From Chayei Sarah to the BBC The resignations of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and News CEO Deborah Turness mark a moment of reckoning. Their departure followed revelations that a Panorama documentary had edited a Donald Trump speech in a misleading way, and came amid deepening concern over the BBC’s coverage of Israel and Gaza. Jewish staff have accused the corporation of ignoring pleas for an inquiry into antisemitism, while watchdogs report that the BBC has been forced to issue, on average, two corrections a week on its Gaza reporting since October 7. At stake is not only journalistic accuracy but...

Between Heaven and Earth: A Dialogue In this week’s parasha, Abraham takes audacity to a new level. G-d informs him that he will destroy Sodom because of its wickedness and Abraham argues back! “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” (Bereishit 18:25). Abraham doesn’t let go. The argument goes back and forth. This is the first recorded argument for moral responsibility in human history – a veritable dialogue between heaven and earth. Rabbi L-d Jonathan Sacks zt”l – whose yahrzeit falls this Monday evening – often described Torah as “the conversation between heaven and earth.” That phrase...

ABRAHAM AND SARAH’S FANCLUB When Abram and Sarai came to the land of Canaan, they didn’t come by themselves. They arrived with Lot, Abram’s nephew. They arrived with all their possessions. Then the verse adds: “and with the souls they had made in Charan.” (Bereishit 12:5). Rashi (in his second, peshat explanation) observes that the straightforward meaning of this phrase is that it refers to the retinue of servants that they had acquired. But Rashi’s first explanation, based on the Midrash, is that the word “souls” refers to converts Abram and Sarai had made whilst in Charan. Their example of...

A KING’S VISIT This week King Charles visited Manchester, meeting members of the Heaton Park Synagogue after the Yom Kippur attack that claimed two lives. It was a brief encounter, yet it carried the weight of something larger – the moral presence of a leader standing beside a wounded community. The timing, in the week of Parashat Noach, feels almost providential. The Torah opens with a world unravelling: “The earth was filled with violence (chamas).” G-d’s response is not merely to destroy but to rebuild – to begin again with Noach, “a righteous man in his generation.” Out of chaos...

LET THERE BE LIGHT Every year, as we begin Bereishit, we stand again before the mystery of creation. The Torah opens not with a commandment, nor with the history of Israel, but with a vision of a universe coming into being through Divine speech: “Vayomer Elokim, Yehi Or — and God said, let there be light.” This week, a new book published in Britain, God: The Science, the Evidence by Michel-Yves Bolloré and Olivier Bonnassies, invites readers to revisit that same mystery through the lens of contemporary science. The authors are not rabbis or theologians but lay thinkers and scientists who draw on...