Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein

Surrendering to what lies beyond our control can be liberating. Accepting our powerlessness before God can paradoxically be empowering. The final verses of the Torah, which we read on Simchat Torah, describing the last...

Self-help is one of the most popular genres of books in the world. Walk into any bookstore and the shelves are weighed down with them. Self-development, personal growth, becoming your best self. This series has been...

What are we actually meant to be doing on Rosh Hashanah? What are the goals of the day? What does an ideal Rosh Hashanah look like? What should be going through your mind when you are sitting in shul? The answer to...

Courage is usually defined against fear. In the parsha of Vayelech it is defined against weakness, which makes courage a matter of strength. And that turns an abstract virtue into a practical problem. Where does a...

Understanding that feelings of guilt come from the depth of the soul, can empower us to transform the discomfort they bring into a catalyst for personal change and new beginnings. This understanding comes from...

What does it mean to be spiritually healthy? The Rambam was a physician as well as one of our greatest sages. In his introduction to Pirkei Avot, he draws a remarkable parallel between the health of the body and the...

Over the course of this journey through Pirkei Avot, we have been piecing together its vision of the human being: how we think, the character we develop, the choices we make, and the responsibility we take for the world...

One of the most famous lines in Pirkei Avot is Hillel's question: if I am only for myself, what am I? I thought Pirkei Avot was teaching me how to become a better person. I realise now it is asking us to become...

Why has the Jewish people always stood alone? Recorded on the night of Tisha B'Av, this shiur begins with a simpler question: what does it actually mean to mourn? The grief turns out to be only the surface of it...

Personal mourning fades with time. Our national mourning, the Three Weeks leading into Tisha B'Av, on the other hand, move in the opposite direction. It grows more intense until a day described as "sitting shiva for the...

Why do we spend three weeks manufacturing grief for a building none of us ever saw? This is the question the Chief puts directly to his audience in this year's Shemiras Halashon shiur, delivered the Shabbos before Tisha...

Few aspects of human relationships are more uncomfortable than criticism, whether giving it or receiving it. Yet we cannot grow without it. If we are to become better people, we have to recognise our mistakes, learn...

We instinctively look for the quickest most efficient path from where we are to where we want to be. But life rarely unfolds in straight lines. It twists, detours and doubles back, leaving us wondering whether we've...

<p >After countless hours of searching, I thought the picture was complete. We had found the heart of Avot - the Torah of who you become, the third pillar of Jewish life - and mapped it across the whole tractate...

After countless hours of searching, I thought the picture was complete. We had found the heart of Avot - the Torah of who you become, the third pillar of Jewish life - and mapped it across the whole tractate. Everything...