Episode 3: Future Tense (Part 1)

Tanya: I'm Dr. Tanya White and this is Books & Beyond: The Rabbi Sacks Podcast, a series dedicated to exploring four of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks most powerful ideas from four of his most influential books. Each episode features distinguished leaders and prominent voices from the Jewish world in dialogue with his teachings.

Whether you're a devoted admirer or new to his work, this podcast offers inspiration and insight for these challenging times. 

This episode is sponsored in the memory of Alvin and Anita Kaplan, (Avraham Aharon HaCohen ben Moshe Nissan HaCohen V’ Devora and Chana Perl bat Malka and David Zissel). Welcome to episode three of Books and Beyond, where we delve into the second book in our series, Future Tense. If you're new to the series, I encourage you to listen to our short trailer intro episode, where we explain the aim and structure of these podcasts.

As with all first episodes in the series, this discussion, features a fellow Sacks Scholar. Together, we'll unpack the book's agenda, key themes, and broader context. Part two of our study on each book, in this case, episode four, is a thoughtfully curated journey that goes beyond the book. Joined by leading and prominent Jewish voices, we'll explore how the book's ideas intersect with today's challenges and ongoing conversations within the Jewish world and beyond.

We've titled this book The Narrative, as it examines the Jewish story, how we frame it, why it matters, and how it shapes our collective mission and calling in the world.

Tanya: In our previous episodes, we explored the themes and messages in Rabbi Sacks', A Letter in the Scroll, or as it's also known, Radical Then, Radical Now. We labeled it The Call as it invites us to reflect on our dual roles as humans, navigating the world and as Jews in covenant with the divine. Now with Future Tense, we turn to the question of the Jewish narrative, how we tell our story and how that story influences our identity, our purpose, and our contributions to the broader world.

To help unpack pack the profound ideas and concepts in this book. I'm thrilled to welcome my dear friend, colleague, and brilliant thinker. Dr. Mijal Bitton is a spiritual leader, community builder, and sociologist. She's the co-founder and Rosh Kehilla of the Downtown Minyan in New York City and serves as scholar in residence at the Maimonides Fund.

She's also a visiting researcher at NYU Wagner, where she leads groundbreaking research on Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the United States. An alumni of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship, a New Pluralist Field Builder, and a Sacks Scholar, Mijal lectures widely and co-hosts the podcast, Wandering Jews.

She was also featured speaker at the Historic March for Israel in Washington, DC. For those who want more, I highly recommend subscribing to her Substack newsletter, Committed, where she shares weekly Jewish wisdom for living a meaningful Jewish life today.

As with all our first episodes in this series, we'll structure our discussion around four key questions.

First, we'll explore the context of the book, what inspired it, and the circumstances in which it was written. Next, we'll consider its agenda, what Rabbi Sacks aimed to achieve. Then we'll provide a brief outline of the book, highlighting its main themes and topics. And finally, in my favorite part of the discussion, we'll analyze one or two key ideas and pose a challenge, thinking about how these ideas can inspire and shape our lives today.

Tanya: So let's jump in by talking about the context. If we think for a second what was going on when Rabbi Sacks writes the book, he publishes the book in 2009. And fascinatingly enough, if we read the introduction to the book, it sounds very familiar, almost as if he's writing it today. He speaks about the Gaza war in 2008 and 2009, Operation Cast Lead.

He talks about the idea that Hezbollah threatens in the north and obviously Iran, and he discusses the international criticism that Israel has had for defending itself. Again, a very familiar situation. So those are the external threats that he's writing about. And he also is writing about the internal threats.

He mentions assimilation and apathy and the eclipse of what he calls religious Zionism and modern orthodoxy. And in many ways, what he's grappling with here is what is the Jewish narrative? How can we form a coherent collective Jewish identity that isn't necessarily based on a negative perception of self?

So this really is the context in which he's writing.

 Mijal, it's such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. Welcome

Mijal: It's so good to be learning this book with you. I'll just say the fact that you have a British accent, it just reminds me of Rabbi Sacks. So it's almost like I can hear a little bit, his voice which I cannot recreate as well. I agree with you when I was rereading this book for our conversation. I was just thinking like, it feels like it's capturing so many of the challenges that we have today, even though it was written a decade and a half ago. I think the main difference I would say we have today is not so much the nature of the challenges, but maybe the extent of them. So we can, we're still facing similar threats, antisemitism, questions about Jewish identity infighting between the Jewish people becoming isolated. Like all of these things are still part of our challenges. I was just wondering would Rabbi Sacks, there's a big question for all of us who are students, right?

To think how much would his thinking or writing have evolved based on the world changing. And in many ways, I would wonder would he just say that we're facing the same challenges, but again in, in a deeper way, already think there's something different here. I would just add one more thing, Tanya, to what you're saying. Part of the introduction to the book is both to name the challenges that the Jewish people are facing and also to name some of the, what Rabbi Sacks would think are misconceptions,

Tanya: We'll talk about misconceptions later. . But I think what's super important here, Mijal, and I think something that you were hinting to. Many people since October the 7th have asked me and I'm sure you as well as one of the Sacks Scholars both of us were together and that's how we got to know each other through being Sacks Scholars and became friends.

Many people have asked me, what would Rabbi Sacks say today? And I think of all Rabbi Sacks's books, because of the fact, when we're talking about the context of the book, because of the fact he wrote this book in the shadow of similar events, obviously what happened in October 7th was unprecedented in both in its scale and in so many different arenas and areas of it, but that Rabbi Sacks really spoke here to that moment, to the moment of external threats, internal threats, how, and in what way do we respond to them?

Mijal: Yeah. The one thing I would add just for us to keep thinking about is whether the diagnosis that he's giving is one that he would continue to agree with. That's a question that was alive for me because what Rabbi Sacks does here and in many of his books, it really combines theology, classical Jewish texts with philosophy, but also sociology.

So he spends a lot of time actually doing like diagnostics kind of saying, this is what we see empirically in front of us before we can talk about who we want to be. So I was really, as I was reading this, Tanya, I was wondering, would he agree with his diagnostics today because of the way the world has changed?

So I'll give you just one example right now. In the prologue to the book, he says, even though things are very challenging, there are certain elements about contemporary history that make this a different conversation than centuries ago. The two things that he mentions there as major changes were, number one, the existence of the state of Israel. And number two, what he calls the glory of liberal democracy. And the way the Jews in diaspora can live and flourish and thrive in liberal democracies. The reason I'm mentioning this, Tanya, is that we could have a real conversation. This is the kind of conversation I would wanna have with Rabbi Sacks of blessed memory if he was alive right now, one of them. Do we still believe, for example in this almost like triumphalist narrative of liberal democracies and that they will continue to be stable and provide a safe home for Jews in the diaspora?

Because he builds a lot of assumptions based on certain diagnostics. And I think part of the question that we have to continue to revisit is how much has reality changed or not changed.

Tanya: I hear what you're saying, I think it's a really important question. I think it's a question that is going to inform not just our conversation, but obviously the episode that's going to come after this as well. I do want to just quote something he says right at the beginning in the prologue, and I think this is very important to understand in all of Rabbi Sacks' writings. He is always navigating a space between the ideal and the real. Between certain ideal principles and ideas, and the empirical reality in which we live. And he says it like this, this is on page seven in my copy.

So I have tried in the following chapters to set the present in the wider context of past and future, and immediate problems in terms of ultimate ideals. My argument will be that we have lost our way and need to recover the classic terms of the Jewish story.

Even though he is a responsive philosophy, he responds to events on the ground. His responses are based on certain principles that he holds and retains throughout his lifetime. And so I think we can ask the question, would he say something different today? But I think we have to note, even at the beginning, he says: yes, I'm responding to a challenge in this moment, but I'm responding it through the prism of a story of our people that has its roots in ancient principles and ancient narratives and not necessarily something that's new. So I think we have to note that. And again, I come back to would he say something different?

I'm not so sure. I think he would still hold tight to this narrative that he adopted in this book.

Mijal: Yeah. I think part of what characterizes just his writings and his brilliance and wisdom is this ability to be both timely and timeless at the same time. And to hold both. And there's real, I think, questions there about the balance of those but Tanya, let me ask you, because you know, his books and any writings in such an in depth way, when you think about this book, we're thinking not only about the challenges that he's seeing and the aim of the book, which we're going to get to in a second, but also the um, the interlocutors. Who is he writing to here right now with this book? Who's he addressing?

Tanya: So I think that's a really important question. I think he's speaking on two levels. I think he's speaking here both to obviously our enemies and our friends and saying, we want to engage with you. But I actually think primarily he's speaking to the Jewish people. He's saying that the role of the Jewish people, we cannot achieve our role. We cannot achieve our mission. If our self narrative is one of isolation, if our self narrative is one of victimhood, because the only way to engage in our mission, which is essentially to be a light unto the nations is if we recognise that we are not alone. And if we recognise that we need our friends and our friends need us because there's this kind of relationship that exists between us. We're going to unpack these ideas a little bit more as we go on, and maybe we should jump already to the idea of the aim of the book.

On page seven he talks about this and he says to recover the classic terms of the Jewish story, that is the aim of the book. What do you think he means? I don't know. Like I'm thinking out loud with you, Mijal and you've read the book and I know you've really also grappled with certain elements of it.

He speaks about, Wittgenstein said, a picture has held us captive. And he says, yes, it's the same for the Jews. This image of the Jews alone in the world, surrounded by enemies. That's the picture that's held us captive. And Rabbi Sacks, what he's doing in this book is essentially turning around and saying, we don't need to adopt that image anymore.

Actually, we need to reframe the image. We need to recover our faith in ourselves and in the outside world. And he says, this isn't a Pollyannish optimism. This is something that really can be done. And that's the aim. That's the agenda of the book.

But the question, I turned to you also specifically as a sociologist, because when we were discussing this previously, I was looking at it through the lens of theology and philosophy, and you were coming in from a totally different perspective, which I loved, which is from the perspective of sociology.

And you were saying to me who's he speaking to here? What communities is he speaking to? So I just wonder what you think about the aim, the agenda of the book. What do you think he's trying to do here?

Mijal: So first of all, I'll tell you, Tanya, that I felt like I spent more time than usual trying to actually understand the thesis.

What I mean say is that I think Rabbi Sacks is a very direct, clear, linear, systemic writer and thinker. And it's usually pretty clear to me, okay, that's what he's doing.

he's building a case as carefully as any, lawyer in a court to prove his point. And here it actually took me, I felt like it took me a little bit to try to understand what is he doing here?

So I think like you, said recover the classic terms of the Jewish story. I think he's trying to, he's doing a couple of things. He's trying to, at its core, I think he's trying to explain what it means to be a Jew. In that way, it's a little bit similar to the book, A Letter in the Scroll and other works of his. But he's trying to both explain what it means to be a Jew and he's also actually in a the same place he's also trying to show that we have lost our way.

So it's almost like a dual combination. He wants to both say, Hey, there is something we are supposed to do. And even though you think you're doing it, we're actually falling short of that and we can recover that. So that's really what I think is trying to do. It's a very ambitious goal, right?

 I would also say we spoke about interlocutors Tanya, so I think it's interesting because a hundred percent is trying to speak to, I think a primary audience are Jews that he's trying to convince to not feel like they have to be isolated. He also speaks about assimilation, but I think, and I'm curious what you think, I think his main audience are Jews that already buy into the Jewish project. And I already believe they have to uphold the Jewish story, but Rabbi Sacks almost believes like they're going too much towards the perspective that the only way to do so is to be 'am levadad yishkon', uphold that as a prescriptive philosophy, that we should be a people who dwell alone. So to me, almost like the primary audience are committed Jews who intentionally or unintentionally are embodying that attitude of being more isolated and a race access coming and saying, let's try to understand going back to first principles. Who are we supposed to be? How are we falling short and who can we be? And then he has additional, I think layers, like he does speak about the importance of the Jewish story. So it's also talking to Jews who perhaps have walked away and also to non-Jews in terms of engagement. That's a little bit what I feel is his aim..

Tanya: I really agree with you. I think what's something very important that you said, which I just want to emphasise is this idea of the descriptive and the prescriptive, which I think is very important in his book. In many of his books, he begins by describing the malaise. He describes the problem. He says, these are the challenges that are facing us in this moment.

Whatever that moment happens to be. If you're looking at various books, Not in God's Name, he's talking about religious fundamentalism. If you're talking about The Great Partnership, you're talking about the idea of the new atheism. These are the problems that are on the ground, right?

That he describes the reality he describes the challenges. And then he prescribes in many of those books, he prescribes the way in which we can overcome them. Morality is the classic example as well. In many ways, I think he's doing the same in this book. I think really highlighted something very important.

Mijal: The one really interesting thing, Tanya, and you can tell me from a comparative perspective, how you think about this. I think part of what's fascinating here is that he's describing the challenges. It's almost like he's saying, yes, there's all of these challenges and maybe we're spending a lot of books and talks talking about them, but guess what? It's actually us. Okay. It's the way that we are approaching our challenges. That's the most important problem, the most important challenge. There's a famous metaphor by the author of the seven habits Stephen Covey. He has a lot of metaphors, and one of the metaphors that he has for like big mistakes that we do, it's almost like if you have the lighthouse in the wrong place, you're going to just go in your boat and keep rowing or whatever you do, to move a boat, but you're to go in the wrong direction. So it's a little bit like he's saying, we're approaching all of these challenges, we're trying our best to have a Jewish people, but if we don't have the right understanding of who we are, we're just going to be wasting all of this energies and just going to be messing up. So I think there's something actually pretty deep here, like an extra layer, not just descriptive and prescriptive, but telling us like, there's something deep about the challenge, which is really us more than anything else.

Tanya: I think it's very true. And I think that one of the things that if we go and talk about deeper layers, the agenda of the book, the aim of the book also mirrors the aim or very similar ideas that in previous books of his, like Radical Then Radical Now, and in future books that come afterwards. One of the things I've always said that really I think informs and is very instructive for Rabbi Sacks, is this idea of Viktor Frankl, of being a victim or being an agent.

And I think what Rabbi Sacks is very worried about is that the Jewish narrative should not become a narrative of victimhood. And it's very easy to buy into that narrative. If we imagine ourselves as isolated, if we imagine ourselves as being alone, and if we say we have no friends. And therefore what happens in that case is we actually become quite fundamentalist. And that was something that Rabbi Sacks really warned us against and warned the Jewish people against. And I think he wants us to take agency. I wondered as I was reading it, if Rabbi Sacks here isn't also just speaking to the English speaking milieu, if he's also speaking in a way to the Israeli, to those that are living in Israel, because Rabbi Sacks, I think and I know this from reading other things and from hearing him on a few occasions when there was a lot going on in Israel and when Rabin was killed and other things. Yeah. And I think Rabbi Sacks was very concerned about the fundamentalism, especially within the religious Zionist movement. And within, just general, the general Israeli on the street who said, I don't really care about what happens in the world. I don't really care about the diaspora. They all hate us anyway.

And that led in some senses to certain governmental policies that were in, at least I think, and again, here I'm speaking without source, but I think Rabbi Sacks did not want that governmental policy to turn inwards and to become isolationist. And I think maybe there's even an underlying current in this book where Rabbi Sacks is actually addressing the Israeli, the average Israeli on the street and certainly the Israelis who are involved in governmental policy and saying to them, you know what? We really, if for us to fulfil our mission as a nation, we need to be, we need to remember right? That our narrative is one of the future. Our narrative is one of engaging in the world and not one of isolating ourselves.

I wonder what you think.

Mijal: Yeah I agree with you. I think 100 percent he's talking to not just to English speaking Jews, but to Israeli Jews. I will put it a little bit differently, Tanya, and I'll use sociological terms here.

I think he has two and a lot of people often do this, right? They put like binaries and then they offer a third way. So I think he's critiquing two main ways of being okay. And I'm going to say it in my own words, and I'm going to simplify for the sake of making a point. One way of being might be almost like ethnic tribalism or ethno nationalism. So we can talk there about what happens when groups, they become so tied to each other but in a way that is not only about the strengths of the group, but can either be a little bit clannish or look at the outside world with suspicion or animosity. Arguably, again, I'm not we're giving a bit of a shallow point of view here to make a point. So arguably when we look at Israel, we can say one of the dangers here is too much, you know what I mean? Too much of only being with Jews, too much of only being isolated. And there you can talk about. Different flavours of this threat, right?

One flavour is just ethno nationalism. Another flavour could be religious nationalism, right? And the extremes where it can go. I don't think that he's only speaking to Israeli Jews though. I think Rabbi Sacks is also looking at orthodoxy in the diaspora and saying orthodoxy can also go too much in a way that is isolated.

In other books he's I think also in this book, but he's read a lot of, Peter Berger sociologist speaks about how very often to maintain your religious in a secular society. You have to huddle close together with fellow religious people. So I think Rabbi Sacks, that's like one critique. It's those who are, we can use the term ethnicity, we can use a different term, but those who are taking this like thick ethnicity that can be a source of strength and Rabbi Sacks I think is saying, yes, but it can also, you can also take it into a place in which you take this isolationist attitude and you become apart from the world and not part of it. That's one critique, but it's not the only one. So I just want to emphasize it here is not only talking to Israelis and to orthodox Jews, Rabbi Sacks is also critiquing what I would call something like symbolic ethnicity, or like a very light ethnicity. Like he's also critiquing those Jews for whom to be a Jew is just about responding to the antisemites, right? It's just, I'm a Jew because my grandparents survived the Holocaust.

Tanya: Like Emil Fackenheim says the 614th commandment not to hand Hitler posthumous victory.

Mijal: So he's also critiquing the continuity agenda, which at that time, I think it's changed right now in the West, but which at that time was very much focused on we're not going to give you a real reason as to why it's important to be Jewish. We're just going to say, just do it because you are continuing and, you know, you add a healthy dose of Holocaust guilt in there. So I think he's looking at this multiple ways of being. He's critiquing those who are too much separated from the world and those who don't have enough separation. Can I read to you one paragraph, Tanya, that I think is really important here?

So I'm going to go to page 70.

“Judaism is a faith.” Now, I just want to make a little note here before I keep reading. Rabbi Sacks uses the word ‘faith’ in a couple of different ways in this book. Sometimes he uses the word faith descriptively to talk about religious groups, and sometimes he's using the word faith to talk about a transcendent covenantal mission and vision. Here in the thesis of his book, he's using it in the second way. Okay. So he's not going to, when he says Judaism is a faith, he's not saying like another religious group. He's actually going to argue. There's something very specific here. So in calling Judaism a faith, I do not mean he says to exclude secular Judaism or interpretations of faith other than my own. This is the gold line for me. “In the widest sense, Judaism is the ongoing conversation of the Jewish people with itself, with heaven and with the world. It is a conversation scored for many voices, often in the argumentative mode, but it is an unusual faith.”

And with this, we approach a cluster of issues at the heart of the trouble, sometimes tragic fate of Jews in the modern world. So this is really what he's setting out to be. You said before, Tanya, that Rabbi Sacks is constantly between the is and the ought, right? the what is and and what could

Tanya: Descriptive and the prescriptive, the ‘is’ and the “ought”,

Mijal: Right. And to me, that's a little bit what it means by faith. Faith is this conversation, right? Between us, each other, the heavens and the world about what is and what could be.

Tanya: And that's what he says, by the way, in Radical Then, Radical Now, which our listeners have already heard, is that faith for Rabbi Sacks is that space, in some senses, between the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’. Between the world as it is and the world as I want it to be. And the faith In ourselves and in God's in the covenantal bond between the two of us to be able to transform the world. So yeah, it fits right into that.

Mijal: So Tanya, I think really the challenge that Rabbi Sacks is offering us is a challenge that basically says, if you look at your communities, if we look at the way that we are responding to the world, are we responding to the world from this place in which we see ourselves as part of this covenantal and transcendent conversation about what it is and what could be with a sense of agency that we get to shape our future? That I think is the challenge that he's asking us.

Tanya: And he's also and I 100% agree with you and I think he's also telling us that we shouldn't fear. I think one of the big themes in the introductory sections when he's talking about the idea of the book and why he wrote the book he said is that when we are fearful and again this speaks to us in this moment. When fear dominates we revert to type we revert to old strategies old ways of thinking And the idea of the jews of the holocaust the idea that you know when we are fearful we close ranks. That's what people do that's what we do as individuals and that's what we do as a nation. And rabbi sacks said that we shouldn't do that We shouldn't buy into the fear, and actually we should take a step back and ask the question, what is the authentic Jewish narrative? What is the authentic Jewish story?

Tanya: So I want to segue at this point to provide an outline of the book. We've already touched on the fact that the book is one in which Rabbi Sacks diagnoses a problem and prescribes a cure.

It's 11 chapters, and I think in a sense it's helpful to see it as divided in two sections. Chapters one to six, he identifies and analyzes the core challenges. And then chapter seven to 11, he offers the values, the ideas of Judaism that he believes can provide a cure to the problems that he sets out in chapters one to six.

So chapter one to six, he asks many probing questions, questions about Jewish unity, whether we still have a singular narrative that combined us together. Judaism's relationship, for example, with the other, particularly Christianity and Islam, and of course, one of the book's main central themes, which is the problem of antisemitism.

One of his most well known and often quoted insights from this section of the book is his analogy of antisemitism as a mutating virus.

He also challenges a certain perception, a certain image, which is this traditional image offered by the prophet Balaam, the words, a people that dwells alone. And he asked whether this self definition still serves us well in fulfilling our mission. So that's chapters one to six. From chapter seven onwards, the book shifts focus and it moves to a more prescriptive kind of analysis where Rabbi Sacks argues that the idea of a people dwelling alone, isn't what he describes as the authentic Jewish story.

Instead, he says we've got to, shift the way that we look at our story and we have to focus on a very authentic, what he believes to be an authentic Jewish image, and that is the image of Tikvah, of hope, of traveling to new horizons. And it becomes, this section of the book turns into a more outward looking agenda, a proactive vision, I would say, for the Jewish future.

He speaks in this book, he tells the story of his - I think his great grandfather - who founded Petach Tikva, the city Petach Tikva, and he weaves this story into his idea that Judaism is this opening of hope a non-tragic narrative. One chapter speaks about the imperative, the second stage of Zionism, not just the creation of a state, but the building of a covenantal society.

And there's also a chapter on Torah and Chochmah, Torah and wisdom, Judaism and the world in relationship to the world, which we'll discuss later.

So to summarise, the book questions the current Jewish narrative. It examines its status today and Rabbi Sacks in a sense articulates a aspiration for returning to what he believes to be the authentic Jewish narrative based on certain values and principles.

And that's essentially the outline of the book.

So I want to go now into kind of enter into our discussion, and our discussion I want to focus to begin with on an analysis of the, perhaps one of the main central images and discussion points of the book. And that is antisemitism, obviously a very prescient topic for today.

So I know you're in America, obviously, Mijal, at the moment, and I'm in Israel, and we're coming each with our own baggage, of what we've been carrying over the last year.

But I'm wondering whether his analysis of antisemitism here is something that can speak to us at this moment

Mijal: Yeah so the first thing, Tanya, as I was reading this again, I just kept thinking likehow brilliant this is for when it was written. Like today, a lot of people who back then in 2008, just. weren't thinking or writing about antisemitism, today they would write about it in this way. Like he was so ahead of the conversation. I'm almost like amazed. I'm like, I can't believe that he was saying this because I have been in the many circles, Tanya, where people have refused to contend with antisemitism until three or four years ago. I would continue to agree with the way he describes antisemitism as a mutating virus. I think the way that he describes the most contemporary version of it as using the language of human rights to attack the Jewish people is brilliant.

And it's unfortunately very much what we've seen since October 7th.

Tanya: I just want to quote Rabbi Sack say, because I think it's such a brilliant analysis. And as you said, ahead of his time, he talks about the idea of a mutating virus.

And he said that it happens in precisely the way viruses defeat the immune system. They do so by posing not as enemies, but as friends, not as intruders against the human body, but as part of the body itself. The new antisemitism emerged by a strategy of devastating simplicity and effectiveness.

It goes as follows.

Rabbi Sacks zt"l: How did this happen? It happened the way viruses always defeat the human immune system, namely by mutating.

 Throughout history, when people have sought to justify anti semitism, they have done so by recourse to the highest source of authority within a culture.

In the Middle Ages, it was religion, so we had religious anti Judaism.

In post enlightenment Europe, it was science. So we had the twin foundations of Nazi ideology, social Darwinism, and the so called scientific study of race. Today, the highest source of authority worldwide is human rights. That is why Israel, the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East, with a free press and independent judiciary, is regularly accused of the five cardinal sins against human rights. Racism, apartheid, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing, and attempted genocide. The new antisemitism has mutated so that any practitioner of it is can deny that he or she is an antisemite.

After all, they say, I'm not a racist. I have no problem with Jews or Judaism. I only have a problem with the state of Israel. The ultimate weapon of the new antisemitism is dazzling in its simplicity.

It goes like this, the Holocaust, must never happen again. But Israelis are the new Nazis, the Palestinians of the new Jews and all Jews are Zionists. Therefore, the real antisemites of our time on none other than the Jews themselves.

Tanya: He goes on to explain how technology and social media are transmitting this hatred and this story and this narrative in such a way that it is become the go-to narrative for the Palestinian people.

And I think that his analysis of antisemitism is spot on.

The biggest question that we have to ask ourself is does he get the response right? Because his response is not to buy in to the antisemitism. His response is the opposite. He essentially is saying to us, how do you fight the hatred? You fight it through love. You don't fight it through isolating yourself and putting a wall up.

And I wonder whether that's the right response and whether that's a response that's palatable today, actually.

Mijal: So it's almost like you started off by saying we need a new narrative and I'm like, I love the narrative. What if the world is different than what we thought though? I'll give you a couple of examples. He writes about how, when we refuse to speak with others, it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. He also writes about how the best way to respond to antisemitism is to join with other victims of hate and to create new alliances. What we might call, he's not saying this, but in universities, we might use the word intersectional alliances to fight back hatred. I think part of what we have seen in America, and it's not everybody, but there has been a very deep disillusionment in the part of those Jews who would have been even much more universalist than Rabbi Sacks and who - post-October 7th - experienced a disillusionment when they reached out and they were rejected.

I can give one personal anecdote here. I did a campus tour at one point this last winter, I went to, I think it was seven or eight campuses in the East Coast. And spoke to Jewish and not Jewish grad students. And I had Tanya prepared a lot of information. And I felt when I went that a lot of it was not so much information, but it was almost like there was a lot of pain in the room and the biggest and most painful question that came up at every single meeting was the student who raised their hand and said, we want to engage, we want to be in alliance, we want to work with the other students, but what happens when they won't let us? What happens when they demand that we disavow Israel and Israelis as the price of entry? So in a sense, I think, and I'll say just one more sentence here, Rabbi Sacks is writing at a time in which across the West, there is still a certain confidence in liberal democracies in a way that I think today that confidence has been eroded. So that's almost like if Rabbi Sacks was here, that's part of the conversation I would want to be in with him. What happens if we try it? What happens if we want to and we encounter this rejection?

Now he could say a couple of things.

One thing he could say is the road is long and hard. And guess what? There's still people out there who want to be with you and you shouldn't discount that and you shouldn't like close it off. But I also wonder if he would say, okay, so we need to, what does this narrative look like if the empirical reality changes, that's really what I'm, sitting with here, Tanya.

Tanya: I think it's such an important question that you're asking. And I think it's a question that we will never know the answer to because we don't know how Rabbi Sacks would respond. But I do think that the disillusionment you're talking about is something that he already does hint to in the book when he speaks about the new antisemitism coming from liberal circles.

So I think he was already aware of it. But I think what you're saying is even deeper. And that is that the people we thought were our friends are not our friends anymore. In terms of the, from the Israeli perspective, I think Rabbi Sacks would say, we always knew Hamas hated us and we always knew Hezbollah hated us.

Mijal: Not that we can speak on Rabbi Sacks' behalf, but what I think Rabbi Sacks might ask us to consider that there's different conversations. There's a conversation we have internally and internally, having a culture of victimhood means that we believe we have no other options and that we cannot shape our response or destiny. But I think Rabbi Sacks would couple that with a very strong, like I identify him so much with Jewish pride and Jewish confidence and Jewish clarity towards the world and saying our story.

So I think there's something there about like internally, we can talk all the time about, are we doing this right? How should we respond? While, and I'm pretending like it's a simple internal external binary, while externally we have a firm voice saying Jewish pain and suffering must be given space, right?

Like that our vulnerability is real. So I don't see that contradiction so much. I really think a lot of this is a matter of, of how you assess reality and then what you emphasize. Does that make sense what I'm saying here, Tanya?

Tanya: Yeah, I think it does. And I think that binary that you spoke about, the internal and the external is very important in this case, because I think there's certain messages, certain principles, certain things we have to stand for and stand against the world. Justice for the Jewish people. Telling the world, yes, this happened to us, and we deserve to have a place for our pain and at the same time, not allow that narrative to dominate or to almost become so self definitive that we lose our sense of agency. And then it defines our internal narrative.

I just I'm thinking the car like about both you and I are mothers, and I'm thinking about the way in which we navigate this space with our kids. On the one hand, you don't want to turn your kids into like a crybaby, right? There's that sense of, I don't want my kids to become a victim and be constantly a victim of everything that happens and they have to come and cry to me.

On the other hand, I want my child to know that there are certain moments in which the child needs to say, this is painful and this is hurting me, and I want your attention for this. And how do you navigate that space between these two places? And I think that what Rabbi Sacks is saying to us here, and I think it's actually very powerful and quite profound and maybe speaks to us in this moment, is that there is, part of the Jewish narrative is suffering, right? The Jews have suffered. That is descriptive. That is empirical. It's there. It's on the ground. The biggest question is what do we do with the narrative, both for the outside world, and the way in which we engage with the outside world about that narrative and about that empirical experience? And how do we navigate it for ourselves, for our own internal dialogue, for our own internal narrative? Because if we adopt a victimhood mentality for our internal narrative, we isolate not only those people who are our friends on the outside world, but we actually become alien to ourselves and that's, I want to speak about that for a minute.

Mijal: This is actually reminded me of of an exchange I had with Rabbi Sacks about this.

So this was back in 2018. He was a professor at NYU. That's how I got to know him, in lower Manhattan. I was so privileged and blessed to be able to form a personal relationship with him and with Lady Elaine. And I wrote an article. It was one of my first public facing articles, like trying to like, say something, about the world and our people. And I wrote this piece looking back, by the way, it's not well written, very dense, but I wrote this piece in 2018 about what I was beginning to see and some others were beginning to see as this consistent and systemic double standard in which Jewish identity was held to different standards than other minority identities.

In particular, I wrote about how there was a politician who just decided she was Jewish and then she spoke on behalf of the Jews. And I critiqued it, I said, we don't usually allow other people to decide to wake up one day and say, oh, I'm Hispanic, I'm going to speak on behalf of all Hispanic people here in America.

There's actually almost like very strong norms in terms of groups and who gets to speak for them. So I critiqued it in a way, and I was demanding that Jews, that we be treated fairly in the public square here in America, and I sent it to Rabbi Sacks, actually and he called me back.

I missed that call, but he left me a voicemail, which I have saved. Rabbi Sacks was encouraging of the need of Jews to stand up in public and to say, hey world, you don't get to treat us whichever way you want. You don't get to deprive us of our dignity to self-definition. You don't get to have double standards in the way that you approach us. So I know that like we shouldn't speak, we shouldn't insist that we know what he would say right now. But we can be inspired by what he said in the past to think about how he would approach the present. And I have a sense, Tanya, that he would have multiple voices and multiple messages. And yes, he would be turning to us. And he would be encouraging us to hold on to our pain, but to still have agency and to not adopt a culture of victimhood.

And he would also be going up to the biggest stages in the world, and he would be demanding that the world treat us with dignity and with respect and pushing back against the toxic and dangerous way in which we are asked to subsume our pain in the way that no other group is doing. So I think it's really important for us, like you said before, there are certain principles that is always held and he would be using his voice in a way that is responsive to the needs of the moment.

Tanya: And I 100% agree with you. It's so beautiful, Mijal, the way that you voiced that. And I want to say that I asked his brother, Alan Sacks, who came to speak to a class of mine very kindly and generously, a class that had been reading Rabbi Sacks' books over the last two years, and he came to speak them at the end, and we asked him the question, what would Rabbi Sacks have done post, 7.10?

And Alan said he would have taken a week and he would have just gone to bed because it would have been so overwhelmingly depressing for him. He said, and then he would have got up and he would have poured every single ounce of his energy into writing and speaking and going on every platform and forming and tapping into all the relationships that he had with the outside world, with so many different people that he was engaged with and really shedding light on the Jewish narrative, on the as you said allowing the Jewish voice to come out into the world, not a voice that demands a victimhood rights, but a voice that says, we are the Jewish people, this is our story we have so much to give to the world, but the world has to stop trying to kill us.

And I think that to me is so emblematic of actually, this message that Rabbi Sacks is putting through in the book. Which is on the one hand, he is saying to us in the book, we have to foster a love of our narrative. We have to go back to the, what he calls, and again, we can question this, but he calls the authentic narrative of Judaism, which is a narrative of engagement with the world, which is a narrative of love, which is a narrative of a mission of maybe what we would call his other book, the dignity of difference and teaching that to the world. But at the same time, a mission that that says we can only do that by engaging and having a conversation and having dialogue outside of our own ethnic, religious, national purview. Because if we don't, the narrative will become one of victimhood and we will become isolated and then we will have nothing.

 Mijal, with this, I want to lead to another very, very important part of this book, which, and again, here I'm going to draw in a little bit from the philosophical side.

In many many of Rabbi Sacks's books, and we've heard him many times speak about the moment in which he sees Elaine - Lady Elaine - walking across the campus and he all of a sudden looks at her and he sees this positivity radiating out from her. And he said, “she was everything I wasn't, I was this angst filled existentialist philosopher and she just radiated goodness and joy and happiness.”

And he said - and I realised = that we grow through the people who are different from us. We are transformed by those who are other. And I think this ontology, this philosophy of existence of being, really spoke to Rabbi Sacks, not just as the person he was, not just in his own personal life, not just in his relationships with his family, his wife, his community and others, but also in some senses, it engendered a certain philosophy about Judaism and about the Jewish narrative and about way in which we define ourselves.

There's a part in the book where he speaks about the idea of Solipsism, which is a philosophy, it's a way of viewing the world only through the self, right? We're saying everything that exists is only viewed through the self. And he writes on page 184, “Solipsism is the condition of thinking oneself to be alone.” And Rabbi Sacks did not like that type of philosophy, he did not like the type of ontology that says, I don't need anything other than the self.

 And what Rabbi Sacks says is that when we engage with others, when we make ourselves open to relationships, to dialogue, to people that exist outside of ourselves, that is transformative, both for ourselves and for the others. So I think it actually chimes so much of what he says here with his own experience of his own life trajectory and his own experience of his life. What's transformed him. And I think it's very powerful. Again, we can ask the question. Does it work? That's a big question and maybe I'll throw it out to you as a question to be discussed when we analyse this in a minute or two, does it work? Is it true? Can it really? We talk about the descriptive, but Rabbi Sacks is very prescriptive here. Sometimes the prescriptive doesn't work on the ground.

Before I ask you that, I want to just bring one other idea here that I think is important and that is the notion of the Torah and the Chochmah,  the idea of Torah and wisdom. And he says that the Jewish people are both a universal and a particular people. They're particular, the Torah, the way the language of the Torah is particular to them and the Chochmah is this more universal wisdom that we tap into. And our job is to teach the world in many ways that we must maintain, every group must maintain its particularity, but not in exactly what you said earlier, Mijal, but not through saying us and them. Not through building very high walls, not through a sense of parochialism that in some sense demonises the person that's different to me, but rather through an engaged conversation where I respect the diversity of your culture and the differences that define who you are and you respect that to me.

Why he brings this idea of different wisdoms, different ways of speaking, different languages for different audiences, why that's so important here and why he brings it into this book.

I wonder if you can offer us a perspective on that. I'm curious.

Mijal: I'm still thinking about the metaphor you offered Tanya. And also picturing him walking hand in hand with lady Elaine at NYU. He would walk with her on campus.

I want to answer it actually, by going back to what you just said. You just described a philosophy of life in which we reject the atomized self that is alone in the world. And it also rejects the kind of self that is only huddling together with similar people and not engaging with others. So it's like both extremes are dangerous. And it asks us to do something difficult, which is to be in community while engaging with others and also to have space for the individual, which is it's not simple. But I think this was to him, there were a lot of different layers to it. And one of them was Torah and Chochmah. I think it's part and parcel of the same vision. That there's this beautiful, broad conversation that elevates itself by bringing in different voices. Torah and Chochmah really have to do with a sense of what is like particularistic Jewish wisdom, what is part of revelation, what is part of like broader human social wisdom throughout the ages. How do we live with both at the same time? And to me, this was like the, almost like the philosophical underpinnings of his approach of a Judaism engaged with the world. Which I think is different than in the US we use like the modern Orthodox, Torah u'Madda, I think it's a bit different actually.

Tanya: By the way I've been told that that he believed that this was one of his greatest chidushim, the idea of Torah and Chochmah which is fascinating that he thought that this was something really novel that he really bought in.

Mijal: It's interesting. You know, Tanya, he, to his credit throughout the book, he actually makes mention of Sephardic Jews in a way that most other writers don't. So I'm like, but with Torah and Chochmah, he doesn't go there, but when I'm reading it, you said it's a chiddush, I actually go back to the great humanist Sephardic tradition of all the sages who did not, they did not compartmentalise, you know what I mean? It wasn't like Torah and madda in such a compartmentalised way. There was this organic way of thinking, like Hashem, God created the world with all of its beauty and wisdom and capaciousness to actually understand new things. And God also gave us revelation and this and that. So there's something here that demands the word that comes to mind. I don't know you as a philosopher, how you think about it, but to me, it almost invites us to be in a less angsty relationship, right? With knowledge and with the world and with what it means to. This is the thing about Rabbi Sacks, when you compare like, let's say his Parsha series - Covenant & Conversation - with many others, especially from the Orthodox community, one of the things that makes him stand apart is that he asks questions of human significance. You know what I mean? He believes that that's part of what it means to be a Jew in the world. You ask the big questions of the world and you believe your tradition can contribute to it.

Tanya: He speaks to the human experience that's Rabbi Sacks.

Mijal: And that's Torah and Chochmah.

Tanya: He writes it very simply on page 219. He says, so we have a dual ontology. That is two modes of being, right? And that is on the one hand to be, again what does it mean? Two modes of being I am myself. I'm an individual, but I'm also an individual that exists within the matrix of many different relationships, right? But Judaism also recognises a dual epistemology. There are two ways of knowing one is called Chochmah wisdom. And the other is Torah teaching, instruction, law, guidance. Wisdom, this Chochmah, every human being can tap into and all of us as Jews, we have access to it. That's what Rabbi Sacks is saying. We all have access to this universal wisdom, but as Jews, we also have our own particular language, our own particular epistemology, our own particular way of knowing, and that is Torah.

And Torah is not something that other people necessarily need to understand. But other people necessarily need to respect. And that to me is where the novelty is here, he's saying, but because we are different and because we have our own epistemology, our own way of knowing our own Chochmah, our own wisdom, sometimes that isolates us, and sometimes that may cause antisemitism, but it shouldn't mean that we don't engage with the world because if we don't engage with the world, then we're also losing a part of ourself because we are also part of the human narrative of mankind. We are also part of the human wisdom of mankind. And if we don't tap into that and we don't engage with that, then the Torah has nothing to intersect itself with. We don't have a purpose. Our mission is to take the particularity of our own existence of our own Torah, of our own language, our own narrative, and to find ways to engage and bring it out into the world.

And here, by the way, I go back to the two covers and I said there were, there's actually three covers, three different illustrations of covers of this book. One is the first one is a Magen David, a blue cover with the Magen David. The second one I think you have, which is like a yellow and a red more generic cover, which is also the Magen David, it's in the middle of the Magen David. And then the third one we don't have here, but it's a lighthouse. Okay. It's a picture of a lighthouse. And I think that in many ways, Future Tense is oscillating between the Magen David, which is the particularity, which is the Torah, which is the Jewish message, which could lead to an us and a them kind of isolationist policy or way of thinking and the lighthouse, which allows us to take the Torah, the particularity, the definition of self that is maybe even parochial and to shine that and say, how am I going to use this particular identity that I am part of or ethnic group that I am part of, how am I going to use that in order to engage and bring light out into the rest of the world?

And that to me is the big idea of the book.

In order for life to be meaningful and purposeful, we have to move out of the self. And I think more than anything is Jewish narrative of hope and faith, which you said has a tricky definition in this book, but of hope and future and faith and being able to be a light unto the nation, which is really what he wanted.

I wonder if there's anything else, Mijal, you'd add to that.

Mijal: The only thing I'd add earlier in our conversation, Tanya, you said, use the word that prescriptive. That there's like the descriptive and prescriptive. But I actually think that the book is more aspirational. And maybe here like the you use the image of the lighthouse as a way of thinking about Or la'Goyim, what it means to be a light into the nations.

But second meaning is what it means for us as a people to have a lighthouse for ourselves. Where do we want to go? Now there might be all of this changes in the world or obstacles that are beyond our control. And he's not asking us to ignore them or pretend like they're not there. But I think the question is, do you still have your lighthouse?

Do you still have the vision right off Abraham and Sarah, right? The two, I don't know if they're the two individuals Rabbi Sacks most referred to, but he quoted their journey a lot, but there's something there. Do we still have the lighthouse about what it means to be a covenantal family that's supposed to eventually be a blessing to all the nations of the world?

 So I think Tanya, we can borrow a page from Rabbi Sacks' book and kind of talk about two unhelpful extremes. And I think here is focusing only on one, but I think both exist. One unhelpful extreme is when we convince ourselves that everyone hates us, even when they don't, and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Okay. And you're actually asking me, do we agree with that as a diagnostics. The other extreme I would say, is the kind of illusion. No one hates us. We have been accepted. Everything is good. And I actually think that, thinking about our world right now, I do agree with his diagnostics and I can give examples.

I do think that there is so much that we as a people have not done in terms of engaging with friends. This is where it gets really complicated. Even as at the same time, I believe in many other places, we went to the other extreme and we just presumed that everything was good and that we didn't need to work on this anymore.

 Even today I see plenty, we don't thank our friends enough, you know what I mean? Like I speak as an American Jew, like there's plenty of places where I can point to and say, because we have real outrage over real bad things, it affects our way of responding. And we do not act strategically and in a smart way with the allies that we do have.

So we are being asked to do something really complicated. And I think that Rabbi Sacks was writing at a different time. Right now we're being asked to figure out what does it mean to not have illusions, and to also not have this outrage machine fueled by social media, in which we convince ourselves that there's nobody who's willing to stand with us.

So that's part of the challenge that there's both extremes that are alive right now, and we have to push back against both.

Tanya: Again, I think it's a critique of us as the people and this narrative that, it doesn't matter because they're going to hate us anyway. It's a critique of that stance and that's where Rabbi Sacks was coming from. I also wonder and here, maybe throw it out to you, Mijal, now, by way of getting to the next stage and the final stage of our conversation, and that is, I wonder whether Rabbi Sacks was perhaps writing from, and again, I'm talking to you as a diaspora Jew writing from the perspective of somebody who was accepted in the house of Lords, who spoke on the BBC, who was engaged at the highest levels in British society, amongst gentiles, amongst politicians, amongst Kings, royalty, somebody who perhaps from that perspective was writing from a perhaps slightly more naive posture perhaps. Is this book, post 7.10 obviously, does it come across as, yes, exactly as he said, Pollyanna-ish, right? Is it just that bit too aspirational?

Mijal: Yeah. I think it's not just about his position. I think he was writing this in a moment in Western society in what there was like a certain sense, like we've achieved the end of history. We have a flourishing interfaith industry. We've conquered certain things. So I think that he was writing as a product of a confidence in liberal democracy that many thinkers who had it back then don't have it in the same way today.

So I'm trying to say I don't think this was a naive book written in 2009. I think it's a book that was written at a moment in time. And at this moment in time, there are real questions that everybody is having and everybody's looking backwards and saying, oh, things that I took for granted, then I don't know if I can take for granted anymore.

So my reaction, Tanya, when I was reading this book is really just trying to figure out what has changed empirically, what are changes that I can point to in the world. Not because we were all wrong 15 years ago, but because we inhabited a different universe and things change. But the timeless part of it, what Rabbi Sacks was arguing should be a certain aspiration of the Jews contributing to the world. Of us being confident in our vision of us, not just wanting to be here for survival sake alone, that to me is timeless, that has not changed. So part of what I'm thinking as a student of Rabbi Sacks, as a reader of this books, part of maybe our conversation with Rabbi Sacks throughout, even after his passing, is not to ask myself, or do I agree with everything that was written in this book? But actually I'm in conversation with the book and I can ask myself, what are the timeless lessons that I can apply today in light of some new realities? For me, the new realities are a new sense of a new loss of trust and uncertainty over our place in liberal democracy as a whole, a new loss of faith in the capacity of human beings to treat Jews in a certain way. A new kind of like loss of innocence as to the barbarism of some of Israel's enemies. A new sense of being back in history.

So none of these things invalidate the premise of the book and the challenges Rabbi Sacks is asking us to me. It's an invitation to say we still have that lighthouse, right? Maybe the waters are choppier now. Or maybe we realised that we had measured, right? I'm so bad at navigation, but we have navigated wrong. And now we are in a different place, but the lighthouse is still there. So what we have to do in our moment right now and as we're learning Torah together is ask ourselves, okay, so what does this look like now? So it's not like an all or nothing, you know what I mean? Does that make sense, tanya?

Tanya: A hundred percent. And I think with that, I'll just say that there's very often when we think about certain thinkers, we think there's two types of thinkers, there's obviously more, but in a more binary way. And I see that meant there are certain thinkers whose thought changes drastically over their lifetime. And there are thinkers who have certain principles and ways of understanding the world that are so well positioned and oriented, and in some sense so aspirational, that they remain the guiding light for that thinker throughout their lifetime. But what they do is that use that compass to guide them in responding to the issues of the time. And that to me is Rabbi Sacks.

And that's why, Mijal, I think you brilliantly were able to pinpoint those two things in the book that there is in some sense, he's responding to a certain moment. And that is a moment, yes, Israel's being attacked, et cetera, but it was still a moment where there was a deep optimism that I think the kind of permeated the moment of history that Israel was in.

And at the same time, he's tapping into certain founding principles of his own thoughts and his own thinking. We spoke about the ontology. We spoke about the idea of not being a victim. We spoke about the idea for being a future oriented religion. And I think what Rabbi Sacks is saying and what you have certainly been saying throughout the podcast, there are many points here, which I disagree with in the book. And maybe today there are certain messages that may not apply to this particular moment. But there are some principles some aspirational elements of the book that will always be there and will always be the Jewish guiding light. And the question is, can we take those things and can we appropriate them to this moment?

And I want to finish with two things. I want to finish by bringing in what I think is, he brings in Avraham. You're a hundred percent right. He uses Avraham as the kind of prototypical Jew. The archetype that we follow that hear's the call in Radical Then, Radical Now. And I think Avraham for him really was that Jew that opened up his tent. It was someone who was engaged with the world. He went out, he fought against the Kings when he went to go and save lot. But there's another person there in that story and that's Sarah. And Sarah stood at the tent and she said, no, you're not letting this one in and you're not. And Sarah said to her, get rid of the handmaiden and the son, because they are threatening the survival of your people. And Sarah said to him, go and find Yitzchak a wife from far away so that he's not influenced by her. Sarah was the pragmatist. Abraham was the idealist. It's not a surprise to me that Rabbi Sacks identifies with Abraham. Rabbi Sacks is an idealist. He is someone who is a visionary and it is so important for us when we're reading this book not to get drawn into the question of, can we really take these messages?

But to see and to understand that his vision in this book is what we should be tapping into. And that is the vision that Judaism is not just about a narrow parochial vision for ourselves, but it is about a much wider, more universal, more global vision for the whole of humanity.

Mijal: I would also say that Rabbi Sacks was so encouraging to his students and to anybody who came to him, not just to like, take what he said, and repeat it. He wanted to shape leaders and he wanted to inspire people, even if they were to think differently, just to take responsibility for the Jewish story and the Jewish vision and mission.

So I actually feel reading his books, asking ourselves what has changed? How do we think, you know, about this? Where are places where we identify, where are places where we might do things slightly differently or a bit, you know, or differently? I think that we are honouring his memory by exemplifying the types of leaders he wanted us to be and the type of Torah that he thought is possible.

Tanya: And Mijal, I'm going to finish with a quote from Rabbi Sacks, but before I do that, I want to say that you really exemplify that leadership. We saw you speaking at the rally and we've seen this continual work that you're doing for the Jewish people.

So I thank you. Thank you for being on the podcast. Thank you for your friendship and thank you for what you're doing for the Jewish people. And I'm going to finish with a quote. Rabbi Sacks says right at the end of the book, and I think it is particularly pertinent for us to hear today:

" Even if no victory is final, and for each of us there is a Jordan we will not cross. Yet this small, otherwise insignificant people has with surprising consistency been a blessing to the families of the earth. And though it has fought a losing battle for 4,000 years, it still lives and breathes and sings, refusing to despair, still bearing witness without always knowing it, to the power of God within the human heart to lift us to achievements we could not have reached alone without the faith in our ancestors. Jews are a small people. Every one of them counts. And the Jewish task remains to be the voice of hope in an age of fear, the counter voice in the conversation of humankind.

 I go back to Avraham and Sarah. There are moments for us to be an Avraham and to tap into his message. And there are moments for us to adopt the message of Sarah.

It might be that at this particular moment in our history, we need to listen to the voice of Sarah, but the aspiration is for us to return to the voice of Avraham. And I believe that is the voice that Rabbi Sacks is conveying and is setting up for us in this book Future Tense. So thank you again Mijal.

Mijal: Thank you so much for having me.

Tanya: I'm Dr. Tanya White and you've been listening to Books & Beyond: the Rabbi Sacks podcast. In our next episode, we'll continue exploring Future Tense, asking how it can help us respond to some of the very real and visceral challenges we face today.

Our next episode will take you on a thoughtfully curated journey beyond the book, exploring how its ideas intersect with current challenges and conversations, especially in a post 7.10 world.

Joining me will be critically acclaimed author of " Everyone Loves Dead Jews," Dara Horn, and Israel's special envoy for combating antisemitism, Michal Cotler-Wunsch. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Don't forget to check us out at rabbisacks. org and follow us on X and Facebook at RabbiSackspod and instagram @RabbiSackspodcast, where you will find all information and extra content relating to the episode.

If you enjoyed the episode, please be sure to rate us on Apple podcasts. Thank you to our series producer, Amir White and the team as well as to The Rabbi Sacks Legacy, with special gratitude to Jonny Lipczer. We cannot finish without holding in our hearts and minds that at the time of recording, a hundred of our brothers and sisters continue to be held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. We pray for their safe return in both body and spirit for the protection of our soldiers and for the return of all evacuees, and a lasting peace.