Rabbi Sacks speaks at The American Joint Distribution Committee Centennial Celebrations

Introductory remarks

Rabbi Sacks: Beloved friends, mazel tov, mazel tov on your 100th birthday, and Jackie has just given me the thing that I was searching for, which is that we now have empirical and irrefutable proof that you, every one of you, is so much better than a Chief Rabbi. In my merit, my team lost. Their greatest defeat in 63 years. In your merit, Maccabi Tel Aviv have just become basketball champions of Europe. And if you're an Israeli, life doesn't get better than that. 

Friends, because of you, because of you and your work, hundreds of thousands of Jews throughout the world are leading a healthier, happier, and more hopeful life.

I have to tell you, because of you, the words, the most famous words, the most famous line in the book of Psalms rings so true in those thousands upon thousands of lives - “Gam ki eilech, b'gei tzalmavet, lo ira ra ki ata imadi.” Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.

Because of you, every Jew in the world knows that he or she is not alone, that you are there for them. The JDC was founded in 1914, at the beginning of one of the critical moments in the history of the world. People had no idea then just how long World War I would last, how many millions of casualties there would be, how it would not turn out to be, as everyone thought, the war to end all wars, and what a terrifying price the Jewish people would eventually pay.

Already then, in 1914, the West that had opened its doors to Jews fleeing from persecution and pogroms in the 1880s, then closed those doors, trapping millions of Jews in Europe and turning others into other kinds of refugees in a world that was deeply and dangerously hostile to Jews. And it was then that the Joint stepped into the breach, offering help to endangered and impoverished Jews throughout Europe and eventually throughout the world. And because of the Joint, you rescued - or your predecessors rescued - a fragment of light from the heart of darkness.

Today your work is absolutely astonishing in depth, and scope, and reach - from children to the elderly, from addressing poverty to special needs, to disaster relief. Because of you, 33,000 children and 150,000 elderly in Europe are getting support. In Israel, 74,000 children and young adults are studying at your programmes, and 75,000 of the elderly are getting that same support.

You are training 92,000 people in Israel to develop skills that will allow them to become employed and self-sufficient. And you're creating community centres, learning programmes, leadership groups. All of these are transformative interventions. And above all, you're creating and developing leaders for the future.

You are engaged in healing a fractured world on a scale that is almost unimaginable. And this is God's work. Every day, three times a day, we say about God that he's “somech noflim, verofeh cholim umatir asurim,” He is lifting the fallen, healing the sick, and untying those who are bound in a desperate plight.

And you are doing that work. 

So I salute you, and I say to you, may God continue to bless you, and may you continue to be a blessing to the world. Amen.

Friends, I want to do something that Jackie reminded me I like doing. Can I teach you some Torah? Can you handle that, please? I want to teach you some Torah because there's a little piece of Torah that we read in shul this past Shabbat that I think contains a drama that almost nobody knows about. And I want to explain this drama to you because it epitomises what the Joint does and indeed what the Jewish people is all about.

You know, we read in shul this past Shabbat in Parashat Bechukotai, one of the really dark passages in the Torah. It's called the Tochacha, the list of curses. You know this thing. We say it very softly. No one wants to be called up for the Tochacha.

There was a little town among the shtetlach where nobody in the entire community was willing to be prepared to be called up for this list of curses because it was supposed to be bad luck.

So they used to hire every year a poor Jew to get called up for the Tochacha. One year, they come to the Tochacha and he's not there. And nobody's willing to be called up.

So they wait and wait and wait. Half an hour later he turns up. They say, “Where were you?” He said, “I had to be called up in another shul as well.”

And they said, “Why?”

And he said, “With the cost of living nowadays, from one curse I can make a living?” 

But there is an incredible passage.

I want you to hear it. At the climax of the curses, Moses says, when all these terrible things that have happened to you, among those who are left, I will put fear into their hearts. They will be terrified by the sound of a windblown leaf. They will run as if from the sword, but no one is pursuing them. “Vechashlu ish b’achiv” - And they will stumble over one another. On those three words, the Sages said one of the most remarkable things they ever said, and it's something every one of you, every Jew in the world, knows.

They said this. Don't read it, “Vechashlu ish b’achiv,” they will fall over one another, but “Vechashlu ish b’avon achiv,” they will stumble because of one another. Melamed, This teaches us, “Shekol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh,” that all Jews are responsible for one another.

This is the only source for that principle in Jewish law and Jewish life. Whenever the Talmud quotes this, it gives this proof text. 

Now the question is absolutely obvious.

Number one, this isn't the plain sense of the verse. It's the verse about Jews fleeing in danger, not helping one another. And secondly, did the Rabbis need to find that principle in the passage of curses? You can find it anywhere in the whole Bible.

The whole of Torah tells us that when Jews flourish, they flourish together. When they suffer, they suffer together. They could have chosen any verse.

Why this verse in the midst of the curses? 

And I think the answer is this. And it is so profound and so remarkable. The idea that we're all responsible for one another, that we share a collective fate is not unique to Jews. Every country, every neighbourhood, knows this. If I live in a neighbourhood where people are law-abiding, everyone benefits. If I live in a neighbourhood where there's petty crime and violence, everyone suffers. If I live in a country whose economy is booming, everyone gains. If there's a recession, everyone loses. 

But when does that apply? It applies when people live in the same country, in the same land, under the same government, part of the same economy.

And that was what Israel was during almost the whole of the biblical era. Jews were all living together here in Eretz Yisrael, and they were like any other nation. They flourished together, they suffered together.

The crisis came with the destruction of the Second Temple and the failure of the Bar Kochba rebellion. Because what then happened was Jews began to suffer the longest exile ever endured by any people on the face of the earth. They were scattered all over the world. They no longer lived in the same place. They no longer spoke the same language of everyday life. Rashi spoke French, Rambam spoke Arabic.  

They no longer shared the same fate. While Jews in northern Europe were being massacred during the Crusades, Spanish Jewry was enjoying its Golden Age. When Spanish Jewry was expelled and suffered for more than a century, the Jews of Poland were enjoying a rare spring of tolerance.

Jews had none of the normal preconditions of nationhood. And the question was, are we still responsible for one another? 

Where in the Bible will you find a passage that talks about Jews being defeated, exiled, and scattered around the world? The answer is there are only two passages in the whole Torah that talk about it. The two passages of curses. One in Vayikra, one in Devarim. 

And it is in last week's parasha that the curses end with a note of consolation. Nonetheless, says God, ‘Even when they're in their enemy's land, I will not despise them or reject them. I will not break my covenant with them.’ 

And that meant that even when Jews are scattered around the world, still their covenant with God holds. Therefore, their covenant with one another holds.

And that is an extraordinary idea. No other people ever had this idea.

Tell me, when historians look back at the 21st century, what will be the key word that sums up our age? The answer is globalisation.

Did you ever think of this? What for everyone else is the newest of the new, for us is the oldest of the old. For 2,000 years we've been scattered across the globe. And yet we still saw ourselves and were seen by others as one nation. The world's oldest global nation for 2,000 years. The world's only global nation. 

I have to say that when Elaine and I, you know, part of the British Commonwealth included Hong Kong. Until ‘97 when they had to give it back, after all, to China. And I remember our first visit to Hong Kong. They gave Elaine and myself a challah cover.

Now there was nothing special about this challah cover except for the fact that it was designed by a Jew from Russia, living in Jerusalem, manufactured in China, distributed in Hong Kong. For everyone else it was the challah cover, for us it was the global Jewish people. 

And the truth is, how did Jews survive that long exile? For one reason and one reason only.

That Jews knew that even in exile, even when they no longer had a Land, a home, a Temple, a priesthood, still they had a principle of “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh,” all Jews are responsible for one another. Nobody can split us apart.

As Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai said, “K'ish echad b'lev echad,” we are like one person with one heart. “Echad mehem lokeh, kulam margishim.” If one Jew anywhere in the world is injured, every Jew feels the pain.

And because of that invisible yet unbreakable bond between every Jew and every other Jew, we remained a nation. 

That idea, deeply counterintuitive, is unique to our people. And that is the principle our Sages found in the three words in our parasha.

Somehow, from the heart of darkness, they rescued an ember of hope. 

And it saved the Jewish people who otherwise would simply have disappeared. 

And let me give you an example of the power that this represents even now. Every year when I was Chief Rabbi I used to make a television programme for the BBC around Rosh Hashanah. A message to the nation because 99.5% of Britain isn't Jewish and it was on BBC One so it had to be relevant. So in 1999 they took me to Kosovo.

You remember the NATO operation in Kosovo? It was just coming to an end. The refugees were coming back. And I interviewed for the programme the head of the NATO forces who was General Sir Michael Jackson. I mean the military Michael Jackson, not the moonwalking Michael Jackson. 

And he said to me, the head of the NATO forces, he said, “Chief Rabbi, we owe your people a great debt.” You know what? I was trying to work out what did the Jewish people contribute to Kosovo.

And he told me the answer. He said when there are hundreds of thousands of refugees coming back, what is the sign that the trauma is over and normal life has been resumed? The schools open on time. He said, “We owe your people the thanks for making sure the schools are opened on time. They're running all the schools in Pristina.”

When I came out of that interview, I asked around how many Jews in Pristina? The answer came back: nine. Now go figure, how do nine Jews run all the schools in Pristina? It's obvious.

Hashem invented a special invention just for us called the telephone, the cell phone. Jews use it three times as much as anyone else on earth. So if you've got a cell phone and you're a member of the Jewish people, you get on the phone to the Joint, you get on the phone to Israel, and all of a sudden you've got the whole Jewish people coming to run the schools in Pristina.

That is what gives us our power. 

And friends, I know you'll forgive me if, you know, I had the great privilege of knowing one of your great members, who sadly was killed in an accident early this year, the late Anne Heyman of blessed memory. And to me, Anne, whom I came to know just through the Joint, was an embodiment of what this is all about.

You know her story. In 2004 she was watching a documentary about 10 years on from the massacre in Rwanda. 800,000 Tutsis and their friends murdered in 100 days mainly by machete. And the result was Rwanda was full of traumatised orphans.

And Anne is sitting watching this on the television and she's saying to herself, ‘I'm Jewish, we're supposed to do something when we see something like that.’ And so she phoned up Chaim Peri of the youth village in Yemin Orde and some other Israelis and that great, great man who also sadly just died a few weeks ago, Reuven Feuerstein, the world's greatest expert on dealing with damaged and traumatised children. In one way or another, through the Joint and through Israeli, she built an Israeli-style youth village called the Agahozo-Shalom Youth Village for 700 Rwandan orphans in the middle of Rwanda, teaching them computing skills, leadership skills, how to grow avocados.

It was just unbelievable. I'm sure you all know it. But just to see children of Holocaust survivors here from Israel saying, you know, ‘Our parents cried out and the world wasn't listening. When the Rwandan orphans cry out, shall we not listen?’ There were Ethiopian orphans who said, ‘Somebody did this for us. We want to do this for somebody else.’ It was just unbelievable.

And I asked her, ‘What's the meaning of Agahoso?’ And she said, it's how you say in Rwandan, whatever they speak in Rwanda, ‘Healing of broken hearts.’ And I thought to myself, you know, every day in our morning service, we say about God, “HaRofeh lishvurei lev uMechabesh l’atzvotam.” God heals broken hearts and binds up their wounds. And that's what Anne did, and that is what you are doing day after day after day.

And that is what you are. You are the world's greatest embodiment of that unique Jewish principle, global Jewish responsibility. And obviously, you have done so much, and I bless you for all that you have done.

But if there's just one challenge I would throw out, it would be this. One thing I would ask you to do. 

Every one of you is a leader.

And you know, when I was a kid, when I was 20 years old, I had the great privilege of meeting the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory. I had no interest in being a rabbi, in being a leader. My ultimate ambition in life, I have to tell you, was to be an accountant.

I am, that stands before you, an accountant, monke. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe challenged me. He said, ‘What are you doing for Jews at your university?’ I said, ‘Nothing. I'm supposed to do?’

He said, ‘Go out and lead.’

And that is when I realised that good leaders create followers, but great leaders create leaders. 

And that is a challenge I throw out to you.

You have so inspired Elaine and myself. Go out and inspire a new generation of young leaders who will run with your work and take it forward in the future. 

And I know it isn't easy to be a leader of the Jewish people. We say, “the Lord is my shepherd,” but no Jew was ever a sheep. 

But it is so worthwhile because your message is the Jewish message for our time. It is the message that will inspire young Jews.

And let me define exactly what the message is. You know, people sometimes confuse two words. The word optimism and the word hope. I think they're completely different. Optimism is the belief that the world is going to get better. Hope is the belief that if we work hard enough together, we can make the world better.

It needs no courage, only a certain naivety to be an optimist. But it demands a very great deal of courage indeed to have hope. No Jew, knowing the history of our people, can be an optimist. But no Jew worthy of the name ever, ever lost hope. And we are sitting here in the epicentre of the country whose national anthem, Hatikvah, means “The Hope.” 

Friends, go and turn the next generation into agents of hope. Because that is what you are for me. In a world full of conflict and strife. In a world where countries from Syria to Somalia, from Libya to Lebanon, whole societies are tearing themselves apart, and you are showing the world that there is another and better way.

You are showing what it means to be “Kol Yisrael areivim zeh bazeh.” Take seriously global responsibility. You are healing shattered lives. You are bringing hope where otherwise there would be despair. You are showing people that they are not alone. 

So I thank you. I admire you. I bless you. With that loveliest of blessings that Moses gave the people of his age. And may it become true of you. Yehi ratzon shetishreh Shechina b'maasei yedeichem. May God's presence live through the work of your hands. Thank you. 

Closing remarks