectuals, innovators and philanthropists for a BBC series on moral challenges of the 21st century. Among those I spoke to was David Brooks, one of the most insightful moralists of our time. His conversation is always scintillating, but one remark of […]
The Effective Critic The first verse of Devarim, the fifth and culminating book of the Torah, sounds prosaic. “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahav.” There is no hint of drama in these words. […]
Miles to Go Before I Sleep Etre ailleurs, “To be elsewhere – the great vice of this race, its great and secret virtue, the great vocation of this people.” So wrote the French poet and essayist Charles Peguy (1873-1914), a philosemite in an age of Anti-Semitism. He continued, “Any crossing for them means the crossing […]
