Hannah Smith was a 14-year-old schoolgirl living in Lutterworth, Leicestershire. Bright and outgoing, she enjoyed an active social life and seemed to have an exciting

Excavating the history of words can sometimes be as revealing as excavating the ruins of an ancient city. Take the English word “enthusiasm.” Today, we

One of the most difficult elements of the Torah and the way of life it prescribes is the phenomenon of animal sacrifices—for obvious reasons. First,

The American Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Recently, following the pioneering work of Martin

There is a verse so familiar that we don’t often stop to reflect on what it means. It is the line from the first paragraph

In Vayakhel we meet, for the second time, the man who became the symbol of the artist in Judaism, a man by the name of

The more I study the Torah, the more conscious I become of the immense mystery of Exodus 33. This is the chapter set in the

Beethoven rose each morning at dawn and made himself coffee. He was fastidious about this: each cup had to be made with exactly 60 beans,

As soon as we read the opening lines of Terumah we begin the massive shift from the intense drama of the Exodus with its signs

One of the most famous phrases in the Torah makes its appearance in this week’s parsha. It has often been used to characterise Jewish faith

The American writer Bruce Feiler recently published a best-selling book entitled The Secrets of Happy Families. It’s an engaging work that uses research largely drawn