Rabbi Sacks: On Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, we reflect on the past 12 months.
News footage: The apologies came thick and fast this morning… I'd like to find an unqualified apology... Unreservedly. Sorry… A full apology.... We are extremely sorry… MPs have been defending their expenses claims… Two Labour peers could face suspension from Parliament…
Rabbi Sacks: There's been a real sense of crisis in society. It's left us questioning who we can trust and wondering whatever happened to morality. Judaism prompts us to ask ourselves, ‘Where did we go wrong?’
So can faith help us strengthen our moral sense, the better angels of our nature? If so, it might have a message for all of us as we try to build a more gracious future.
Throughout recent months, the country has been gripped by turmoil in both politics and the City.
We've been kept up to date with events on the financial scene by the BBC's Business Editor, Robert Peston. I wanted to meet him, to hear his thoughts on the moral questions underlying these crises.
Robert Peston: We lived through a period where the prevailing political consensus was there was nothing better for any economy than so-called wealth creation. And that as soon as you started to question whether individual sums that particular people were making were excessive, as soon as you raised that as a question, there was a fear by politicians that they would be seen as somehow anti-wealth creation. So nobody dared to say, ‘Hang on a second, are we sure X or Y should be making a billion here and a billion there?’
Rabbi Sacks: Did you see a connection between the financial collapse and the scandal about MPs' expenses? Was there something wider going wrong with our society?
Robert Peston: I suppose the things that seemed to me to unite both of these debacles were lots of MPs took this money, because they thought they were following the rules, but they didn't ask the wider question whether, even though the rules were being followed, it was the right thing to take the money in a much more profound ethical sense.
Rabbi Sacks: So how did we get to this point? If you want to understand the roots of today's turmoil, I believe you have to go back at least 50 years.
In the 1960s, I think the idea prevailed in Britain that morality was an optional extra. We preferred freedom.
News footage: Nearly all of their members are involved in some sort of industrial action.
Rabbi Sacks: But 10 years later, society was facing the consequences. Violence on the streets, child poverty, family breakdown. We thought the state could take care of our problems. It couldn't. So we looked for other ways to meet our needs. By the 1980s, it was all about the ‘Me’ generation, looking after number one. Greed is good.
The winners in life would create a trickle-down effect, showering good fortune on the rest of us. In the long run, that failed us too.
So half a century on, we find ourselves feeling disillusioned with society.
News footage: They were once top players in the banking premier league, but Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS were brought to their knees by the credit crisis… And there was more evidence this morning that the financial crisis is not just affecting bankers… House prices plunging at their fastest-ever rate… Unemployment is now at its highest since 1997…
Rabbi Sacks: If nothing else, we've surely learned that market forces alone can't determine what's right and wrong. We need some sense of honour. Institutions need trust in order to function well. And that means acting responsibly, honestly and honourably towards others. And we'll need something stronger than self-interest to make this work.
Because we'll always be tempted to do what's good for us, but not necessarily for others.
Religious faith teaches us that we aren't the centre of the universe. Each one of us is part of a much bigger picture.
So other people matter. When we do things we shouldn't, someone else pays the price.
But not everyone wants to hear that, especially in Britain, where we rarely look to religion for answers.
Speaker at the US Presidential Inauguration: Let us pray. Almighty God, give to our new President, Barack Obama, the wisdom to lead us with humility. The courage to lead us with integrity.
Rabbi Sacks: In America, it's different. Religious leaders are visible at the heart of public life, such as at the inauguration of President Barack Obama. To British eyes, American religion can seem over-enthusiastic. But the way they do faith in the United States is far from unique.
When the Editor of The Economist recently set out to write about religion in the United States, he soon realised that it's not America but Europe that's out of step with the rest of the world.
John Micklethwait, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist: You look at North America, you look at Asia, you look at Africa, you look at Latin America. All those areas, religion is either expanding or at least holding its own. We begin our book in China. China now has maybe 100 million people going to church each week. It only has 70 million communists.
Rabbi Sacks: What do you attribute it to?
John Micklethwait: I think there are many people who want to get ahead in the world who are turning to religion. Go to America, the megachurches are not built in the downward parts of America, they're built in the gleaming, shining suburbs. They're full of doctors, accountants, lawyers. It's the professional classes.
The great cliché in Europe is always to look at George Bush. The real example is actually Barack Obama. Barack Obama. There was a clever, young, sophisticated, well-educated, doing-quite- well-guy in Chicago whose life he felt - rightly or wrongly - was somewhat empty.
He found meaning in a Chicago church. He found other ways too, but the church was absolutely crucial to how he saw his life go forward. And that actually is an experience which is repeated in endless different ways around the world. Not that much in Western Europe, but pretty much everywhere else.
Rabbi Sacks: In Britain, we've tended to rely on politicians to set the moral agenda. Seven years ago, the government introduced lessons in citizenship as a way of teaching young people about their rights and responsibilities.
Schoolteacher: What does morality mean? I'd like you to think about your own personal morality. What does the word morality actually mean?
Rabbi Sacks: But how is that approach standing up? Pupils at King David High in Manchester have been left questioning the example set by those at the top in society.
Do you think that the kind of leadership we've had in society has been up to your standards? Have you wondered about the morality of people in public life? What do you think?
Student: I feel that with the collapse of the banking system, the bankers, who are obviously in a very high position of responsibility, have unfortunately set quite a bad example to perhaps business, young people.
Student: The MPs spending the money that they didn't actually need to spend.
Student: I think football can be quite a bad role model as well because players get all their money and they get drunk and assault people and get arrested.
Rabbi Sacks: Who has seen or read about some really positive role models in the last year?
Student: There are clubs such as Barcelona, for example, in Spain. Within the majority of clubs, the name on their shirt is a sponsor that gives money to them, but with Barcelona they have UNICEF on their shirts and they give money to them instead. So I think that's a very good example of a way to behave to young people.
Student: A few years ago, Bill Gates gave almost half his fortune away to charity and that he was one of the richest people in the world. So half of his fortune was that.
Rabbi Sacks: So how can we find the good in society and repair what's broken? Father Timothy Radcliffe is the former head of the Dominican religious order. He believes that the only way forward involves a complete rethink of what it means to be moral.
Father Timothy Radcliffe: I think we can see all over the world, particularly in the United States, the revival of the virtue tradition, which emphasised the fundamental virtues of prudence, of courage, of justice and temperance. I think in the virtues you find a common ground between people who believe and who don't, where we can have conversation and mutual respect. And that's much more possible than if you see morality fundamentally in terms of obedience to external commands.
Rabbi Sacks: And what the virtue tradition forces us to ask is not, ‘What's to my advantage, what's legal, what can I get away with?’ but ‘What kind of person do I want to be?’
Father Radcliffe: Exactly. I think the virtues form you as someone who will spontaneously do what is just, who will spontaneously be courageous. And that spontaneity comes from the fact that you're working from your own self, from the core of who you are.
Now, we as believers, we trust that we ultimately are formed to find our happiness in God. But already you can have a courageous, prudent, just person who has immense human solidity. They really are themselves, even when they're non-believers.
Rabbi Sacks: I agree with Father Timothy. Regulations alone aren't enough to prevent a repeat of the events that have challenged our society.
The terrible reality of this crisis is that it's those who can least afford it who end up paying the biggest price.
News footage: The latest job cuts come as a survey shows firms are taking a wait-and-see approach to recruiting new staff… No such respite for manufacturing though, which is also struggling badly. Figures out today showed output has now fallen for eight months in a row, the longest losing streak for almost 30 years.
Rabbi Sacks: We need to find practical answers, fast.
Sir Trevor Chinn: Welcome to the first meeting of the Advisory Panel of Good Business Practice.
Rabbi Sacks: Sir Trevor Chinn is the former head of Kwik Fit at the RAC.
Sir Trevor Chinn: Although this grew out of the Jewish Association for Business Ethics, this is supposed to deal with companies.
Rabbi Sacks: He's now chairing an initiative to create a new code of ethics for commerce and industry. We live in times in which ethical practice has been cast into doubt.
So what does good business practice mean to Sir Trevor?
Was there a moment in your business career when you quite consciously decided not to do something even though you knew it would be profitable in the long run?
Sir Trevor Chinn: There was a case back in 1974 which was a pretty serious crash, not quite as bad as today but pretty serious, when the company that I chaired was in deep trouble but was still making profits. Someone came to us with a tax scheme which would have saved us a lot of money. I remember having a meeting and asking one of our senior advisors, ‘If I did this, would it meet the standards of integrity that I set in this company?’ And he said no, so we didn't do it.
And I think we all get faced in big ways and in small ways with those decisions and it's more important to do what is right than what is profitable, because the right pays off in the long term.
Rabbi Sacks: But Trevor, you work in the hard-edged field of business where, at least on the face of it, your responsibility is to maximise profits. So how do you bring an ethical dimension into the decisions you have made in your business life?
Sir Trevor Chinn: It's quite clear that if you want to employ good people, you are better off to behave properly. Good people want to work for companies who they believe will behave properly.
Rabbi Sacks: With hindsight, you can speculate on what difference such basic principles might have made to recent events. But the reality is that even in the much maligned City, there have always been good people keen to consider their impact on the wider world.
Paul Bernstein is Managing Director of a children's charity set up and largely supported by those who have made fortunes in hedge funds.
Child: In Africa, ARK is fighting the AIDS crisis that is destroying families and wrecking children's futures.
Rabbi Sacks: We met in the heart of the City at Bevis Marks Synagogue, the oldest still in use in Britain.
I wondered if there's any contradiction between the world of finance and the world of charity.
Paul Bernstein: We can't ignore the global economic problems that are being faced by people. No one actually, I think, is proud of what has gone on in the economy.
But what I find in some way the magic is when you have this hedge fund manager in Africa, in India, wherever it may be, sitting as an equal with a community worker in their shack in a township, wherever they are visiting. And they're actually their equals at that moment. And they are talking and working together, determined to do the same thing, which is make a difference, help children and really change the world.
Rabbi Sacks: I feel this is going to have to be the way forward because there's a lot of anger out there. There's a lot of inequality out there. The suffering has not been spread equally.
People feel, in a sense, betrayed. And there's going to have to be a real regaining of reputation, which can only come when people feel that financial institutions are bounded by codes of moral responsibility and by role models and examples of people who are there not just to create wealth for themselves, but to create blessings for others.
The Jewish New Year is our reminder that honouring God means honouring our fellow humans, that conscience is the voice of God within the human heart, that morality isn't whatever we choose to make it.
It's what we need to be able to live together in bonds of trust.
You don't have to be Jewish or even religious to know that justice, compassion, decency, integrity, and a sense of honour and duty are essential to the human enterprise. And we can bring them back if we have the courage to say, I did wrong. I have sinned.
At this time of the Jewish New Year, let's renew our commitment to the right and the good, the love of the neighbour and the stranger.
May God's love and forgiveness inspire us to love and to forgive.
May His care for us help us care for others, not just ourselves.
