Ross Douthat

Edwidge Danticat

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Gina Dalfonzo

Sarah C Williams

Leah Libresco Sargeant

Zito Madu

Norann Voll

Noah Van Niel

What is a family and what is it good for? Story 1: Families are in crisis, and the cause is moral breakdown. We urgently need a deep renewal of our family culture, supported by public policies that strengthen traditional marriage and encourage childbearing. Story 2: Families are in crisis, and the cause is capitalism. We need structural changes in society so that all families can flourish: parental leave, guaranteed healthcare, flexible work hours for parents, restorative justice. What if both these stories are true? This issue of Plough reflects on what a family is and what it is for, so that the transformations needed to solve the crisis of the family start from a firm basis, not a nostalgic ideal or progressive theorizing. As always, we take as a starting point the teachings of Jesus. It turns out his idea of family values might not be what people think. He calls us to extend our natural love for our biological family to a vast new throng of siblings - a family of many ethnicities and cultures that includes the widowed, the unmarried, the outsider, and the stranger. In this issue: - Ross Douthat asks what is stopping people from having the one more child they desire. - Edwidge Danticat says families are not nuclear. - Gina Dalfonzo reveals what singles know best about the church as family. - Norann Voll remembers a Jewish woman who escaped the Holocaust and married a German. - W. Bradford Wilcox and Alysse ElHage report on how the Covid pandemic has impacted the family. - Noah Van Niel asks whether masculinity is OK anymore. - Cardinal Christoph Schönborn reflects the burden of family history, celibacy, and monument toppling. - Sarah C. Williams pinpoints the source of feminist pioneer Josephine Butler's daring. - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks begins the story of marriage 385 million years ago in a lake in Scotland. - Zito Madu recalls how his father's amazing storytelling saved the past from oblivion. You'll also find: - M. M. Townsend on what Louisa May Alcott and Simone de Beauvoir had in common - A special announcement about Plough's new poetry contest: the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Award - A reading from G. K. Chesterton - Two new poems by Rachel Hadas - Reviews of Eric Edstrom's Un-American, Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law's Prison by Any Other Name, Brian Doyle's One Long River of Song, and Martín Caparrós's Hunger Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to put their faith into action. Each issue brings you in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art to help you put Jesus' message into practice and find common cause with others.

Plough Quarterly No. 26 - What Are Families For?

The Koren Sacks Siddur is the first new Orthodox Hebrew/English siddur in a generation. The Siddur marks the culmination of years of rabbinic scholarship, exemplifies Koren's tradition of textual accuracy and intuitive graphic design, and offers an illuminating translation, introduction and commentary by one of the world's leading Jewish thinkers, Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks. Halakhic guides to daily, Shabbat, and holiday prayers supplement the traditional text. Prayers for the State of Israel, its soldiers, and national holidays, for the American government, upon the birth of a daughter and more reinforce the Siddur's contemporary relevance. A special Canadian Edition is the first to include prayers for the Canadian government within the body of the text.

Koren Sacks Siddur, Sepharad: Hebrew/English Prayerbook

For too long, Jews have defined themselves in light of the bad things that have happened to them. And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks is, quite simply: How? How, in the face of such adversity, has Judaism remained and flourished, making a mark on human history out of all proportion to its numbers? Written originally as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law, A Letter in the Scroll is Rabbi Sacks's personal answer to that question, a testimony to the enduring strength of his religion. Tracing the revolutionary series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism created -- from covenant to sabbath to formal education -- and showing us how they remain compellingly relevant in our time, Sacks portrays Jewish identity as an honor as well as a duty. The Ba'al Shem Tov, an eighteenth-century rabbi and founder of the Hasidic movement, famously noted that the Jewish people are like a living Torah scroll, and every individual Jew is a letter within it. If a single letter is damaged or missing or incorrectly drawn, a Torah scroll is considered invalid. So too, in Judaism, each individual is considered a crucial part of the people, without whom the entire religion would suffer. Rabbi Sacks uses this metaphor to make a passionate argument in favor of affiliation and practice in our secular times, and invites us to engage in our dynamic and inclusive tradition. Never has a book more eloquently expressed the joys of being a Jew. This is the story of one man's hope for the future -- a future in which the next generation, his children and ours, will happily embrace the beauty of the world's oldest religion.

Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion

A Letter in the Scroll

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

Books

Your next favorite book is out there