FOOD GOING TO WAIST Nearly two-thirds (63%) of adults in England are overweight or living with obesity—and one in three children leaves primary school in that category. Even with drugs like Ozempic offering short-term success, lasting change depends on a realistic, sustainable lifestyle once the medication ends. Recent research suggests that our mindset about food can be as important as the food itself. Science writer David Robson, in The Expectation Effect, notes that the way we think about eating can directly influence how our bodies respond. A 2016 Canadian–French study found that when people anticipated their meal—focusing on its flavours,...

NON-SCREEN FACE TIME A recent study warns that phubbing—the habit of looking at your phone instead of engaging with the person in front of you—can seriously harm relationships. Snubbing someone by looking at your device instead of at them comes with unforeseen consequences. When we are physically with someone but mentally elsewhere, we engage in a whole range of nonverbal and behavioural signals that the human brain interprets as social exclusion. A loss of eye contact signals a lack of connection. We often don’t realize that when we turn our body to attend to our phone, it creates a physical...

FINDING OUR VOICE This Shabbat, we begin reading one of the most powerful and sustained speeches in history. Almost the entire book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) consists of the final address that Moses gave to the Jewish people before taking his leave from them. “Eileh HaDevarim — These are the words that Moses spoke to all of Israel” (Devarim 1:1). It is striking, then, to recall how Moses’ journey as a speaker began. Forty years earlier, when we first encountered him at the burning bush, he declined G-d’s mission on the grounds that he struggled with speech. “Please, my L-d,” he...

OH, THE PLACES YOU’LL GO! With the holiday season upon us, I’d like to begin by wishing safe travels to everyone who’s taking a vacation, whether you’re going abroad or staying here in the UK. Our second parasha this week, Mas’ei, describes the journeys and encampments that the Israelites made during their forty years in the desert, from Egypt to the Promised Land. Surprisingly, despite decades of archaeological research, the identities of the forty-two locations remain uncertain. So many questions! We know that the Israelites crossed the Red (or Reed) Sea—but where exactly did they cross it? We know that...

TWO-HANDED JUDAISM In this week’s parasha, G-d tells Moses to appoint Joshua as his successor, and he instructs him to lay his hand on Joshua’s head. However, when Moses carries out the instruction, he places both his hands on Joshua’s head. (Bemidbar 27:23) The late Rav Joseph B Soloveitchik (d. 1993) explains that Moses wasn’t simply being generous and wholehearted in investing his successor. He was expressing the fundamental idea that there are two components in the transmission of Judaism from generation to generation. First, there is the Mesora or tradition of Torah study. Second, and equally important, is the...