Time and again, in the midst of troubled times or facing difficult decisions, I’ve found the words of the weekly parasha giving me guidance – or, conversely, the events themselves granting me deeper insight into the Torah text. For that is what ‘Torah’ means: teaching, instruction, guidance. Torah is a commentary on life, and life is a commentary on Torah. Together they constitute a conversation, each shedding light on the other. So wrote Rabbi Sacks in the introduction to his first collection of essays on the weekly Torah portion.

In I Believe, the final cycle of Covenant & Conversation essays written before his untimely passing, we are brought full circle, with Rabbi Sacks giving us a personal and intimate demonstration of how he came to see the world through listening attentively to the Torah and its message for the present and for all times. In this deeply uplifting collection of essays, Rabbi Sacks identifies and explores a different Jewish belief in each weekly portion, showing us how his own beliefs were formed from an ongoing conversation between the Torah and his life, and how we can achieve the same.