Rabbi Sacks: At this time of the Jewish New Year, we're on the brink of Judaism's holiest days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They're days of reflection, a time when we review the past year and see ourselves as standing before God and giving an account of our lives. That for me is what faith is about.
It isn't a set of easy answers. Faith is a series of tough questions. The questions God asks us, because the gateway to God, especially at this time of repentance, is through honest self-searching.
I've come here to a quiet hillside in Jerusalem to ask one of the hardest questions of all.
Does belief in God bring peace or war? Reconciliation or hostility? Life or death?
The ancient Hebrew prophets, who walked on these hills two and a half thousand years ago, had a dazzling vision. They dreamt of peace. Not peace as a political negotiation, a diplomatic solution, but peace as a religious ideal, the will of God.
Isaiah dreamt of the day when the word of the Lord would go forth from Jerusalem, when nation would no longer lift up sword against nation, nor would they train any more for war. It was a revolutionary idea. For the first time in human history, God appeared not as an elemental force crushing all opposition, but as the voice, the religious imperative, of peace.
What has happened to that vision?
I'm standing here at the graveside of a man who gave his life pursuing it, Yitzchak Rabin, Prime Minister of Israel. Yitzchak Rabin was a former Chief of Staff, a military hero. But in his late years, he came to the conclusion that the cost of war was just too high, and he did the hardest thing of all.
He shook hands with his former enemy and set out on the tough, tortuous path to peace. Last Rosh Hashanah, shortly before he was killed, Yitzchak Rabin wrote me a letter. In it, he said that the struggle for peace was no less difficult than waging a war.
But he believed there was no other way. He'd seen too many young men die in battle. He'd had to comfort too many grieving parents. He'd seen too much blood, too many tears. And he ended the letter with the words with which, for countless generations, we've ended our prayers - “May God bless His people with peace.”
And that surely is the message of these days.
“Zochreinu l'chaim, Melech chafetz b'chaim” - Remember us for life, O King who delights in life, and write us in the Book of Life, for you are the God of life.
We pray for peace because only peace respects the sanctity of life and the integrity of humanity as the image of God.
This is Har HaTzofim, Mount Scopus, today the site of the Hebrew University. And I've come here because it was at this spot, many years ago, that I had an experience that probably changed my life.
I'd just finished studying philosophy at Cambridge, and that taught me how to question. But I wanted to learn something else. How to search, how to believe, how to have faith.
And it was here, one evening as the sun was setting, that I remembered that a great rabbi, Rabbi Akiva, had once stood here 1,900 years ago, together with some friends. And as they looked down at Jerusalem, they wept, because what they saw was the city laid waste and the Temple in ruins, destroyed by the Romans.
But Rabbi Akiva didn't weep. Instead, he comforted them. Jerusalem, he said, will one day be rebuilt, and the Jewish people will return.
And in all the intervening centuries, wherever Jews were scattered - in Babylon and Spain and Eastern Europe - that was their prayer, that one day Jerusalem would be rebuilt and the Jewish people would return. And suddenly, I realised that our generation had lived to see that day.
And then I knew that faith, so seemingly fragile, is the strongest thing there is.
It was faith that sustained the Jewish people through centuries of wandering and persecution. Faith that gave them hope at moments of despair. Faith that brought them back from every part of the world. Faith that rebuilt the ruins of Jerusalem.
Faith is like a flame. It gives light. It gives warmth. And by its illumination, we see the beauty of simple things - human faces, fellowship, the majesty and grace of relationships.
But sometimes it sets things on fire. It lights the fuse of explosive passion. It burns.
In the past year, we've seen suicide bombings in Israel, continued tension in Northern Ireland, a fragile peace in Bosnia, the burning of churches in the United States.
And it was the year when one man, pursuing the dream of the prophets, was murdered by another man claiming to be acting under instructions from God.
Where is God? In the flame that lights the darkness or in the flame that lights the fuse?
I've just crossed the Jordan, on my way from Jerusalem to Amman, to meet someone who's done more than most to break down the barriers between Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. His Royal Highness, Crown Prince Hassan of Jordan.
Rabbi Sacks: Your Royal Highness, supposing somebody said to you, historically, religion really hasn't been a source of peace. It's been a source of conflict. How do you see our faith traditions bringing us together instead of pulling us apart?
Crown Prince Hassan: I would say a selective interpretation of history would obviously look at the periods of reconciliation and the periods of shared persecution - in the context of Sepharad and Andalus in the shared tradition, more recently in the context of Bosnia and the suffering of Muslims and Jews, as an illustration of the fact that we have to understand the importance of middle ground.
And I think that our traditions essentially, are one in the same. Of respect for human dignity, respect for peace, respect for a shared system of moral values as opposed to material values. But sadly, I don't think we're being given the chance to focus these issues in a form of trialogue, because this region, in a sense, lacks a corporate identity, whether cultural, economic or political.
Rabbi Sacks: So you would say that the entire peace process in the Middle East, as well as having a political and economic dimension, has a religious dimension as well?
Crown Prince Hassan: I think the peace process is a political process. I think it is a security process in the broadest possible sense, in the overlap between security, that is to say, physical well-being and development, material well-being, but also in the essential understanding of cultural and religious freedom.
Rabbi Sacks: We're just approaching the Jewish New Year. What hopes do you have for the coming year?
Crown Prince Hassan: Well, I was taught by one of my Hebrew scholars and mentors never to quote without consulting the text. I would consult the text of the Holy Quran by saying, “Oh mankind, we have created you from a male and female and divided you into nations and tribes that you might know one another.” And I hope that this shared knowledge can be enhanced by instructive and committed encounters such as this one.
Rabbi Sacks: It seems to me that a few years ago we could not have had a meeting like this here in Amman. And I think that's a great sign of hope for the future.
Crown Prince Hassan: Thank you.
Rabbi Sacks: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur ask us to recognize the sanctity of life. In our readings in the synagogue, we remember Sarah and Hannah and how they prayed for a child. We remember Jonah and how he thought the inhabitants of Nineveh were wicked and deserved to die. But God told him he wanted them to change their ways and live.
And most tellingly of all, we read of how Abraham bound his son Isaac on the altar and then heard a voice from heaven say, ‘Stop. God does not want human sacrifices.’
“Remember us for life, O God who delights in life, and for your sake, write us in the Book of Life, for you are the God of life.” And how difficult a lesson that has proved to be.
The power of religion through the ages is that it brings people together into a community of faith. It teaches us to share, to belong, to feel part of the collective us. The problem has been that for every us, there's also a them, the people who don't share our faith. And the more closely we identify with us, the more distant we can feel from them.
That's why as well as uniting, religion can also divide. As well as fostering love, it can also incubate hate.
Why then do I continue to believe that religion is still our greatest resource for peace? Because I've seen Jews, Christians and Muslims working for peace.
Because our faiths value and pray for peace. And because we know, in our more lucid moments, that this is what God wants of us. He gave us a world to protect, not destroy.
He asks us to sanctify life, not to sacrifice it. “Who is strong?” Ask the rabbis. Not one who conquers his enemies, but one who turns an enemy into a friend.
We need confidence in our faith if we're not to feel threatened by someone else's faith.
And sometimes we need to remember that my God can be the same as yours, even though we worship Him in different ways. God isn't on my side to the exclusion of your side.
When we make one another suffer, God weeps. But when we celebrate life and make a blessing over it, the Divine Presence is there with us. Sometimes it takes great tragedies to remind us of these simple truths.
But that's the challenge of faith. To be able to tell the difference between making God in our image and allowing Him to remake us in His image.
Faith isn't the flame that lights the fuse.
Faith is the flame that warms the human heart and teaches us to share our world with others.
Oseh shalom bimromav, may He who makes peace in His high places teach us to make peace with one another in the year to come.
