Religion and Democracy in America and Europe

Rabbi Dr Meir Soloveitchik, Host, Introductory remarks

Chief Rabbi, our subject today is religion and democracy in America and Europe. Now, I've read almost everything you've written, and what strikes me most of all, perhaps, is that for a British Lord, you have a remarkable admiration for America. Clearly, all is forgiven, clearly, for the revolution, which is good to know. 

You've written about your visits to the United States, of our founders' covenantal conception of this country, in the book that we just, in this book of yours that you were just teaching to our seminar, “The Home We Build Together,” and you've actually begged Britain to adopt a more biblical, and therefore more American, approach to politics.

In this respect, you remind me of another European who wrote openly about his admiration for America, and that is Alexis de Tocqueville. I know that you love de Tocqueville, Chief Rabbi. I actually read that you read him at least once a year. I don't know if you make a formal siyum every year on de Tocqueville, but nevertheless, you do try to read it every year. We'll be reading de Tocqueville in our Strauss Seminar on Jewish Ideas in American Democracy. Now, de Tocqueville notes that “it was only in America where he found faith and freedom flourishing together.

In France, he said, "I had seen the spirits of religion and freedom almost always marching in opposite directions, while in America, I found them intimately linked in joint reign over the same land.” You yourself have noted that in contrast to the markable religiosity of Americans, Europe today is the most secular region in the world. What is the historical source of this contrast, and how is that contrast connected to your own affection for America? This is yours, Chief Rabbi.

Rabbi Sacks: Thank you. 

Kvod HaRav, first of all, I'm really sorry about Covenant & Conversation, and every year I ask HaKadosh Baruch Hu, please make me boring.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Well, now we have the siddur and the machzor.

Rabbi Sacks: And I really try to, but I probably developed the knack of being boring in a slightly different way, that's all. Can I say, first of all, what an enormous privilege it is to be with such a fantastic group of people in what I regard as the leading centre of Orthodox Jewish thought in the world.

And to say what a privilege I think you should all feel at being part of this. I salute the incredible efforts of President Richard Joel, and Richard, may you and Esther continue to be a blessing to this great institution and to the Jewish world. To thank personally, as Zahava and Moshael Straus, for this extraordinarily important, seminal, and transformative project.

And we thank you so much for that. And we say to you, you could not have chosen a better person to lead it than Rabbi Meir Soloveitchik, who is a star in the making and somebody it's a privilege to be sharing this platform with. So thank all of you very much, and a round of applause is called for at this point.

Okay, chevre, I agreed with Rabbi Soloveitchik just now that I would tell you the story behind this book, which connects with the difference between the political culture of America and the political culture of Britain. In America, a president, certainly in his inaugural address, has to mention God. As Eisenhower said, “An American president has to believe in God, and it doesn't matter what God he believes in.”

Whereas in Britain, famously, when Tony Blair, a very religious man, was Prime Minister, his press officer, Alistair Campbell, refused to let him answer any questions whatsoever on religion and said, ‘We don't do God.’ So therefore, when I was there earlier this year in the House of Lords, and when your President Obama addressed both houses of Parliament, and I had the privilege of meeting him then, I was standing next to the Bishop of Leicester, and I said to him, I don't know, how is he going to handle this? You know, as an American president, he has to refer to God. But he's standing in the British Houses of Parliament, so he can't mention God.

What's he going to do? And he really, you know what he did? He chose the Jeffersonian option. He mentioned the Creator. So he didn't mention the G word, so that was okay.

Aliba de Anglia, and aliba de the United States. He mentioned the Creator. So he split the difference. It was beautifully and deftly done. May he dance through all raindrops for the sake of the American economy. Like the European economy, which we wish a refua shleima to.

The irony of this is that Tony Blair was a very, very religious man. And Tony Blair - people didn't know this - I did the first television interview with him after he was Prime Minister, in which he spoke about faith. People didn't know this. Tony Blair read Tanach every single night. He once said to me, ‘Jonathan, how come your bit of the Bible is so much more interesting than our bit of the Bible?’ I said, ‘Obviously, Prime Minister, we have so much more politics in Judaism than you have.’

So we used, whenever we met in 10 Downing Street, after we'd got through the business, he would order his team out, my team out, and we would just sit together, and we would learn Torah together. He'd ask for a little Dvar Torah, a little shiur. And it was, I never knew in advance what it was going to be, because it was going to be whatever he read the previous night. And since he couldn't tell anyone that he was reading the Bible or they'd have thrown him out, we never knew in advance. So yeah, I had to think on my feet.

And we learned Iyov together. We learned Yirmiyahu. The last time we sat, we were learning Micah, Chapter 6. But came one day, and he turned to me, and he said, ‘Jonathan, I've come to the boring bit.’ I said, ‘Which boring bit, Prime Minister?’ He said, ‘You know, that stuff about the Tabernacle at the end of Exodus does go on a bit, doesn't it?’ I said, “Indeed it does, Prime Minister. In fact, I can tell you exactly how much it goes on a bit,’ (because politicians always judge stories by what they call column inches). I said, ‘Compare column inches for the Creation of the universe and for the building of the Mishkan. For the building of the universe, 34 verses. 31 of Bereishit 1, the first three of Bereishit 2, 34 verses. The building of the Mishkan - Teruma, Tetzave, half of Ki Tisa, Vayakhel, Pekudei, nearly 600 verses.’

It takes 20 times as long to build a shul as it took HaKadosh Baruch Hu to create the universe. The reason is, shuls are built by committee. 

So he said, ‘Go on, explain it to me, Jonathan.’ So not being prepared for this question at all, I gave him the best answer I could come up with at the time, which was, ‘Prime Minister, it is not difficult for an omniscient, omnipotent, infinite God to create a home for human beings. But for finite, fallible human beings to create a home for the infinite God, that is difficult. And that's why the Torah focuses our attention on it.’ And it satisfied him.

But as you know, when Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai explained to the Roman about Para Aduma and when he left, satisfied, the talmidim said, ‘You gave him some feeble answer which satisfied him, but what will you answer us?’ I wasn't entirely happy with that answer. I liked that answer, but it didn't answer a big question that I had. If you had a choice, which book would you put the building of the Mishkan in, in the Torah? Which book? I would put it in Sefer Vayikra, right? Vayikra is all about Avodat HaMishkan.

Let it begin with the building of the Mishkan and then tell us Avodat HaMishkan. What has it got to do with Sefer Shemot, which is the birth of a nation? What's the Mishkan got to do with the birth of a nation? 

Anyway, the question remained, but life went on, and after a few years we had another prime minister. And he began to raise with me a complex question about which - sorry, this is actually before he became prime minister - the issue of multiculturalism.

Are you familiar with that idea? The idea, multiculturalism is a problem. It seemed a good idea at the beginning, but then it seemed to lead to more segregation, not more integration. And I was being consulted by various politicians on this to give them advice on this.

And I suddenly realised this big issue and I have to think it through. And that was when I suddenly realised the answer to the question that I'd been asked all those years before by Tony Blair. Because actually the challenge for Moshe Rabbeinu is how do you turn this rather multicultural nation of 12 tribes and an Erev Rav, a mixed multitude, all of whom are individualists and ex-slaves, how do you turn them into a united, purposeful community? A community of faith, the Brit Yeud. How do you turn them into a community of faith? 

And what happens? Moshe Rabbeinu, HaKadosh Baruch Hu. through Moshe Rabbeinu, did for them miracle after miracle after miracle. And what was the result? They complained. 

Takes them out. There's no water. They complain. There's no food. They complain. They come up against the Red Sea. They complain. Why did he leave us out here to die in the wilderness? He divides the sea for them. One of my friends sent me a little postcard. Moses dividing the sea and summoning the Israelites across. And a lady is saying, “But vot about the puddles?” He gets them through the Red Sea - “VaYaaminu BaHashem uveMoshe avdo.” How long did that last? Three days. And they're complaining again.

It is my favourite story of all. You'll forgive me. It's got an American reference. Max Goldberg has - rachmana litzlan - a minor heart attack. They rush him to the finest hospital in America which I gather is Massachusetts General in Boston. They rush him there. He's treated for seven days. And then he checks himself out and goes off to a rundown Jewish hospital in the Lower East Side. 

And the doctor wants to know, why did he leave that fantastic hospital to come to this rundown Jewish hospital? And he says, “Goldberg, what was the matter? Did the doctors not understand your condition?” 

He said, “The doctors - Einsteins every one of them - about the doctors, I can't complain.”

“Was it the nurses? Didn't they look after you properly?”

He says, “No, the nurses, angels in human form, about the nurses, I can't complain.”

“Was it the food?”

“Food, manna from heaven, about the food, I can't complain.”

“So Goldberg, why did you leave there and come here?”

And with a big smile, Goldberg says, “Because here I can complain.”

So that is what the Bnei Yisrael do. Every single thing that's supposed to transform them into a united people fails. So HaKadosh Baruch Hu, having done Kriyat Yam Suf, the biggest miracles since Sefer Bereshit, and they're still complaining three days later, does the biggest thing of all, makes a personal appearance, b'chvodo v'atzmo al Har Sinai, the only time God ever appeared to an entire people.

And they tremble and they stand far off and they say, whatever you say na'aseh veNishma, how long did that last for? 40 days. Day 41, they're making a golden calf. What do you do that's one better? What do you do that's one better than Kriyat Yam Suf and Matan Torah? If all of that has failed to make a people, what do you do? And that is when HaKadosh Baruch Hu does the most counterintuitive, remarkable, transformative thing in the whole Torah.

He says, ‘Moshe Rabbeinu, you want to turn this people into a constructive, creative, united people? Get them to build something for Me. Get them to build a little home for Me.’

And do you know what? The whole time they are building the Mishkan, no complaints. No rebellions. Moses asked them to give and they give dai v’hutar, too much, he has to say stop.

And I suddenly realised it is not what God does for us that transforms us. It's what we do for God. 

And that is when I suddenly realised if you want to take this diverse, fractured culture of Britain and turn it into a united nation, you have to get them to build something together.

And that's why I wrote the book, called “The Home We Build Together.” Society is the home we build together. And that focuses on responsibilities, not rights. It says, yes, diversity. But each one of us, each culture is different. Therefore, let it bring that unique gift to the common good.

To the home we build together. 

That creates not multiculturalism, but integrated diversity. And I suddenly had the answer to Tony Blair's question.

I wrote the book and it is the only thing I wrote which actually immediately became government policy. And I say this very simply for a reason. The government policy on multiculturalism, the document was called “Face to Face, Side by Side,” which is the title of one of the chapters of the book. And it changed the government's whole approach to interfaith. Until then, they'd focused on dialogue. Now they're focussing on social action.

And any of you who've read Rav Soloveitchik's zt”l’s famous article in 1964, “Confrontation,” they will know that was the Rav's philosophy also. And it has now become national policy. Why do I say all this? Number one, because Moshe emet, v’Torato emet. This really is Torah and it is truth and it speaks to the 21st century. Number two, if we speak, the world listens. And number three, don't think this is just theoretical.

We are taking Torah and using it to change the world. I'm sorry that was such a long answer, Rabbi Soloveitchik. But I had to tell the story.

That brings us back to de Tocqueville. So then if the United States, as you noted in the book, got the entire concept of covenant, yes? Got the concept of covenant from the Bible. And ultimately, as you show, that came originally from Britain.

So what has happened to Britain? And what has happened to Europe? The cradle of Christianity, which now even refuses to acknowledge the history of Christianity and the role that it played in European history and their constitution. What has happened? And de Tocqueville already noticed it in 1830. It remains the same today.How did that come about? 

Rabbi Sacks: Well, actually, you privatised religion in America. You don't have an established church. The result is you have open competition. The result is that religion actually competes for attention. And the end result is, I'm not sure if you're aware of this, that a higher percentage of the population of America attend a place of worship weekly than do the population of the theocratic state of Iran. Did you know that? About 40% of Americans, on the latest figures, attend a house of worship once a week, and 39% of Iranians.

That's what happens when you don't have an established Church. Now, I'm not going to say that I want that to happen in England, because I'm a Rav, and I am not the Posek for the Church of England. But… 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Not yet, Chief Rabbi.

So, you know, Baruch Hashem, an established Church does not have to compete for membership. It's there. It has 26 lords spiritual in the House of Lords.

It has a voice in the public domain. I am not in the House of Lords as a religious leader. I'm there just as Jonathan Sacks, not as Chief Rabbi. There is only Church of England bishops sit in virtue of their religious office. And the result is that the Church does not have to compete for people's attention. And the result is, sadly, Christianity has become a little marginalised in Britain.

Now, I think that is serious, because I think without some higher ethic and some higher accountability, mere liberal democratic politics and market economics are not going to give us the ethics we need to be able to be a strong society in the future. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Well, you have said, building on that, that thanks to the secularism of Europe, Europe is dying. In a major speech, you spoke about Europe's failure to have children. You essentially accused them - I don't mean that in a bad way - of selfishness toward the next generation. And you link that specifically, specifically to the secularism. Is that correct? That has come to dominate Europe. 

Rabbi Sacks: Well, I didn't criticise them. I merely quoted the second-century BCE Greek historian, Polybius. Should I criticise Christians? Do me a favour. Yeah, try to criticise Jews. You'll find out what happens to you. So, no, no. The truth is, the truth is, did you ever read, right through to the end, Sefer Iyov? You know, the beginning of the book of... 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: I'm interviewing you, Chief Rabbi. I don't need to answer these uncomfortable questions. 

Rabbi Sacks: That is called a rhetorical question. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Yes, exactly. Excellent. 

Rabbi Sacks: The beginning of the book of Job, he loses everything he has, including - rachmana litzlan - his children. At the end, he has his children back. And we are left unsatisfied by that ending, because how can the fact that you have more children be a substitute for your aveilut for those you lost? But I don't believe we should read Iyov that way. What Iyov means is that after he had seen HaKadosh Baruch Hu face to face, he had the faith to bring children into the world.

We have had that crisis of all crises, the deepest crisis in all of human history. How can we have the faith to bring Jewish children into the world after the Holocaust? But be aware that it needs faith to bring any child into the world. 

And so what is happening to a Europe that has lost its faith? The zero population growth, that is a stable population, requires on average 2.1 children per female of the population. That is replacement rate. And the current rate in the United States is 2.1. The United States has a stable population. In Europe, there is not one of the 27 member countries of the European Union that has a rate of 2.1. They vary from Britain, 1.8, to Greece and Italy, 1.3. In other words, Europe is failing to reproduce itself.

And that's what happens when you lose faith. You lose that connection to something that transcends space and time, and you no longer feel a connection with your children. You don't feel an obligation to bring children into the world.

So Europe today is being populated very largely by immigrant populations, and the native population of Europe is failing to replace itself. And I think that is where theology becomes demography. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: It's interesting, actually, I'll just add, there's an article by Mary Eberstadt in Policy Review, Journal Policy Review, where she suggests, interestingly, that perhaps it's not as the conventional wisdom suggests that lack of faith led to lack of children, but to some extent, if you look at the actual numbers, it was people stopping to have children that then led to the decline of faith. And that, to some extent, perhaps, it's having children, having somebody whose life you care about more than yourself, that could actually be the foundation of faith for many of us. 

Rabbi Sacks: And just as a footnote, I would quote the American Jewish mother who said, ‘Once I had children, I found I could relate to HaKadosh Baruch Hu better.’ She said, ‘Now I know what it's like to create something you can't control.’

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Yes, exactly. That reminds me, Chief Rabbi, if I might tell a story, of the father in the supermarket who has a small child, and the child is having a huge tantrum. And the father is saying over and over in a soothing voice, ‘Okay, David, don't worry, David. We'll be home with Mommy soon, David.’ And a woman comes over to this father and says, ’Sir, I'm so impressed with your patience with little David here.’ And the man looks at her and says, ‘Lady, I'm David.’ So, so, I've been there. 

Rabbi Sacks: Kein Yirbu.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Yeah, amen, amen, thank you, thank you. I agree. Whether the supermarkets agree, Chief Rabbi, I don't know, but I certainly agree. Amen, Kein Yirbu.

Now, the question then is, if Europe is sec…, whichever the chicken, whichever the egg, Europe is secular. Europe is dying. The cradle of Christianity.

Rabbi Sacks: Pe, pe, pe. Yesh tikva l’acharitech.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Well, that's my question. First of all, is there tikva? And why should we, meaning, what is the world's stake in the fate of Europe? Meaning, why should we, for example, as Americans, mind that Europe is disappearing? What is at stake for civilisation if Europe stays secular and dies? 

Rabbi Sacks: Look, quite immediately, the dollar depends on doing a little bit of rescuing for the euro. I'll be blunt with you. We are in an extremely interconnected financial world at the moment. But, you know, as somebody once said, ‘Thought of your imminent execution focuses the mind wonderfully.’ 

I think Europe has had a number of shocks recently. And I'm not just referring to the financial crisis of 2008 and the new banking crisis of 2011. We had a wake-up call the like of which I haven't seen in a long time. At the end of August this year, did it come across to America, the riots that were taking place in Britain? These were riots which had nothing to do with race, religion, ethnic tensions. These were stam looting. People were, it was, as somebody said, shopping with violence. People were just breaking into shops and so on. The nation was shocked. Is this what we've come to? Is this the ultimate bottom line of consumer society? And I have not felt a shockwave go through Britain in, you know, in 15 years. It's serious.

And I hope it will make us get serious. I think when any major civilisation goes into decline, either it carries on declining or it discovers, rediscovers its source of strength and its source of renewal. 

And the wonderful thing about covenant is it is the only political concept that contains within it the capacity for renewal. Once every seven years, the Melech got up and did Hakhel and the people renewed their commitment to the founding principles of the nation. “Atem tihiyu li mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh.” And so it was in Yeshayahu and so it was in Chizkiyahu who was there and so above all it was in Ezra and Nechemia.

I discovered something very interesting when I became Chief Rabbi. They said, you've got to take a medical. I assumed it was to test my sanity that I was willing to take on this particular job, but actually they wanted to know the physical stuff not the mental stuff.

And the doctor who was doing this put me on a treadmill and I said to him, ‘What are you testing? Are you testing how fast I can go or how long I can go?’ He said, ‘Neither. So I said, what are you testing?’ He said, ‘I'm testing when you get off the treadmill how long does it take for your pulse to return to normal’ And that's when I realised that health is measured by power of recovery. No one is prone “against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.”

We all have bad things happen to us. Every country does, every economy does. Can we recover? And Judaism is the locus classicus, the unique case in all of history of a people that took every historical catastrophe and turned it into genuine growth. Not just survival, but revival. 

The destruction of the First Temple in Galut Bavel led to the enhancement of Torah in the life of the people. The destruction of the Second Temple led to the classic works of Torah sheBa’al Peh, Mishnah, Midrash, Gemara, et cetera, et cetera. The Crusades led to the Chasidei Ashkenaz. The Spanish expulsion led eventually to the mystics of Tzfat. And the worst catastrophe of all, the Shoah. Three years after the Jewish people stood eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death, they got up and made their single greatest collective affirmation in 2,000 years when they re-established the State of Israel. 

And therefore, if Europe is to revive, it will have to recover its religious roots. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik:So it needs a great awakening, as we've had in America several times, in other words.

Rabbi Sacks: Yeah. Yeah. And what the British public found particularly interesting, this was a piece I wrote in the Times at the time of the riots was, well, it was your second great awakening. When was the second? I didn't study American history. Second great awakening. In 1820, both America and Britain were suffering from severe social dislocation.

In America, young people were coming from the farms to the cities. They were running out of control. In Britain, it was not safe to walk the streets of London in the 1820s. You'd get mugged during the day and attacked during the night. There was drunkenness. There were illegitimate children, et cetera, et cetera.

And both Britain and America, between 1820 and 1850, remoralised themselves by a lot of charities like the YMCA, like the temperance groups, like et cetera, et cetera. And in America, that was called the second great awakening. And in Britain, I don't know what we called it. We didn't call it anything very much, but we did it anyway. And by 1850, both America and Britain had been remoralised. From 1850 to 1950, you look at the graphs for illegitimacy, for crimes, and for violent crimes by young people.

The graphs are in decline consistently year on year from 1850 to 1950. Then, with 1950, all the three start climbing and they are in direct inverse proportion to the attendance at Sunday school. In Britain, Sunday school was the medium by which British kids learned to be good Christians.

And when they were strong, society was strong. When they started getting weak, society started getting weak. So I was able to tell this story in The Times, which was very important, because people need a historical precedent in order to believe that something is doable.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: I think it was George Will who noted that the two great poles of Western political thought are freedom and equality. And they're always in tension. Now, you've sounded the alarm recently a couple of times that, in your words, “The attempt to impose the current prevailing template of equality and discrimination on religious organisations is an erosion of religious liberty.”

You actually said that we might come to a point where, like in the 17th century, a Mayflower of persecuted religions might leave England and Europe to come to safer shores. Now, recently, we all here in America read about the case that took place regarding the admission of a student to one of your schools and how, in the end, you were forced to admit that student. And we read all about that. And perhaps you'll just tell us a little bit about the case and its implications for Judaism in Europe and Jewish freedom in Europe. 

Rabbi Sacks: I don't know if you ever noticed the extraordinary way the Torah tells the story of the Bnot Tzelophchad. You know, Tzelophchad's daughter - they obviously studied here at Stern - I mean, they were strong, good feminists who knew their rights. And they said “Tnu lanu chelek.”  And Moshe asked HaKadosh Baruch Hu and HaKadosh Baruch Hu says, ‘Right on. Those girls, I know those girls. They learn well. Even “Ken, Bnot Tzelophchad dovrot.”

And it's a victory for women's rights. The trouble is that's not the end of the story. Right at the end of Sefer Bamidbar, the rest of the guys from the tribe say, what happens if they marry outside of the tribe and they take the land with us? And “lama nigara,” why should we lose the land? And God says, you're also right.

And so in the end, the resolution is that they're only allowed to marry within the tribe. So there was a major victory for women's rights, but there was also a loss of certain rights. So no victory for human rights is ever that clear-cut, because it's always a double-edged sword.

In 1976 in Britain, the British community, this was long time before my time as Chief Rabbi, decided to seek the protection of the Race Relations Act. In other words, it would allow antisemitism to be a crime under the Race Relations Act. But that meant defining Jews in Britain as an ethnic group. Now, until then, we'd only been a religious community. We weren't an ethnic group. I don't think Jews are an ethnic group. They come from all ethnicities. 

But that was seen as a great victory for human rights. We were protected by law against antisemitism.

But like the Daughters of Tzelophchad, it cuts both ways. So when a school - this was not my decision at all - It was, a Chief Rabbi doesn't have any rights to determine admissions policy to schools. On that, we have separation of School and Church, et cetera. So I have no, these are decisions made by the school governors. But the school governors of this school would only admit kids who were Jewish according to the Office of the Chief Rabbi.

And in other words, they were discriminating between Jews and non-Jews. It was irrelevant that the student who was not allowed entrance had a non-halachic conversion. That wasn't the issue. It could have been a sincere Christian or a Zoroastrian. He would have, if he wanted to get into the school and he was excluded, he could have brought a case under the Race Relations Act. They're discriminating against me because I'm not Jewish.

And the court eventually, a very narrow vote, it went to the Supreme Court. We now have in Britain a Supreme Court. By five votes to four, it was found in favour of the student.

And the reason was, this was an inevitable consequence of what had been seen as a great gain for the community. But it now meant that race relations legislation could be used against us, not just for us. And I am not sure, and it's going to take us a while to decide within the community, which do we prefer? Which on balance? 

Don't think that this is compromising the Jewish character of the school. It isn't. What it does mean, though, is that we have to make test of admission religious, not ethnic. So we can't say, you're Jewish, so we'll let you in. But we can say, you have to prove that you go to shul, that your parents are a member of a shul, that you keep certain, you know. We have to have a test of religious practice rather than a test of identity through birth or conversion. So it hasn't compromised the religious character of the school. In fact, it's enhanced the religious character of the school, but it was an interesting case because it shows that some rights bring with them some wrongs. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: America now is embroiled in a very great debate over the role of government in our lives. And that will be probably for the first time in some time, it seems that our election is going to focus not on foreign affairs, not on the war in Iraq or on the Soviet Union as it was in the 80s, but first and foremost on that question. You love de Tocqueville, and just as long as we're talking about democracy, I'll mention one quote. De Tocqueville wrote that he saw a certain danger in democracy because “Government of, for, and by the people lives to serve the people.” And what might happen, he said, is “A sort of soft despotism that would degrade men without tormenting them.”

What would this be? He said “It would resemble paternal power in that it had for its object to prepare men for man, not to prepare men for manhood, but on the contrary, it seemed fixed on keeping them in childhood. It provides for their security, foresees and secures their needs, facilitates their pleasures, conducts their affairs, directs their industry, regulates their estates, divides their inheritances.” “Can it not?” he said, “Take away from them entirely the pain of thinking and living so that every day it renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare. It reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals of which the government is the shepherd.”

It seems to me that the person who best warned about this danger was the 20th century's greatest enemy of socialism, and that was Margaret Thatcher. And what always fascinated me is that Thatcher saw Judaism and the resilience and the success, the ability of the Jewish people to rebuild, because of their own family values, which she saw as synonymous with Victorian values. She saw, and their focus on self-help, self-reliance, she saw that as an argument for her arguments, for her own moral arguments against socialism. 

Your predecessor, Lord Jakobovits, was a notable ally of hers in this regard. I'm wondering whether you agree with this perspective, and what is your view of Thatcher's legacy, and especially today during all the economic turmoil in America and in Europe, do you think that Judaism is uniquely capable, which is what Thatcher thought, uniquely capable of making the moral case for democratic capitalism? 

Rabbi Sacks: I do, actually, and that was the whole thrust of my argument about “The Home we Build Together.” It's what we do that lifts us. It's not what is done for us. Either by HaKadosh Baruch Hu, or lehavdil a zillion havdalot, by the State.

It's not what is done for us that makes us great. It is what we do for the sake of the common good. And that is very much the distinction that I drew in my book, “The Politics of Hope,” between State and society.

The ideal in Judaism is small State, big society. Society means what we do for one another. Rather than what is done by government.

And David Cameron, the current Prime Minister, came into power on the basis of that philosophy and that phrase, “the big society.” And it was the other side of the coin of Thatcherism. 

The truth is, however, in a very, very strange way - and I don't know whether this ever got communicated all the way across the Atlantic - every single Prime Minister in recent British history has not merely admired the Jewish community, but seen it as their role model.

Margaret Thatcher, John Major, who was the first one to give enormous government funding for Jewish schools, which is why you couldn't do it, but why we now have 70% of Jewish children in Britain going to Jewish day schools. 20 years ago, that was more like 25 to 30%. Then Tony Blair, an equal admirer of Judaism. Then Gordon Brown, and now David Cameron. So it doesn't matter what the political colouration is. They have admired Judaism intensely and seen it as their role model.

Why was that? And I think, I don't know, because I only write “Covenant & Conversation.” I don't actually read it. And I'm always in a different time zone because I always write it six or eight weeks in advance. But if I'm not mistaken, it's this week's “Covenant of Conversation.” I once asked the Catholic historian, Paul Johnson, did any of you read his “History of the Jews”? It's a brilliant book, and he's a Catholic. So I thought, you know, I was interested.

‘Paul, what did you discover? What most struck you when you spent all those years studying Judaism?’ This was his answer. He said, ‘There have been many individualistic cultures in history, ancient Greece, Latin, Rome at his height, Europe today, individualist cultures. There have been collectivist cultures, Soviet Union, Chinese communism. But no society has managed to maintain the balance between the two. Judaism is unique in emphasising both personal responsibility and collective responsibility.’

And, of course, he wasn't aware that he was just paraphrasing Hillel's “Im eyn ani li, mi li, ukshe’ani l’atzmi, ma ani…”

It is that extraordinary ability of Jews to succeed by their own efforts, but then to share their blessings with others, that all these five prime ministers have been struck by. And I sometimes think that non-Jews appreciate Judaism better than we do, if that is not an appalling thing to say. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: But to push the point a little, though, at the heart of Thatcher's critique is that she felt that self-interest, and this thing you stress as well, was not bad, and desire for wealth is something that can be turned toward the common good. And that is something that Judaism perhaps gave to the world and was perhaps more comfortable with than Christianity. I think that's something that you've noted as well. 

Rabbi Sacks: Yes, of course.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: So is that something that's being challenged today? And what message are we supposed to be giving today? It seems to me that we have now, we have “Occupy Wall Street,” occupying not only Wall Street, but all over the country. And we are, it seems right now, debating the proper role for government in our lives. The question is, does Judaism have something particular to say about that? And maybe the answer is no. Judaism can, in the various political debates that we have in Europe or in America, Judaism can be neutral or Judaism can work both ways. 

Rabbi Sacks: No, Judaism has something very specific to say. It is said, for instance, we are suffering a major international debt crisis. Governments, the American government, the British government, have built up debts, certainly the Greek, Spanish, and Italian governments, and the Irish one, for that matter, have built up debts to levels that are unsustainable. Individual levels of indebtedness in America and Britain have also risen to unsustainable levels. Now, we say every time we bench, you know, we don't want to be dependent on others. We say that in benching. 

I have been waiting for 20 years, Elaine and I, since we invite politicians for dinner from time to time, when somebody's going to complain at the benching, because this is very Thatcherite, Chief Rabbi, you know, but Baruch Hashem, nobody's noticed it yet. Maybe they don't understand the Hebrew. What can I say? 

So, and number two is that stunning Rambam, which, you know, we've learned with every prime minister. They all love it, that the highest level of tzedakah is to find somebody a job or allow them to have independence. So it's not to depend on tzedakah, because in Judaism, independence, which is the opposite of indebtedness, is fundamental to human dignity. 

And for heaven's sake, Muhammad Yunus in Bangladesh won the Nobel Prize, I think Peace Prize rather than the Economics Prize, for his system of microloans, which were an application to one of the poorest countries in the world in the 21st century, that level, top level of the Rambam in the Hilchot Matanot Ani’im.  

So here you have a philosophy of individuals who work, who create, who create the commonwealth in Adam Smith's terms, and try not to be dependent on others. And that's a very strong economic philosophy. And it is yesodi. It's fundamental and everyone recognises it. 

And it is no accident that Jews who are one-fifth of the population, of one-fifth of 1% of the population of the world have won 39% of Nobel Prizes in economics. I mean, they have to have a few non-Jewish economists because token ethnics, you know.

But I mean, it began with Yosef HaTzaddik. If Wall Street had only listened either to Warren Buffet or Parashat Miketz, we would have avoided this situation because this whole debt crisis arose because people thought an economic boom can go on forever. And if they'd only listened to Joseph who invented the theory of trade cycles, that seven years of plenty are followed by seven years of famine, they would have taken preparation.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: 20% flat tax also. 

Rabbi Sacks: Exactly so. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Yosef was the first supply-side economist. Exactly. 

You've spoken about antisemitism growing in Europe. This is a spectre of antisemitism that has returned in the Europe that gave us the Holocaust. And yet, you think that this is a radically different form of antisemitism than what has existed before. Why is that so? 

Rabbi Sacks: Three things. You know, I've tried to explain what is antisemitism because antisemitism stated in terms of its content is a stira minai dubai. It's a series of self-contradictions. Jews were hated because they were rich, because they were poor, because they were capitalist, because they were communist, because they kept to themselves, because they infiltrated and got everywhere.

Voltaire hated Jews because they were superstitious believers in an ancient faith. Stalin hated Jews because they were rootless cosmopolitans who didn't believe in anything. So, I've explained that you can have to understand antisemitism as a virus that attacks the body politic.

I have to be very careful. I'm okay in this gathering, but if I'm in a Charedi audience, I have to be very careful how I say a virus. They say, “Aveiros! … Teshuvah!” But... 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Only if you do the Hungarian pronunciation, not the Litvak pronunciation that Moshe Rabbeinu spoke.

Rabbi Sacks: Moshe Rabbeinu spoke with an Oxford accent. You know that. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Not his Yiddish, Chief Rabbi. Not his Yiddish. 

Rabbi Sacks: And how does a virus survive? It mutates. And we are living through one of the great historic mutations of antisemitism. The new antisemitism is different from the old in three respects. Number one, it is focused not on Jews as individuals. It is focused on Jews as a nation, a self-governing nation in its own State. Today, the modern form of antisemitism is anti-Zionism. That’s number one. 

Number two, classic antisemitism in the 19th and 20th centuries were conveyed by national cultures. Today, certainly in Europe, we don't have national cultures anymore. They're conveyed by the new media of communication - by emails, by the internet, by blogs, by Facebook, by Twitter, and so on. And that has very significant differences.

You can have a radical terrorist living next to you and you have no idea. I mean, the four suicide bombers that did the British terrorist attack of 7-7-2005 were born and grew up and were educated in Britain. And their neighbours thought, oh, nice people, you know.

So antisemitism is narrowcast today rather than broadcast. And it's very harder to deal with because of that. 

Number three, it is, strangely enough, quite difficult to justify hate. And therefore, if you're going to get a whole people to hate a whole people, you have to justify it by the highest source of authority in the culture at that time. In the Middle Ages, what was the highest authority? It was religion. And so antisemitism was religious anti-Judaism in one form in Christianity and a slightly different form in Islam.

In the 19th century, religion was no longer the highest source of authority. The highest source of authority was science. And so the 19th century racial antisemitism was built on two pseudosciences that were regarded as sciences at the time. One was the so-called scientific study of race, which was that meeting point between biology and anthropology, which was regarded as a science. And the other one was social Darwinism. In other words, the science that says the same rules apply to society as apply to biology.

Today, science no longer has that pristine authority because we know that science has, among other things, given us the capacity to destroy life on earth. And there are people protesting against science and technology. 

What is the highest source of authority in the world today? The answer is human rights. That is the highest source of authority. The carriers of the conscience of the world today are the human rights NGOs. And therefore, the new antisemitism is justified by reference to human rights.

That is why in August of 2001, the now notorious United Nations Conference Against Racism in Durban accused Israel of the five cardinal sins against human rights: racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, crimes against humanity. The new antisemitism is constructed in the language of human rights.

So we have now witnessed this mutation of antisemitism into a new form. It is very dangerous and we must fight it together. 

Rabbi Soloveitchik: But even as you describe it as a new mutation, you're describing a phenomenon that has existed almost constantly in Europe throughout the ages. And if any time when we would expect it to disappear in Europe, it's after the Holocaust. And it's right there, as you said, that the virus reared its head in a new and terribly horrible form. So the question is then, is this something endemic in Europe? Is it part of what it is? G.K. Chesterton, who was on the whole a very talented writer, but the British writer famously defined the antisemite as “The man who hates Jews more than is strictly necessary.”

I mean, Anthony Julius just recently wrote a fascinating book on the history of antisemitism in Britain. So the question is then, to what extent is it linked to the history of Europe? Even as you can make the case based on your book, Chief Rabbi, that the flourishing of Jews here in America is linked to the fascination that the Founding Fathers had with the people of Israel. 

Rabbi Sacks: This is a very complex issue, but Britain as such is not an antisemitic country.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: No, I'm not suggesting that. 

And it's important that you note that. Anthony Julius has written a book saying it is, but a greater historian, we wish a long life, Gertrude Himmelfarb, the wife of the late Irving Kristol, grandfather of neoconservatism, not that I am looking in your direction at all, Rabbi Soloveitchik.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Absolutely. I'm sitting to your left, Chief Rabbi. 

Audience member: Not from where we sit.

Rabbi Sacks: Gertrude has just brought out, or is just about to bring out, a book called People of the Book, which is a book about British philo-Semitism. So it's worth reading that book, Ken.

Britain is a very philo-Semitic country. And the new antisemitism, to repeat, is not a property of a national culture. We have handfuls of radicals who make an impact far beyond their numbers, especially on university campuses.

And that is serious. But, I, look, I'm going to tell you exactly what I said eight years ago when I stood in the European Union conference hall in Brussels. We persuaded Romano Prodi, already in 2003, to convene a European conference on antisemitism.

And I stood up and said to the leaders of Europe, “Jews cannot fight antisemitism alone. The victim cannot cure the crime. The hated cannot cure the hate.”

Gone on record as saying, and this wasn't my request, I said these words. I want to promise the Jewish community that when it comes to the fight against antisemitism, they will not stand alone. We have extraordinarily good friends.

We may have enemies, but we also have friends. 

Friends, perhaps with this do I end? Perhaps with this I end. Why were Jews hated? Why were they hated? Why is it the world's oldest hatred? The answer was given by one of the world's first antisemites, Haman HaRasha in Megillat Esther, who says, “Yeshno am echad mefuzar umefurad bein haAmim… v’datehem shonot mikol am…” They hated Jews because they were different.

You will say every culture is different. And that is true. But Jews have been the only people in history consistently to refuse to assimilate to the dominant culture or convert to the dominant faith.

They were the minority who were different in mediaeval Europe because they weren't Christian. In the contemporary Middle East because they're not Muslim. However, Jews therefore lived that difference.

Why? Because they said, ‘We have a right to be different. We have a duty to be different. We are about the dignity of difference.’

However, difference is what makes us human. As Chazal say, “A person mints many coins in the same mould, they all come out alike. God makes us all in the same image, His image, but we all come out different.”

Our difference is what makes us human. Therefore, a society that has no room for difference, has no room for Jews, has no room for humanity. 

Antisemitism begins with Jews.

But it never ends with them. 

And that is why I call on in Britain, members of every faith to stand with us in the fight against the world's oldest hatred. And we will win.

Rabbi Soloveitchik: Please join me in thanking Lord Sacks.