An interview with former British chief rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks.
By SAM SOKOLRabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks stands in the garden of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem(photo credit: SAM SOKOL)
A Judaism engaged with the outside world that grapples with the philosophical and ethical issues of the day can help bring Jews back to their faith, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks says.Sitting in the lobby of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel with The Jerusalem Post Magazine last week, the former British chief rabbi discussed anti-Semitism, Jewish demographics and the future of the brand of moderate Orthodoxy he represents.The rabbi was in Jerusalem to receive Bar-Ilan University’s Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies’ Guardian of Zion Award for his “outstanding contribution to Diaspora Jewish life, by bringing the message of Jerusalem to the Diaspora.”Prior to this prize, Sacks, who is now a professor at Yeshiva University in New York, won the Katz Award for his contribution to the application of Halacha to modern life.Sacks headed the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years, leading the British religious body through the Oslo Accords process, the second intifada and the recent resurgence of European anti-Semitism. A much sought-after author and speaker, he is one of Judaism’s most articulate defenders in an age of secularism, assimilation and skepticism.Asked about his receipt of the Guardian of Zion Award, Sacks was retiring, calling it a “humbling experience” and asserting that everyone is “on the line to be guardians of Zion.”“As soon as the peace process broke down and the European media began becoming very hostile to Israel, I took my rabbis on a mission to Israel to meet with political and religious leaders to see the situation on the ground. My message to them was in the coming months and years, each of you must be an ambassador of the State of Israel – because our congregations and the British public are receiving an impression of Israel that we know does not ring true,” he said.“It became terribly important to stand with [Israel] and likewise with our students. You know the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement has turned university campuses throughout Europe, and now beginning in America also, into a frontline – and it was tremendously important to be there with and for the students as well.”Sacks’s achievements in mustering British Jews to combat anti-Zionism were “the kind of thing anyone with a sense of history and loyalty must feel called on to do,” he continued, downplaying his role. “I don’t claim that I did anything that anyone else would not have done in the same situation.”Looking back at that time and the deteriorating atmosphere of delegitimization pervading the continent in the early 2000s, Sacks said he “almost immediately” understood that “this was not bad publicity. This was something much more serious.”“I was trying to work out where is this coming from… and it suddenly occurred to me that in 1948, 1967 and 1973, Israel’s enemies tried to put it in a military crisis. With the boycott in 1973, they tried to put it in an economic crisis.With the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution in the United Nations they tried to put it in a political crisis, and I said, ‘Now they are trying to put it in a moral crisis – and they may succeed,’” Sacks recounted.“In other words, when world opinion turns against Israel, Israel begins to divide Jews instead of unite them.This never happened with the previous challenges,” before the tactics of delegitimization and grassroots boycotts began being pursued in earnest.Turning to the issue of anti-Semitism, Sacks said he agreed with European Jewish Congress President Moshe Kantor in his recent assertion that continuing European Jewish life must be predicated on an end to the fear that many there feel.During a press conference in Tel Aviv in April, Kantor stated that normative Jewish life in Europe is “unsustainable” without a change. Citing a November 2013 study by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights which showed that almost a third of Jews in several European countries are mulling emigration, the EJC president maintained that “Jews do not feel safe or secure in certain communities in Europe.”Despite this, “for more than the first 50 years of my life, I never experienced a single instance of anti-Semitism,” Sacks said. In 2002 during the first intifada, however, “I was beginning to see that this was not a few straws in the wind, this was more serious.”“On that day, I put an op-ed in the Guardian and I addressed parliamentarians and I began doing a lot of warning on the BBC, on the news programs and so on.There were individuals – not many, a few – in the Jewish community who thought I was exaggerating, but I knew perfectly well I was understating it.”Addressing several senior leaders of the EU in 2007, Sacks stated, “Jews in Europe go back a long way, and their experience added certain words to the human vocabulary. Words like expulsion, disputation, forced conversion, inquisition, auto-da-fé, ghetto, pogrom and holocaust. I said all that is the past and we can live with the past, but today the Jews of Europe are asking is there a future for Jews in Europe – and that should concern you, the leaders of Europe.”That was “probably the shortest speech I ever gave in my life,” he said.“So that was seven years ago and I issued the warning then, which Moshe Kantor has now issued. I did it quietly because I didn’t want to scare anyone, nor did I wish to overstate the case,” he said.“Let me make it clear, the anti-Semitism we are seeing in Europe is highly localized to specific groups, but it is dangerous. Once it’s out there, it’s dangerous. That has been shown, of course, by the rise in [late May’s European Parliament] elections of the Jobbik party in Hungary, the Golden Dawn in Greece and the Front National in France. These are very worrying signs.”Sacks also predicted further attempts at bans on ritual slaughter and circumcision in Europe, but stated that such bans will “succeed only where Jewish communities are very small and unable to defend themselves.”“I don’t think they will succeed, but periodically they come under attack. I wouldn’t connect this with the issue of anti-Semitism. I think they are both worrying phenomena, but they are not the same phenomenon.”Asked about the dual challenges of assimilation on the one hand and the encroachment of ultra-Orthodox fundamentalism on the other, Sacks said he was optimistic about the future of moderate Judaism.“Does the center ground have a future? The answer is yes,” he said.Alarmed by the high rate of assimilation in Britain in the early 1990s, Sacks “went public with [a] shocking campaign” featuring posters declaring that “Anglo Jewry has been losing 10 members a day every day for the last 40 years.”“We can now speak pretty definitively about the results” of Jewish efforts to stem assimilation, he said, citing a recent study by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research detailing trends in British Jewish religious practice.“In 1993, we had 25 percent of Jewish kids at Jewish day schools; in 2013, 70%,” he said. “On every single index of religious observance or commitment, the younger they are in Anglo Jewry the more committed they are, and that’s right across the community – including the non-affiliated.”“In 1991 the out-marriage rate was 24%; in 2013, the rate was 24%. So we have halted the decline. From 1945- 2005, Anglo Jewry lost numbers, it was declining demographically. In 2005, the curve turned.”While this trend is “an overall thing,” he added, “there is no doubt that the single largest factor has been the growth of the haredi community, but at least now [we see] more Jews are being born than are dying, and that’s good news for all of us.”Sacks’s brand of moderate Orthodoxy, which like American Modern Orthodoxy seeks engagement with the outside world, has “won great acclaim, especially among the non-Jewish public,” he boasted. The ability to win over non-Jews is significant in that it raises the esteem in which Judaism and Abrahamic monotheism are generally held, and in that such a high-profile and respected Judaism serves to kindle interest in Judaism among the unaffiliated.“I did a lot of broadcasts on radio and television; eight of my books were serialized in the national press. It showed people that there is a hunger for our message.”Last year, Israeli-American philosopher Yoram Hazony charged that Judaism had withdrawn from the world dialogue on faith and reason, but Sacks disagrees.Citing his newest work, The Great Partnership, described as “an intelligent, optimistic credo that allows for the happy coexistence of science and religion” by The Times, the former chief rabbi said the future of Judaism is one of engaging with the outside world.Sacks notes: “When Jews see non-Jews respect Judaism, they begin to say, ‘Maybe it’s worth a look’ – and I think we have so much to tell the world.”
