This article of mine appears in the new edition of the Jerusalem Report, issue dated 7 December 2020
A remarkable man, a truly outstanding figure of
our times, has left us. The death of
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ‒ Anglo-Jewry’s Emeritus Chief Rabbi ‒ at what is today
considered the early age of 72, came as a great and totally unexpected shock to
Jewry across the world, but especially to the Anglo-Jewish community in the
UK. Chief Rabbi for 22 years
between 1991 and 2013, in the past seven his already prodigious reputation has
been even further enhanced. Not only a
towering presence within the Jewish community, he became a well-known and
greatly respected personality in Britain generally through his radio and
television appearances. He passed away
in the early hours of Saturday, November 7, 2020.
Jonathan Sacks was
possessed of a combination of qualities not often found together in one
individual ‒ a towering intellect allied to deep human compassion and
understanding. He bent his abilities to
the service of faith in general and Judaism in particular. Widely perceived as the public face of
Judaism in modern society, he was also highly respected in interfaith
circles. In 2004 his book The Dignity
of Difference ‒ a book he agreed to amend for its second edition to avoid
offending ultra-orthodox opinion ‒ won the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion for
its success in defining a framework for interfaith dialogue between people of
all faiths and of none. When he was
knighted in 2005, the citation read: "for services to the community and to
inter-faith relations".
Although widely
regarded as the leader of Britain’s Jewish community, as Chief Rabbi his writ
ran only in the UK’s United Synagogue organization, established by Act of
Parliament in 1870. He was not recognized as the religious authority in other Anglo-Jewish
movements such as the Haredi (strictly Orthodox), Reform, Liberal, Masorti or
Sephardi. Nevertheless, with only one or
two bumps along the way, he established and maintained excellent relations with
all, as he did with the leaders of other faith groups in the UK.
It was this broad and
enlightened attitude to religion that gained him the respect of many
establishment figures in the UK, including members of the royal family. It was at a royal tribute dinner to mark his
stepping down from the Chief Rabbinate in 2013 that Prince Charles described
him as “a steadfast friend", "a valued adviser", and “a light
unto this nation.”
Born in London in 1948,
Sacks was educated at Christ’s College, Finchley ‒ his local grammar school ‒
and Cambridge university, where he read Philosophy. It was while studying at Cambridge that he
travelled to New York to meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson,
who advised him to seek rabbinic ordination ‒ advice he followed. He gained a double semicha in 1976.
one from Yeshivat Etz Chayim, and the other from Jews’ College, London, the
seminary which prepares Britain’s rabbis for their ministry.
Sacks's first rabbinic
appointment in 1978 was as Rabbi for the Golders Green synagogue in north-west
London. In 1983 he moved on to become Rabbi of the prestigious Western Marble Arch
Synagogue in London’s West End, a position he held until 1990. Between 1984 and
1990, Sacks also served as Principal of Jews’ College. He became Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew
Congregations of the Commonwealth on September 1, 1991, and in 2009 entered the
House of Lords with the title "Baron Sacks, of Aldgate in the City of
London.”
Asked once whether his chief
rabbinate had been too engaged with the outside world, given his frequent media
appearances and his interfaith activities, his response was that extra-communal
affairs had taken up about 2 percent of his time. Up to 98 percent had been spent working
within the Jewish community. In support
of this contention, he pointed to the vast bulk of his writing. One great innovation as Chief Rabbi was his
“Covenant and Conversation” website ‒ a concept that would not have been
possible for his pre-internet predecessors in office. Through his website he both published and
recorded as videos every week what amounted to a sermon, a perceptive piece of
work eagerly awaited and absorbed by thousands in the Anglo-Jewish community. He
later gathered these weekly pieces together and published them in several
volumes.
Perhaps his greatest and
most long-lasting achievement for the community was his work in revising
Anglo-Jewry’s old-established and long-revered Authorised Daily Prayer Book. Known
affectionately as Singer’s after the original English translator (described on
the title page in characteristically Anglo-Jewish terms as “the Rev. S. Singer”),
it was first published in 1890. It was subsequently
reprinted, expanded or re-translated more than 30 times until its final edition
appeared in 1992 under the editorship of Chief Rabbi Sacks.
What followed in 2006
was a totally reconceived and much enlarged Authorised Daily Prayer Book,
incorporating a new translation by Sacks, together with commentary and notes
written by him. Preceding the prayers in
this new edition is his highly insightful article “Understanding Jewish
Prayer”, running to no less than 23 pages.
Anglo-Jewry’s allegiance
to the familiar Singer's was hard to break but eventually, often by way of sets of
the new siddurim donated by members of the congregation, UK orthodox
synagogues switched over to the new, expanded and more useful Sacks version,
which is now standard and likely to remain so into the indefinite future.
Something similar is happening
with regard to the Machzorim (the
order of prayers for festivals) for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Israel-based publishers, Koren, have brought
out totally new editions, translated by Sacks, in a revolutionary format –
namely with the Hebrew on the left-hand page and the English on the right. Koren publish two versions of both Machzorim,
one for the large US market and the other following “Minhag Anglia” (English
custom). The volumes are worth
purchasing for Sacks’s introductory essays alone, to say nothing of his acute
commentaries, some quite lengthy, which adorn each volume. His preliminary article in the Yom Kippur Machzor
runs to 63 pages.
As Chief Rabbi, Jonathan
Sacks never baulked at ruffling feathers.
Well before the spat with the Haredi over the first edition of Sacks’s
prize-winning book The Dignity of Difference, ultra-Orthodox leaders were
incensed in 1996 when he attended a memorial service in honour of the popular
Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a Holocaust survivor and Reform rabbi. When his placatory
letter to the Haredi leaders, intended as a private communication, was leaked,
a storm burst around Sacks’s head.
Another brush with his
community occurred two years later, when Sacks agreed to attend a reception to
mark the 50th birthday of the Prince of Wales on a Friday evening. Because it was the Sabbath, he made the
journey from his Marble Arch Synagogue to Buckingham Palace on foot. Even so
community leaders criticized him for not being with his family on the Sabbath. Sacks
insisted that it was an established protocol for chief rabbis to accept direct
royal invitations, and that an exception should be made for the “expression of
Jewish loyalty to the country and its head of state”. This proved to be a passing storm, soon
forgotten as Sacks’s solid achievements in terms of the expansion of education
and the rationalization of Jewish social care became manifest.
Sacks was once asked
what the toughest moment had been when Chief Rabbi. His reply was far from what most in the
Jewish community would have anticipated.
“There is no question,”
he said, “that the toughest moment actually came in 2002 with Jenin.” In the midst of the Second Intifada the UK
media was suddenly flooded with lurid tales of an Israeli massacre of 5000
civilians in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, accompanied by horrific and
deliberate war crimes. Based on the uncorroborated statement of one individual,
the incident at Jenin had been blown out of all proportion, and the UK media
seemed to be doing their best to stoke the flames. “I had to make a calculated decision,” said
Sacks. “I’m not the Israeli ambassador,
but is this just too serious to leave?”
So he went on the BBC’s prestigious
“Today” programme – sometimes described as the jewel in the crown of BBC radio ‒ and
predicted confidently that when the full facts emerged, the death toll would be
nothing like the figure widely claimed. Four days later, at a rally in London’s
Trafalgar Square, the facts became known for the first time – the Jenin battle
had indeed been fierce and bloody, but it had resulted in 52 Palestinian deaths,
together with 23 Israeli soldiers. Sacks had known the truth, even before the
BBC, because his staff had phoned Israeli soldiers in Jenin and learned it from
them.
How to summarize the
achievements of a man so erudite, so prolific, so open-minded, so revered in
his own country and across the world? He
was showered with honours – 26 of them; delivered some 60 major courses of
lectures; was awarded 14 prizes; authored more than 30 books. Throughout, his focus was on scholarship, on
probing for the truth in Judaism and disseminating it, and on understanding the
beliefs of others.
Sacks was once asked
about his major achievements as Chief Rabbi.
He singled out the fact that he persuaded community leaders of his
orthodox organization to permit women to become chairpersons of synagogues. When
he took office “there were no women on synagogue boards, there were no women,
except in observer status, on the United Synagogue council. We had to make that
a gradual change, and I’m glad that within my term of office women were able to
become chair people.”
On leaving office Sacks
made it clear that far from slowing down, he intended to expand his activities.
He would be going in “the same direction but in a global way – writing,
teaching, broadcasting and speaking on a more global forum. There’s a hunger
around the world for the message that we’ve been delivering of a Judaism that
engages the world. So more teaching, more writing and seeing the possibilities
of the web.”
That is the story of the
final seven years of his life.
https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/a-salute-to-rabbi-lord-jonathan-sacks-a-light-unto-his-nation-650024
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