Episode 5: To Heal A Fractured World (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 has been sponsored in memory of Moshe Feig, Moshe ben Chaim Meir ve'Golda Chaya.

You're listening to Episode 5 of Books & Beyond. 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. In this episode, we delve into the third book in our series, To Heal a Fractured World. We've titled this book, ‘The Mission’.

In previous episodes, we explored the themes and messages in Rabbi Sacks’ A Letter in the Scroll and Future Tense.

The former, which we termed ‘The Call’, invites us to consider our calling in our dual roles as humans in the world and as Jews in covenant with God. The latter challenges us to adopt a forward-looking national narrative, embracing our identity as agents of destiny rather than victims of fate. Along the way, we've heard from some of today's leading Jewish thinkers about how Rabbi Sacks insights resonate with this moment in history and how they can guide us through the challenges we face.

Now, To Heal a Fractured World moves us from the call and the narrative to ‘The Mission’. It asks us to reflect on critical questions. What is our mission? What kind of world are we called to create? And what methods do the Bible and Jewish tradition provide to help us achieve this? In this first of two episodes exploring To Heal a Fractured World, I'm joined by Rabbi Dr. Raphael Zarum, Dean of the London School of Jewish Studies, where he holds the Rabbi Sacks Chair of Modern Jewish Thought, established by the Zanden family. Rabbi Zarum teaches Jewish philosophy and education, trains rabbis and teachers, and serves as scholar in residence at the Central Square Minyan in Hampstead Garden suburb.

His most recent book, Questioning Belief: Torah and Tradition in an Age of Doubt, published by Koren, was a finalist in the 2023 Rabbi Sacks book prize awarded by Yeshiva University, and I can highly recommend it. He's also the host of the popular podcast, Big Questions of Jewish Belief, and is an internationally acclaimed educator who lectures in Jewish communities and institutions worldwide.

Rafi, as I'll be calling him throughout the episode, was once my teacher and is now a trusted colleague. He worked closely with Rabbi Sacks over the years, making his insights particularly meaningful as we explore this profound book. As with all the first episodes in our series, we'll structure our discussion around key questions.

First, we're going to 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 set out to achieve with this work. Then we'll provide a brief outline of the book, touching on its main themes and topics. And finally, we'll analyse one or two two key ideas and offer a challenge to think about how these ideas might apply to our own lives and the world around us.

Rafi, there isn't I don't think anyone that can speak both on a personal and also obviously on a thought level of Rabbi Sacks, you knew him intimately, you worked with him and we're going to jump in straight away to talking about the book, To Heal a Fractured World.

What's going to be, I think, very exciting for our audience is to hear your personal interactions with Rabbi Sacks specifically about this book as well. To Heal a Fractured World - as we've already discussed in the introduction - follows forth from the books Radical Then Radical Now, and Future Tense. This is really the beginning of Rabbi Sacks bringing the theory to the fold and telling us what we need to be doing in this world and how we need to be doing it.

Hi Rafi, how are you?

Rafi: Wonderful to be here, Tanya, on this podcast, and it's I think it's wonderful what you're doing here.

Tanya: Thank you.

We're super excited that you're with us and we're going to jump in to talk about the context of the book itself. The book, I know I've spoken also to Rabbi Sacks’ brother, Alan, and at the beginning he dedicates the book to Alan. He also speaks about him anonymously on page 59, where he talks about the fact that a Jewish lawyer once said to him, you've written many books about Judaism, but none that answer the question that most concerns me, how am I to serve God in my daily life? And in many ways, this book, and he says it at the beginning, Rabbi Sacks, is a response to that question. What is it to be a religious person in my day to day life outside of the moment in which I'm doing religious ritual acts, what does it mean to be religious?

 In many ways, the book To Heal a Fractured World... we would think it might be addressing big dilemmas, global warming, world poverty, nuclear weapons, artificial intelligence, he doesn't address any of those questions. Maybe just here or there slightly. Really it's a book about ethics. It's a book about responsibility. It's a book about what does the average person on the street, how does religious thinking responsibility intersect with their daily lives? I wonder Rafi, knowing that you were around when he wrote this book whether you have anything to add in terms of the context of why he wrote it, who his audience were, what was the aim, the agenda of the book?

Rafi: Yes, indeed.

As you know, he was Chief Rabbi in the UK for 20 years, and he was very good at setting agendas for what he was doing and being focused. And the first 10 years, he called it the age of renewal. That's why he wanted to reinvigorate and re-excite Anglo Jewry about being Jewish and its relevance in the modern world, in a general sense.

And I think after those first 10 years, he was trying to look for an angle or an aspect that could relate to, ultimately, his community, the United Synagogue, mainstream Orthodox, not particularly religious, but connected. And a deep idea he's thought about a long time was this idea of responsibility. And I think the reason, one of the reasons he writes this book is to launch the second decade, which he called Decade of Responsibility. And he wanted to say, this is a focus that you as a Jew can be committed to your faith and involved in the world in a unified way through the ethics of responsibility.

And I think that was a focus of the book. For me, in my conversations with him about it, I talked about, for him, I wanted to see the link between the two. So I said to him, until you can explain to United Synagogue Jews, for a man, for instance, by putting on tzitzit in the morning, saves the world, you have to make that link all the way from one end to the other from, ritual daily halacha to profound change in society. If you can make that link, then people will value both interacting both ways. The people more involved in society will commit to their faith and those involved in ritual, but not seeing responsibility will be connected and those two and he would nod and think about it. And he said, I'm working on something and I think he was already working on the book.

But for me, that was the answer to me, how these two connect. And it's not really two worlds, it's really one. But we'll talk about that later.

Tanya: Beautiful.

Yeah, it's, I think it's a question that many, perhaps even non religious and obviously religious Jews ask, you know, how does this, these kind of anachronistic rituals, maybe even archaic rituals connect with these big ideas that, many people today, not many non Jewish and non religious people today are talking about healing the world and tikkun olam and all of these concepts that look much more universal, much more global. How does me waking up in the morning, washing my hands three times, how does that connect? And does it connect? Is there something that connects those two?

Rafi: I think people have felt in the past, there's a kind of division of labor that the Orthodox focus more on the daily ritual and the progressive Judaism is more involved in, as you say, heal the world, tikkun olam, which is a line in the second paragraph of Aleinu.

And Rabbi Sacks actually addresses that he thinks that's a misuse of the language. And that division of labour creates a divided human where one Jew is involved in one was another, which I think for him, both a mistake. It's the link between the two, how you get from one to the other that was fundamental, which this book is answering.

Tanya: A hundred percent.

So I think that's really the context. Rabbi Sacks, and again, if we speak just for a second, Rafi, cause you're the best place to really take us into the context of Rabbi Sacks when he was writing, who his audience was. If we're just thinking for a second about the average United Synagogue person. For those of you that don't know, the United Synagogue is an umbrella body of UK Orthodox communities with a broad membership of the more and less observant.

The average United Synagogue person is someone that is in many ways oscillating between those two worlds, between the world where I'm going out and I'm a lawyer and I'm doing all the things I'm doing, and maybe even be thinking about these universal problems that we spoke about, global warming and third world poverty and all of these big problems. And at the same time, that United Synagogue Jew is turning up every Shabbat to shul and is, lighting candles on Friday night and making the bracha on the Kiddush. And the question is how these worlds intersect.

So I think this book really is, in some senses, Rabbi Sack's manifesto spoke in previous episodes that Radical Then Radical Now, A Letter in the Scroll is his Jewish manifesto of The Call. What is the Jewish calling? But in some senses, this book is his manifesto on the action. What are we meant to do? What is our daily world, our daily routine meant to look like as people who on the one hand want to maintain tradition and observance, perhaps. And on the other hand, also want to be engaged in the much bigger question of how we heal the world. And I think today more than ever, we're also grappling with this idea from the nationhood perspective. What is Israel's role? Is Israel's role something that we're supposed to be just more parochial in our mindset, in our thinking, or is it something that should be turning outwards? So I think these are all questions that Rabbi Sacks also addresses in the book. And these are questions which we're going to also in our second episode, we're going to be addressing these questions as well.

Rafi: Yeah. And if I add on that, so I think also it's quite radical to do because within traditional Judaism, a fundamental issue is survival mode. So we've got to commit to our tradition and stay strong community so the Judaism will survive, and a younger generation are thinking survive for what? What's the purpose? And again, this is an answer to that question. You don't have to choose between living a meaningful life and maintaining surviving your Judaism. The two work together.

Tanya: 100%.

So I want to jump into the agenda, the aim of the book. I think one of the big questions we need to ask is, and very often in many of Rabbi Sacks books, some of which we're not doing in our podcast, Rabbi Sacks seems to be engaged in a dialogue. He seems to choose an interlocutor, someone that he is particularly speaking to or speaking or protesting against.

And I think in this book, if you look how many times Karl Marx is mentioned, you'll find that perhaps he is that person that Rabbi Sacks seems to almost be in dialogue, maybe not even in dialogue to, but almost responding to Karl Marx. If we look, for example on page 14, Rabbi Sacks speaks and he says, I begin by confronting the strongest challenge to religion as a force for alleviating the human condition. That of Karl Marx. I argue that far from being the opium of the people, Judaism is a religion of protest. And what Herbert Schneider called sacred discontent.

It's very clear, and he mentions Karl Marx many times after that as well. It's very clear that Rabbi Sacks here seems to be arguing against the idea that religion is an opium of the masses, that religion is a way in which we simply come to terms with injustices that are in the world and we reconcile ourselves to this is what is, there's nothing we can do about it. Very similar to what he writes in Radical Then, Radical Now.

I think the agenda of the book here has two faces and Rafi I'll be interested to know, I'm curious to know if you agree with this. I think on the one hand, it has the face of the protest against Marx, against this idea of being anaesthetised almost to suffering, being anaesthetised to injustices that are in the world, being anaesthetised to the pain of the other, because this is the way the world is, right?

And religion is the way that we say, okay, God wants it this way and there's nothing we should or can do about it. That's one thing that Rabbi Sacks is coming out against. The other thing, I actually think on the other side of the coin, I think he's also speaking and he makes this clear in a few different places, I think he's also speaking to Religionists, to fundamentalist Religionists who promulgate this philosophy of passivity. There's no need for me to do anything because God is going to save us or God is going to come and make the world better. Or we're waiting for Zman Mashiach - for the time of the Messiah - because once he comes, everything will be fine.

Rafi: I think you make a good point. I think that for him, it's always in historical context that he thinks about things and in the modern world, the assumption was that religion would fade away, that we're more sophisticated now. And as you say, it was a kind of an opium to keep people calm when they couldn't control their world. And because of modern technology and thought, we now have much more power and control, and therefore we don't need religion anymore. And his first book based on BBC lectures is called The Persistence of Faith. Where he says, actually, it turns out that people still need meaning in the modern world. And therefore, he needs to re-articulate the value of religion in society.

And as you say, he does it with protest. Absolutely right. And he shows very clearly with Abraham and Moses and many other characters, that it wasn't about agreeing with God and accepting. It was about challenging and protesting. So in that sense, it's still got a relevance and anti-Marx. And as you say as well, he's telling religious people don't think it's about just sitting and waiting. You have to do something yourself. So I think absolutely in that context of modernity, it's fundamental.

It's interesting, I'm a film buff and I think of it in those kinds of ways. There was an advert when I was a kid called escape to the cinema. You could watch all these fun action things. There's two kinds of cinema, there's this escapist cinema where you go and see fun, exciting fantasies and you go away and you're happy. And there's another kind of more modern cinema, which is actually about real moral and emotional issues. And you come out change and it affects your life. It's not an escape, it's a engagement with the world.

And do you see religion as going to synagogue on Shabbat and a nice warm feeling of your childhood and your parents and tradition, or do you see it as a place to be challenged to live better and to live more meaningfully? And he was pushing for the second.

Tanya: He was definitely pushing for the second. In some senses, and we said this already, this book is the natural continuation to Radical Then, Radical Now. In Radical Then, Radical Now he is almost charging us to see the dissonance between the world as it is in the world as it ought to be. And in this book, he's showing us in some senses how we need to navigate that space.

 So we've spoken about the idea of the context, why perhaps Rabbi Sacks felt the need to write this book. We've spoken about the aim, the agenda, the people maybe he's speaking to or conversing with in the book and the audience with which he's engaging.

And now I just want to outline the book for our audiences, particularly those who have not read it. And I want to talk about the way in which Rabbi Sacks constructs the book. He speaks about the idea that we are called to responsibility. He divides it into three parts. Part one is the call to responsibility. Part two is the theology of responsibility. And part three is the responsible life. And in each part, he talks exactly about this idea of responsibility. He says, and in many ways, the first part and the second part are really talking about the theory that he's grounding it, as you said Rafi earlier in our conversation we had in Jewish sources. And then in the third part, he's asking, how do we apply it? Where can we apply this idea of responsibility in our world, in our life? And I think it's very beautiful the way in which in specifically in this book, he really is very, very mindful of the way in which he's building up this thesis. He's saying, first and foremost, where do we see responsibility in the most basic principles of Judaism?

In the idea of charity, in the idea of love as deed, in the idea of Kiddush Hashem, sanctifying God's name, meeting strangers and kindness to strangers, all of the small things that are part of the Jewish tradition, they are Rabbi Sacks says, grounded in the principle of responsibility. And again, it's a very novel way of understanding these basic Jewish principles.

And then he begins With his kind of philosophical theological emphasis in the second part, where he talks about the theology. Why is it that we are a religion of action? Because many people would say, no, we need to do what God tells us and that's it. Be subservient. And Rabbi Sacks says, no, it's not about subservience, it's not about passiveness. It's about activism. And he shows it to us from the sources and he creates a theology. And then in the beautiful third part, which is some parts of the third part made me cry because it would just so beautifully written. He speaks about the idea of where we actually take this. How do we lead a responsible life? And he talks about transforming suffering and he speaks about the kind of person we are. And he has the question, who am I? What do I want to be? What kind of life do I want to live? Do I want it to be meaningful? Do I want there to be happiness? How do I create that? So Rafi I wonder what you think about the structure of the book.

Rafi: Yes, it's very powerful and in a way I think it's a very Jewish thing to do to take these three approaches. First of all, in the first section, work on his terms, these key terms and understand that they're not individual actions, but they create an overall ethic of responsibility you described, then the theology and then the application.

And it reminds me of my hero and of his, of Maimonides key book of Jewish philosophy, The Guide for Perplexed, Moreh Nevuchim, is also in three sections. And in the first section, he's. teaching people of a modern world who live in two worlds, literally, he says, for those who are intelligent and know the sciences of their day, but want to be devoutly religious, how do the two come together? And he spent the first third explaining terms in the Torah. What are the key terms to understand this? Then in his second section, Maimonides deals with the theology, what is the nature of God? And the third part beautifully as well is an application. What does that mean for how we live? So Rabbi Sacks consciously, and sometimes unconsciously mirrors these approaches, and I think also, and maybe we'll talk about it more, but his involvement of telling stories in the book. There are many stories that illustrate, but more than illustrate, that actually define and expand. And that's our tradition, if you go to the Mishnah or the Talmud, the very beginning, after talking about the time to say the Shema, the first thing that he talks about is the "Maaseh Shehaya," an action that was. A whole bunch of guys came back late from the pub, bait mishteh, and they hadn't said Shema yet. It's such a real down to earth issue, right? We've come back late drinking, can we still say the Shema, it's after midnight? When can we say it till? And that story not just illustrates but brings into reality Jewish life. That's the purpose of it. So if you spend your entire life learning Jewish law and never living it, what's the point? So I love the fact that on the first page of the Mishnah we're already coming out of the pub, in my English terms and I think Rabbi Sacks tell stories, not just the great Rabbis, although there are some there as well, but of everyday people and how they've inspired him.

And that is a very Jewish thing to do.

Tanya: I think it's actually particularly obvious in this book that he has chosen, not these great role models, not people who are going out and have radically changed the world, innovators. He's actually tells stories of the average person on the street. He speaks about his father as well in this book, beautifully, the average person on the street. And he shows how those people can really change the world. And at the beginning also, he speaks about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and he speaks about the idea that, and I think you can really feel him in the pages of the book, the Lubavitcher Rebbe and his influence on Rabbi Sacks. And he says, when he speaks about that, this book is a protest against religious fundamentalism. He says the only force equal to fundamentalism of hate is a fundamentalism of love. And he speaks about how Rabbi Schneerson was a person who, after the Holocaust, after we saw the most violent and terrible crimes against humanity, he was a person that believed that the way to rectify that was not through more hate, but through more love and that love, that chessed, those small acts of kindness, that is what Rabbi Sacks is really championing in this book. So I think it's very important. I also, Rafi, think that if you look at his, and I many of our listeners are very familiar with Rabbi Sacks’ parshanut with his Torah commentary.

And if you see in his Torah commentary, he speaks about the idea of why we have the book of Genesis and why all these stories are messy stories, stories of the messiness of family and the complicated lives and the many challenging decisions that our ancestors, forefathers and foremothers had to make. And he says that Genesis is there in order to teach us that these people were human and therefore we can identify with them. Yes, they lived in a time where they spoke to God and they were greater than us in many, many ways. But they are also human beings. And part of being a human being is to know that we falter and to know that we fail, but to know that God has faith in us. And that's going to be a major theme we're going to unpack in a minute. God has faith in us that we can change the world through the very small acts of kindness that we do on a day to day level.

And I think it's one of the most beautiful things Rabbi Sacks does is to see that it's not just about the theory. It's not just about the abstract. Kant was a moral philosopher, and we're going to come to him a bit later, who said, there is a theory of morality. This is this abstract equation, and we can do it if we just follow it. And Rabbi Sacks says, yes, but you know what? Actually living is very messy. And Kant's categorical imperative doesn't always work in the world. It's not always theory. And so he speaks about this idea that we don't just need text book, we need text people. We need to have this ability to, all of us have a mimetic desire. We want to, we want role models. We want people to copy, want people to look up to. And Rabbi Sacks says that's the people he writes about in this book. The ordinary people who are walking around in the world, who, if we actually just look at them and notice them, we have so much to learn from them.

Rafi: Yes. And the power of textbooks and text people is something that Dr. Joshua Heschel, Dr. Heschel from the last century, a great philosopher also talked about, and he was involved in these kinds of things. Got to walk with Martin Luther King. But I think what Rabbi Sacks is taking with that is not just stories of famous people, but of individuals, as you say.

Tanya: Exactly. So I think this really is the context of the book, the structure, and as we've seen the aims and the agenda of the book.

Now, Rafi, let's jump into the main themes, the main topics that Rabbi Sacks covers in this book. What do you think, Rafi? What would you highlight as one of the main themes of the book?

Rafi: So one of the key themes, as we say, is how the ethics of responsibility comes out from the stories in the Bible. So in the second section, before he gets to the theology of it, he just shows you, look at the stories, look at the first four stories in the Torah, Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel and Noah and the Flood and the Tower of Babel.

Those are all examples of people taking or not taking responsibility. So we learn in the negative that they're very real. So he says that Adam and Eve is a story of personal responsibility where Adam has to take responsibility for eating from the fruit, not just blame and say, my wife gave it to me and Cain and Abel, there's a moral responsibility, the blood of your brother is calling me. God says to Cain, where's Abel that you've killed him. And in the story of the flood, Noah's taking collective responsibility for the world in terms of building his ark and following what God says. And in the Tower of Babel, it's a more fundamental, he calls it ontological responsibility, which is that what is our responsibility for each other as a society.

So he shows in a way that the Torah is a story of how do we grapple with what human responsibility really is? And I love the way he tells that story, because he's reframing those first 11 chapters, which are universal, right? There's no Jews in them. Abraham only turns up in chapter 12, or the very end of chapter 11.

There's no Jews. It's a universal story. And that's why it's an important message for all people. It's because there's an interesting aspect. The book is clearly written by a rabbi with many Jewish sources, but he wanted it to be wider. His argument is responsibility works in a wider way than that. And that brings me to a second theme, which is fundamental to me. A favourite chapter of mine in the book is chapter 8, which is on page 97, The Kindness of Strangers. And the reason why I love that is that's the chapter that if you're not Jewish, you suddenly realise is, this is just as relevant to me as everybody else, because he explains and the way he does, it's very clever. He says, we make a bracha blessing before we do an action. And there's two kinds of actions. There's mitzvot, there's commands between us and God, like Shabbat and so on, and kashrut eating kosher food and so on. And there's other ones about tzedakah, or visiting the sick. And he says, why do you only make a blessing for the ones between us and God? On Kiddush on Friday night or eating kosher food or putting on tzitzit. But you don't make a bracha before you visit someone in a hospital, or before you give charity, why is that the case?

And he first goes through, as he always does, the rabbinic answers to that. It's not a complete action. There's a negative aspect to it, you can't complete it yourself. But then he gives, I'll tell you why he says, because ultimately the second kind, the action is the mitzvah. You don't need to make a blessing to make it meaningful. The act itself is meaningful and doesn't need a blessing. And then he says, and this is his big jump, that makes it universal. That means that everyone can be involved in this. And that's a transformative moment for me, where he makes it a universal aspect of the book. And so for me, that chapter is a very special one, in the way it generalises that issue, that all people in society can be involved in this, and it's a sacred act, whether you're religious or not.

Tanya: It's beautiful Rafi, I think there's something fundamental about this book that touches at the heart of this central aspect of Rabbi Sacks’ philosophy of the movement between the particular and the universal. Because in many ways, the book, even the title of the book To Heal a Fractured World, there's nothing, I don't know, nothing particularly Jewish about that.

And what Rabbi Sacks does in this book is brilliant because he shows us that as human beings, we have a role in the more universal, global act of healing the world in our everyday lives and on a much larger scale. But he shows us that the core, the source for us as Jews, for that value comes from the Bible, comes from our Jewish sources. And that in many ways kind of the infrastructure of Judaism is created in order to engender within us this feeling and this want and this need to act, right? If we look at the whole of halacha and we look at everything that Judaism the kind of the rituals, the laws of ben adam l'chaveroh of man to man and ben adam l'makom, man to God, many of them are centered on the idea of action. But action is exactly what Rabbi Sacks is saying is the basis of healing a fractured world. And I think in many ways, it's funny because this book sounds to me almost as if he's saying, I'm a philosopher, but philosophy is not enough. If you really want the world to change, you have to actually go out there and practice what you preach because it's not going to happen on its own.

Rafi: It's interesting which books of the Bible he focuses on when he's discussing this because to talk about the healing of a fractured world is looking at the global view about bringing peace to the world and understanding. And so you'd think to quote Isaiah and the vision of Shalom of peace that Isaiah talks about. And in fact he does, that's a universal aspect that we all aim for. But he doesn't focus on that more. He talks about a Jewish rabbinic concept of darchei shalom, of ways of peace. And that's much more nitty gritty how the rabbis dealt with it. He argues that the Bible has universal aspects, whereas the rabbis talk more particularly of how to get there through these actions and how you relate to a Jewish and a more wider society as well, darchei shalom. And so at the end of that chapter that I was talking about earlier, he talks about the book of Ruth. So it's not the vision of Isaiah of each person sitting under their tree and peace and understanding of the whole world, but small acts of kindness as described in the book of Ruth, and the way they relate to each other. And it's so interesting because that book of Ruth, which is almost very small acts of how Naomi and Ruth deal with this and how Boaz is kind to them. That ends up being the book that we read on Shavuot, revelation at Sinai, and we get the law. And in fact, the end of the book of Ruth, as he points out, leads to children after child leading ultimately to King David, which is a vision for the Messiah. So it's not so much about having the big picture. It's how do you get down to the nitty gritty of actually doing it?

And that's why he'll focus on Ruth rather than Isaiah on darchei shalom versus shalom. So it's going, as you say, from universal aspects of Judaism and focusing on the particular ones.

Tanya: There is a point in the book where he speaks about the notion of tikkun olam and he actually follows the trajectory of how it became a concept in Judaism. And it's very clear that Rabbi Sacks still is tapping into this more kabbalistic and I guess also Chabad take it to a different place, but there's more Kabbalistic notion of, picking up the fragments.

There was this fragmentation of the Divine spirit that was fragmented when the world was created. And part of our job is to pick those fragments up and elevate them. And I think even though he never speaks in that language, it's clear that in some senses that really informs his thinking in this book, because for him, it's not just about, as we said, the big acts of changing the world. It's actually about the small acts that transform ourselves and therefore transform others. And that's exactly what I think you're saying, the small acts in the book of Ruth. And that's why he draws on the book of Ruth in this book, and by the way, many other places as well. He draws on the book of Ruth, because for him, it's those small tiny acts. It's Boaz who recognises Ruth, even though she's an other, she's different. It's Ruth who sticks and is loyal to Naomi, even though she doesn't need to. These tiny acts, which really could have gone unnoticed are what are drawn out in the book. And that is what leads to the messianic age.

It makes me think Rafi today, so many people are walking around very despairing, right? Every day you wake up and all we hear is bad news, and all we hear is suffering, and all we see is suffering. And in many ways, what Rabbi Sacks is saying in this book is step by step, these small acts, when Ruth did what she did for Naomi, when Boaz did what he did for Ruth, they didn't know that was going to bring about the Messiah generations later, they had no idea that their small acts of everyday kindness of seeing the other was going to transform the Jewish people.

That just those small acts of everyday kindness can be transformative in ways and on levels that we are not conscious of, and maybe will never a hundred percent be conscious of, but they are important. They're important because of what they do from an objective level, but they're also important because, and this is one of the key things he talks about in the book, because they give us meaning. They give us purpose and they allow us to covenant with God in making the world a better place. And here, Rafi, I want to draw a bit on a theme that I see in this book that I think is super important. And that is the idea of human freedom. There are some forms of religion, both Jewish many different religions that in a sense nurture a certain passiveness, this is exactly what Rabbi Sacks was saying.

And this was Marx's critique of religion and that take away from our freedom. And in some senses actually even deny human freedom. And Rabbi Sacks coming, and I think also here we see the deep influence of Enlightenment philosophy, and also of his own childhood of his father and his mother of what they did as survivors coming, the survivors that he lived with amongst in London who came and transform their lives out of suffering, how they took agency of their situation and how they acted in freedom. And obviously being in the UK, being in a very free society that allowed the Jews to reinvent themselves. I think that for Rabbi Sacks freedom or the freedom of the individual is one of his most central principles. And we see it here in the book because you cannot be responsible if you are not free.

In fact, the very words - and Rabbi Sacks himself talks about this - “responsibility is the ability to respond”. If I have no ability to respond to something, because I'm not free, then I can't take responsibility. Responsibility is predicated on the idea of human freedom. And Rabbi Sacks says that first and foremost, as religious people, we have to know we are free. And then when we acknowledge our freedom, when we know that God has given us our freedom, then we can covenant with God. We can work with God in order to make the world better. And for me, this principle of freedom, this principle of covenant, this principle of responsibility, that's the triangle of Rabbi Sacks’ thinking. And it's so clear in this book how he understands that triangle and how he sees them all interrelated, right? One is dependent on the other, but you can't have one without the other.

Rafi: Yeah. I think that's why in his middle section with the theology, it's the one place that he really grapples with it, he looks at the book of Job. Because the story of Job is a man who is expected by his friends to accept the pain that God has caused him through the story with Satan and so on. And Rabbi Sacks’ interpretation of that, unsurprisingly, is in fact no, that Job's friends aren't so friendly, and actually the need to protest is more important, even while recognising God. So the book of Job becomes a fundamental because on the one hand God turns up at the end and says to Job, where were you when I made the world? You don't understand things. So there's still a recognition of God and yet still the need to protest and the fact that those two can go hand-in-hand, And this is all Rabbi Sacks’ reading of this is the only place where he really focuses on the theology of Job, this is where he brings it in. And this is also I like about him it's not just he was being this book about responsibility, I would argue he was a responsive philosopher.

Each of the books is written in a response to a context and a time. So you're never going to get him just writing a commentary on the book of Job for the sake of it. No, right now, in this context, talking about responsibility, now is what I'll tell you about Job and how I can read him. I want to read him and he teaches this message that I'm trying to convey.

Tanya: So I think it's so important very often when we read the book of Job or even when we actually think about the problem of evil, as we already noted in the previous books, the problem of evil, we often think about it from the perspective of humans accusing God. Why did God not stop evil? Why did God not come down and save? Why did God make Job suffer? And we're looking at it from the perspective of a human pointing a finger almost at God. And Rabbi Sacks essentially turns it on his head. He says on page 192 in the chapter called The Faith of God. And I want to talk about this in a minute, because I think this is again, so Sacksian and also so revolutionary in many ways.

He says "the Bible is not humankind's book of God, it is God's book of humankind," meaning what? Meaning this is not a theology about God. Judaism is not a theology about God. We actually don't even speak very much about God. It's a theology of humankind. What does that even mean, a theology of humankind? It means that we are less interested in understanding God, and we are much more interested in understanding what our role is in the world when we covenant, when we are aware, when we are in tune with a transcendent reality in which God exists. And I think that this is exactly, it shines, or I should say even intersects so beautifully with Rabbi Sacks agenda in the book.

Instead of looking at God, instead of saying I'm waiting for God to save me, or why is God not doing this to say, hold on a minute, I'm pointing the finger at God, but actually God is pointing his finger at me and he is saying to me, I want you to think about where you can be responsible. Rabbi Sacks turns the entire story on his and he says, who's on trial in the book of Job is not God, but Job himself, can Job take responsibility? And the very, very last thing Job has to do, by the way, is he has to bring a sacrifice for those very friends that made his suffering even worse by accusing him of something they shouldn't have. If we can still find within ourselves a sense of empathy or even a sense of action that helps the other, even when the other, by the way, might not have helped us in any way whatsoever and actually may have made our suffering worse. If we are able to act for that other, then we've redeemed ourselves and we've redeemed the world. And that's what Rabbi Sacks is saying. And by the way, Rafi I think that chapter, The faith of God is so beautiful because what Rabbi Sacks is saying is that what is faith?

Often we think of faith as, we have faith in God, et cetera. So actually he's saying that faith is the knowledge and the belief that God has faith in us. And that's what he says in the book.

Rafi: Absolutely. And the phrase God of faith is El Emunah is a quote directly from the Torah. His understanding of faith was fundamental to these issues. And the first thing a Jew says in the morning when they wake up is Rabbah Emunatecha how great is your faithfulness to bring us back to life? And he often would say this, God has more faith in us than we often have in him.

And he's again, flicking it on his head. For me, it fits so well with creation. God doesn't want things from us, but God wants for us. And the whole purpose of why you need the creation story is that it can end with God saying to man, your job is to to "l'ovda ul'shomrah" to look after it and to guard the garden, which the rabbis see as the positive and negative commandments, the rest of the Torah.

So what often happens is we divide the two. We think, Oh, these are stories at the very beginning. And then we get into the real meat of the particular Jewish story, but no, we need those first 11 chapters to say this ethic of responsibility, let me show you how we actualise that, that's the mitzvot. So it's a fundamental link between the two.

And so at the end, God becomes an El Emunah who's faithful, empowering us. It's a very different way of looking at things. And for me, I see Rabbi Sacks, and I'm writing a paper about this as a Renaissance man, as a religious humanist in a fundamental way. That he's not saying that's what he is. That's what Judaism is telling us is what does it mean to be human being on this earth and humanism doesn't have to be secular, it comes from God. It gives us a vision, an ideal of what we can be. And so for me, it's all interconnected. Those first 11 chapters underpin the rest of the Torah.

Tanya: So It's fascinating that that you say that you see Rabbi Sacks as a religious humanist. I think some people would take a front to that actually because Rabbi Sacks was firstly and foremost, he was very orthodox and almost very conservative in his, conservative with a small c, yes, in his orthodox views. And I don't think people would naturally group him with religious humanism. So I'm, curious what you mean by that?

Rafi: I would go even further. I think it's a very religious thing. And in fact, I'd say more, he was quite Hasidic in many ways, influenced by Chabad. But I would argue that Chabad and Hasidism is particularly humanist. It's the power of what one person can do to change the world. All those Hasidic stories about these individuals who made such a great impact. They're obviously very God conscious and marinated in the philosophy and the belief in God. But it's about what a human being can do. So I see it as profoundly religious. It's funny when you say the word humanist, it's as if it's not religious based, but that's not, in fact, the first humanist who talks about this great power and the ability of what human beings can be in the Renaissance period were all religious people. Like Michelangelo expressing it through art and also through philosophy and other ways. It's, I don't see it as a contradiction. In fact, I see it as this focus that you're saying, that what does God want not from us, but what does God want for us? And you're more of a human when inspired by God of what a human can be, not less so. So it's not we are trying to chase God, but God is behind us pushing, saying, go forward. I mean, Jewish law is halacha, which means "to walk". And Adam walked behind God, it says, "im Hashem hitalech Noach" Noach walked with God, but what does God say to Abraham, 'haLech lefanai ve'heye tamim,", walk before me and be holy. God wants us to move forward with the tools of understanding of what he wants from this world and the way the Torah is constructed, that we have to do it all ourselves. For me it's, a natural, it's not an unusual reading. It's a clear reading of Torah if you take it all together.

Tanya: It's fascinating, Rafi, because it actually works with the chapter where he speaks about a Divine initiative and human initiative it's chapter 11 of the book. I personally think that's the most radical chapter in the book. The Divine seeks us to take initiative. It's almost, I imagine it almost as if God holds the baton of responsibility for a certain period of time. And at some point he hands the baton over to us as human beings. And we then have to run with the baton. We have to run with it. almost in a relay race from generation to generation, passing that baton on each generation, knowing that they can't let go of that baton and they can't stop running because if they do, there won't be an end goal. We won't win, right? We won't be victorious. And I, I think that's what Rabbi Sacks is saying. He's saying God's begun the race and we have to look back, we always have to be conscious of God because we can't win the race without the people that came before it. God started it, He creates the world, He gives us everything. And if we are covenanting, and again, going back to that concept of God and taking initiative, being the partner, the main partner in the covenant means taking responsibility. And I, it's interesting that you draw it into the humanism because Humanist philosophy is, again, very much focuses on the role of the human being. And for many centuries, religion almost took away human initiative. And that's, as we know, the French revolution was about bringing autonomy back to the individual.

In my mind, what Rabbi Sacks does is he says something brilliant in this book. He says to us that human initiative, human authority, human autonomy, doesn't have to be secular. And actually, if we look at the sources, at the origins, at the roots of Judaism, at the biblical stories, what are we going to see? We are going to find that rooted in all of those narratives is what we term today religious humanism, is the idea that God is calling on us, that God has faith in us, that God takes a risk by giving the baton over to humankind.

And therefore, Rabbi Sacks says, what is faith? And here, Rafi, with your permission, I want to read just what I think a beautiful quote, he says, and it's very, again, it's quoted very often by Rabbi Sacks. ”Faith does not mean certainty. It means the courage to live with uncertainty. It does not mean having the answers. It means having the courage to ask the questions and not let go of God as he does not let go of us.” We take a risk by covenanting with God and putting our faith in him. Even more, God takes a risk by covenanting and putting his faith in us. And that's the uncertainty.

Rafi, I know that all of us, you, me, everyone, we all engage in many different kinds of relationships in our lives. And in some senses, when we really become vulnerable in those relationships, we take a risk. And that risk is we can get hurt, we can get betrayed, that person can do something that we do not approve of. Be it our child, be it our spouse, be it our sibling, be it our parent, whoever it happens to be. But we hold on to that person because that relationship, that loyalty, that bond, that kinship is more important in some senses than those small moments of perhaps a betrayal, those small moments of disappointment. And I think that's what Rabbi Sacks is telling us about our relationship with God.

Rafi: Again, that's from the word Emunah, which means faithfulness as opposed to faith. I write about it in my book, but it's quite famous. King Ahab who's definitely historical character, wasn't a religious person, in fact rejected God, but he still won his battles and defended Israel. And the rabbis argue why? Because he unified the people. He was faithful to the Jewish project, even though he had difficulty with the idea of God. And that was enough. God was happy with that. God doesn't mind if we have questions about God, if we're acting and doing something meaningful in the world. There's many examples where Rabbi Sacks tries to show how God and this human idea are fundamentally linked, not that it can be religious, that it's fundamentally religious.

My favourite one, which I've mentioned in another podcast is he puts it even into the Siddur. So a bracha that is said in the Amidah, the end of the Amidah weekday and Shabbat. The second last bracha ends with "baruch ata Hashem," God, "hatov shimcha ul'cha na'eh le'hodot" whose name is Goodly "ha'tov shimcha", and it is good to praise God. And the art court says whose name is Beneficence. If you look at Rabbi Sacks Siddur (in the United Synagogue one, and the Koren) every single Amidah there's a really wild translation. He says, whose name is "Yhe Good." And he puts "The" and then "Good" with a capital G and then puts between "The Good" he puts in quotation marks. Look it up. It's really weird. It's a translation. Whose name is "the Good," with a capital G and then a quotation marks for "The Good."

And I showed lots of people, I said, what do you think he's doing here? And I met him at one, one of the bar mitzvahs of the family. And I said to him, are you doing what I think you're doing? He goes, what do you mean? I said "The Good" is the platonic vision of what does it mean to be human? What is the purpose of existing?

Are you basically saying that all of Greek philosophy is just another name for God? And he smiled and that's what he's doing. It's a natural link for him. Hatov, it's a brilliant translation. Hatov Shimcha, what you think this purpose, this whole Greek project of how do you live a meaningful and good life? You think that's something separate from religion? That's what God is.

And so as a result of that, I tell people, if you have difficulty believing in God, maybe you can spell God with two O's. You can believe in good. And it's the same thing for us.

Tanya: Wow. That's so powerful.

Rafi: Fact that it's in the Siddur without any explanation means that it's just a natural. And I sometimes think it's like a, like the yearbook, the high school kids do. They put lots of stuff in that they want to say without explaining it slightly. And he wants you to work that out. It's in every Amidah printed literally hundreds of thousand times and all the Machzorim in the Siddur. The phrase we all know is hamevin yavin, for those who realise what it's talking about. And he, why is he not explaining it, not to hide, but for those who understand this idea of the good, who are maybe these young students in universities who aren't finding religion and think that, the good is the value. They suddenly go, "Oh gosh, it's right there!" And then suddenly they're connected in the most fundamental way. It's actually a name for God. It's not an aspect. It's what God's name is in the world. We are God's name in the world. And to be a Jew, people forget the word Jew, as comes to the word Yehudah.

Which is God's name, I always thought it was funny when I first met, Christians from South America called Jesus, who are called Jesus. It's like a weird God. We are, Yehudah is the Tetragrammaton. It's the name of God with a daled for fourth thrown in, Jews means gods on this earth.

It's our name. So what he's doing is not radical at all. It's what Judaism always was.

Tanya: It's amazing. I mean, today we, I'm going to throw a span in the works of your, it's absolutely beautiful. And I love that story about the translation of of the Siddur of Rabbi Sacks. The problem today is that everyone has different definitions of what good is.

That's why I think for Rabbi Sacks, halacha is foundational to Judaism because halacha is the infrastructure that allows us to navigate the path to what is good. It's not just the platonic good, right? It's got to be something that is, and what is halacha? And it goes back to exactly what he says in this book, “Halacha is knowing how to act.”

There are abstract arguments that we learn day in, day out when we learn the Gemara and the Talmud. But ultimately religion for Judaism, religion is about action. And so that goes exactly to what you're saying. The good isn't just a theory. It isn't just the platonic vision. It's actually about what happens on the ground. And that for me is why for Rabbi Sacks, orthodoxy, at least, and he was very inclusivist, but he was also very he was very principled about the fact that orthodoxy for him was what he believed to be the way in which we maintained our particular vision and in which we maintained our manifesto of Judaism. And that was our particularity, our particular laws, our particular rituals that keep us on the right track.

Rafi: I agree with you and the Platonic vision, as gets translated by Aristotle in his Nicomenean ethics of how actually how to live ethically. And that's something that Maimonides picks up in his Hilchot Deot. And Rabbi Sacks actually addresses that issue in one of the final chapters of the book on the kind of person that we are. And actually brings and discusses Maimonides there and says, we move from seeing Torah as a series of actions to actually a virtue ethic. And what's the line in the Torah that the Rambam gets this from? "Ve'halachta b'drachav" and we will go in God's ways and that's the word exactly as you're saying. So for the Rambam, and Rabbi Sacks is really inspired by this, as I am as well, is that he's saying, look, Aristotle's translation of the platonic good into ethical living is, Maimonides will obviously address that and say that's what the Torah is talking about when it says "ve'halachta b'drachav" and halacha is how to therefore walk with God and it translates into reality.

So for him, it's all one. There is no division.

Tanya: And at the end of the paragraph, he says, "as we learn a language by speaking or a game by playing, so we learn virtue by doing virtuous deeds." The idea is profound and it is indeed a profound idea to say it's not just about sitting in my ivory tower and creating a theory of ethics. Actually, when we act on the ground we become ethical people. The theory of ethics isn't even that any more so important because those actions are what transform us and transform the world. So I think that is very Sacksian. He was not a person who lived in the ivory tower. Rabbi Sacks was a person who really acted on the ground as much as anything else.

 So Rafi, I just want to finish with one last point. I think is also very important in this book, a theme that I see run through it. And it's a theme that I think generally runs through many of Rabbi Sacks’ books and a lot of his thinking.

We spoke in the podcast with Michal about this idea that. Rabbi Sacks did not believe that philosophy should focus just on the self. Philosophy had to turn outwards, that it is the other that transforms me. And we see this once again, come up in this book that the meaning we find in our lives comes through our outward turn through the responsibility we have to the other, chessed, tzedakah, Kiddush Hashem, and again, this is very much influenced by communitarian philosophy, the idea that we need to contract with something out or covenant with something outside of ourselves in order to find meaning and purpose and in order to build a better community and a better society. But for Rabbi Sacks it has the added element that we spoke about.

The turn to the other is not just the other with a small O, but the other with a capital O. It's also about us turning and recognising that there's something more to the world than what we have in front of us. It's about me growing beyond the contours of my own self and extending that further, because I know that there's something bigger because I know I'm part of something bigger. And Rabbi Sacks says it beautifully. He says, human existence is essentially self transcendence, rather than self actualisation, meaning takes place when something within us responds to something outside of us.

And in the book we're going to finish with, which is morality, we see that the entire project, and I call it a project because I see that book as part of a much bigger project of Rabbi Sacks. The entire project that Rabbi Sacks is investing himself in that book is about the move from the I to the we. According to him, so many of the malaises that we see in society today come from the fact that we only focus on the I. And we already begin that journey here in this book.

Rafi: Yes. And I would argue or suggest that his biography, he lived this. He was going to be a philosopher. He was sitting university, he had these brilliant lecturers and academics teaching him. And that was a path he was going to take. And I think what you're describing, actually, he experienced himself at first, you know, he told friends that when he's writing his papers, I'm aiming for maximum incompensability. And it wasn't enough for him. And the outward turn to the other, to what meaning is this? And he moves from political and much more to moral philosophy is something that he needed in his life and also the other turning to God as well. when he's becoming more religious, the one of his professors says to him, you know, Sacks, you're clearly an intelligent man. Why are you a believer? And he said well, professor, think of me as a, lapsed skeptic. Which is one of my favourite phrases because that's the transcendence you're talking about. He saw it in his life, he came to it through his personal story. So for me, yes, the Continental philosophers, Levinist and so on, described this.

I think it was so essential to Rabbi Sacks, Jonathan the student at university, he'd experienced it, that then his writings afterwards are trying to come to terms with his own realisations and journey in his life. Moving from a esoteric philosopher into a practical person and a rabbi that lived with community and would give his sermons to real people in real time.

And so he chooses not to become an academic and to write books that are just for academics. He chooses to write books that are readable, that could be understood, because what's the point of philosophy if it doesn't change the world? And so he consciously rejected academia and moved to this era of what he called the middle brow, you know, lowbrow is just, newspaper stuff that you have chips in the next day and highbrow is academic stuff, which is respected, but read by very few people. But middlebrow is to popularise deep, important concepts and be a community professor, community philosopher that's relevant to society, a public intellectual. And he did that, I think, better than anybody.

Tanya: And I think there is so much depth in all these books and that's why this podcast is so important to really allow people to access these books in a way that is user friendly, right? So I'm so happy that you've joined me in this conversation and now I want to ask you Rafi, and I think this is the part where I'm really curious and excited to hear from you because you were around when Rabbi Sacks wrote this book, you were around when he published it, and I'm interested to know first and foremost, why you love this book. And I know by the way, this is many people in the house and what is your favourite book of Rabbi Sacks? A lot of people respond: To Heal A Fractured World. It's one of people's go to to understanding Rabbi Sacks.

And I'm asking you, Rafi, which are your favourite parts of the book? But maybe even more than that, did this book transform you in any way? What was your experience of the publication of the book with Rabbi Sacks himself? And what was born out of it?

Rafi: I don't know if you've seen the movie Rocket Man, Tanya, which is the story of Elton John. But there's a moment when he first plays in America in this amazing bar, and the atmosphere is electric and the filmmaker slows down the scene so people begin to gravitate and you realise this is the moment of transformation. And you can't not get up and dance when you watch that.

When you finish To Heal a Fractured World, you have to do something. He spent the entire book pushing you. What will you do? What are you going to do to heal this world? To heal is a verb. What are you going to do to heal? And when I finished the book, we had to do something.

And at the time, he was the president of London School of Jewish Studies while I was the dean there. And we wanted to do a project that translated this book into reality. And so we started the Jewish Responsibility Project at LSJS. Rabbi Sacks helped us get funding for it, and we had a project of "What Will You Do?"

We created this booklet which was sent to all members of the United Synagogue, and it's called “What Will You Do? 48 Things You Can Do to Make a Difference”. And we began to list, in real terms, different changes you can make, whether in the Jewish community or in the wider world. Donating breast milk or visiting a shiva, going to visit someone in hospital helping wheel someone to come to the synagogue, what to do with the old glasses, lots of different, very practical ideas with phone numbers and websites of how you can make a difference.

And it was sent to the entire United Synagogue and lots of synagogues did projects for Bar Mitzvah boys and Bat Mitzvah girls when they were 12 or 13. What 12 or 13 things are you going to do? And the value of the book was what does it translate to in real terms? What are we actually going to do as a result of this?

And one project I want to tell you about is a wonderful story was a huge blood drive because giving blood is something we can all do for society. And we wanted people to see, again, Rabbi Sacks’ idea of linking the two worlds of the being religious changes the world. So we did this campaign of come to synagogue and save a life and the people will donate blood because they had these blood donation I think big buses that you could, there were transport, you could go in the car park of a synagogue and people could show up and give blood.

So come to, instead of the Rosh Hashanah, the book of life, we called it the bag of life, like a bag of blood. And we had this whole image to say, come and make a difference and give blood. And it was a great project and many people did. And it's a great way we can all give to society. One small person does something, but it's always important.

And British society and many societies don't have enough blood donors at all. And so as a part of the marketing campaign, the United Synagogue, which Rabbi Sacks was the head of, I wanted to have this guy that had this guy dressed up as Billy blood vessel, this big guy in a big red suit and Rabbi Sacks had to chat with him and shake his hand and talk to him. And he looked at him and he goes, do I really have to do this? Because it's kind of a bit a and silly to do it. So as you know, Rabbi Sacks was a huge fan of The West Wing. And I said to him, do you remember that scene where the president, Jed Bartlett, is told you've got to throw the first ball of the season for baseball? You got to go into the pitch and throw the first ball. He was very nervous about doing it, Jed Bartlett this president. And so he's practicing in the White House, chucking these balls and smashing lots of very important, ancient artefacts and so on. And so Rabbi Sacks said, I remember that scene. I said it's a bit like that, but Jed had to do it, so do you. And he goes, okay, I'll do it. And he got involved, but I wanted to show him that we could take this book and turn it into a real project. I think for three years, we did this Jewish responsibility project and it's something that we all have to get involved in all different kinds of ways.

United Synagogue's whole Chessed department grew out of this as a result. And to this day, they do amazing things within the community and also in the wider world Chessed projects that we have to do that Chessed is one of the three pillars of what Jews are involved in doing. Torah is learning and Avodah is service and practice and, and synagogue prayer. And the third part is Gemilut Chassadim the Chessed we're going to do, not just inside, but outside in the wider world.

So this book spawned directly a project that made a difference practically to the lives of the Jews and the Jewish community in the UK and in Israel as well. And to the general wider world, that was the purpose of it.

The value of the book when you close it is what will you do? And we wrote on the back of the book, which I think for me, a summary in a way of To Heal A Fractured World, we wrote: "no book can change the world, but the people who read it can." And so he's an inspirer to make these things happen And he was so excited to see these projects and would always get involved and Mitzvah Day which is a huge project also came out of these kind of things and you'd see him with his green t-shirt with other religious leaders and all painting a house or packing food parcels, and he practically wanted to be involved and show people these small acts make a difference. And he's not more important than doing these small acts. And then on aggregate, when you scale it up, these small acts will change the world.

Tanya: It's amazing, Rafi, because hopefully, please God for our listeners on, in the next episode of our podcast, we're going to be speaking with people who have been inspired by Rabbi Sacks’ thinking and really have gone out and done things to change in Israeli society and to change in British society.

And I think there's something profound about this book because on the one hand, it's a lot of theory and he. In a sense, he constructs it that way. He wants to show us that the theory of responsibility sits at the heart of the Jewish tradition, and at the same time, he wants to turn it outwards.

 By reading this book, many people will understand. Number one, the theory, but perhaps more important, the aspiration, the mission, the drive, what Rabbi Sacks wanted to be born in the theory is the act, the action. And Rafi, I thank you so much for being with us on this episode.

It has been an incredible conversation. I've learned so much about Rabbi Sacks and about you and about the book. through you. So I thank you. And I'm going to finish with a quote at the end of the book by Rabbi Sacks himself. He says as follows:

Rabbi Sacks zt"l: There's no life without a task. No person without a talent, no place without a fragment of God's light waiting to be redeemed. If we are where we are because God wants us to be, then there must be in every situation something He wants us to do. God is the question. Our lives are the answer. All it takes is the ability to listen.

When God calls, He simply whispers our name. And the greatest reply, the reply of Abraham, father of monotheism, is Hineni, here I am, ready to heed your call to mend a fragment of your all too broken world.

Tanya: The world we are in today is indeed broken, but if we listen and read and understand Rabbi Sacks’ words, I believe that we too will be inspired. To mend the world bit by bit,

Tanya: I'm Dr. Tanya White, and you've been listening to Books & Beyond: the Rabbi Sacks podcast. Our next episode will take you on a thoughtfully curated journey beyond the book, exploring how its ideas intersect with current challenges and conversations. We will hear from four extraordinary guests, two of them knew Rabbi Sacks intimately, his daughter Gila and his brother Alan, who will share their insights into his life and legacy and the meaning of this particular book for Rabbi Sacks. Joining them are two guests who exemplify the book's ideas in their impactful work. Daniel Lubetzky, philanthropist, author and founder of KIND Snacks in the U. S. and Yoav Heller, founder of the grassroots movement Harivon Haravi'i the Fourth Quarter, which seeks to foster consensus in a polarised Israeli society.

They both knew Rabbi Sacks well and are deeply influenced by his thought. It promises to be an eye opening episode, exploring the profound ideas in Rabbi Sachs work and how they're being brought to life to help mend a fractured world. Be sure to tune in.

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.