Episode 1: A Letter in the Scroll (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. 

Welcome to episode one of Books & Beyond. If you haven't already listened to our introductory episodes, I highly recommend it. It sets the context and aspirations for this series. Today, we're diving into our first book, A Letter in the Scroll, also known as Radical Then, Radical Now.

We've titled this episode, “The Call”, as Rabbi Sacks challenges us to reflect on our calling in two profound roles, as humans in the world and as Jews in covenant with God. This book grapples with some of life's most challenging questions. It addresses the problem of evil, urging us to confront a world that often falls short of our expectations.

It explores the role of humanity vis a vis God and the unique task He has entrusted to us. Rabbi Sacks also invites us to consider the question of Jewish identity in a post identity world. And, perhaps most poignantly, wrestle with the question, why be Jewish today?

In this first of two episodes dedicated to A Letter in the Scroll, I'm joined by Dr. Erica Brown. Dr. Brown is the Vice Provost for Values and Leadership at Yeshiva University and the founding director of its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks–Herenstein Center for values and Leadership. Her latest book, The Torah of Leadership, published by Maggid, is a must-read amongst all her other books. She has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, Tablet, First Things and the Jewish Review of Books and serves as a consulting editor for the journal Tradition. You can explore more of her work on her website, ericabrown.com. 

Erica, who I'll refer to by her first name from here on, is not only deeply knowledgeable about Rabbi Sacks' work, but also knew him personally and was profoundly influenced by him. I'm delighted to have her join us for this conversation. As with all our first episodes in this series, we'll structure our discussion around 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 personal favourite part of the discussion, we'll analyse one or two key ideas and pose a challenge thinking about how these ideas can inspire and shape our lives today. 

Erica, it's wonderful to have you with us today. I appreciate you greatly being on the podcast with us. And we're going to jump straight into what we're going to be doing in each of the first four sessions of the books. And that is to first and foremost, contextualize the books.

When was it written? Who were the audience, who is Rabbi Sacks speaking to, and maybe is there a polemic? Is there an agenda? Is there something that's underlying? So we're talking about the context and we're going to talk about the aim or the agenda of the book, what Rabbi Sacks is trying to do here. Do you want to share with us some ideas that you have about the book at this stage?

Erica: Yeah. Thank you, Tanya. And thank you so much for having me and also for doing this series because I think it's so important. His words are so timeless, but sometimes we need them more. I think A Letter in the Scroll / Radical Then, Radical Now - we'll talk about the title momentarily - is a book that keeps coming back. And I'll talk a little bit about some of the contemporary resonances. This book was published first in the United States as A Letter in the Scroll in the year 2000. It was not called that in England. I was in contact with the Office of Rabbi Sacks about the title change. And I think the feeling from the British publisher was that Radical Then, Radical Now would expand his readership. So it was a publishing decision.

And this has been a book that I've always been deeply attached to. I actually have (and I'm going to retire by perhaps selling it) a first edition copy of Rabbi Sacks' book, Traditional Alternatives, which also took on a new name. I happened to be in Jews' College as a student at the time, his student, and he didn't like the cover. So actually those books were sent back, but the registrar allowed me to keep one book, which I got Rabbi Sacks to sign. So I have a signed first edition of a book that was his first book that didn't actually make it into public hands.

And I say that because that book was representative of a project I was involved with at the time in Jews' College. He invited figures from Israel, from Canada, from the United States and elsewhere to participate in a very large conference. Really on the ideology of modern orthodoxy of what he came to call Torah V'Chochma, like what, who should be speaking and what kind of questions. And it was an extremely exciting time.

It was a very small institution, and it had a really big footprint when he was principal. And this was a - I can't even remember - a thousand attendees in London. It was a record-breaking blockbuster Jewish event. And the book that came out of that experience that was tied into that experience, the Traditional Alternatives conference was really an intellectual, a deep intellectual experience of historical in nature that sort of traced the development of Jews in contact with modernity, the role that the Enlightenment played and post-Enlightenment.

And this book, which came out, not long after that is really for a very different audience. And he talks about the audience in the beginning of the book. First of all, it was presented to his son, Joshua and daughter-in-law Eve, on the eve of their wedding. I've had four children married, they never got a book out of me. It was an extraordinary, he wrote it as a gift to them. And it was also in memory of his late father, which I think is also important in terms of the tenor of the book. He describes his father as someone who was not well educated, a more simple, what we call, "pashut Jew". Not simple is probably the wrong translation, but it is one that he uses. "A pintela yid" as they say.

That's better. Although you have to translate that too, but so it was this gift to his children and it was in honour of, and memorializing his late father. 

Tanya: I just want to add to there, because there's something really beautiful that he writes. I think towards the end of the book, he speaks about the story that he had a question, he asked his father, and his father couldn't answer the question and his father turned around to him and he said, Jonathan, I'm only a simple Jew. I don't have that answer, but I want you to be able to answer that question one day. And in many ways, I think this book is in some senses, the answer to his younger self, what he wished he had at that stage to answer himself. So I read this book and I think it's such a beautiful book because it's given to his son and his daughter in law. And at the same time, it's almost that he's in conversation with his father and his younger self. So it's almost exactly the Letter in the Scroll, that kind of link between the generations. So I think it's really poignant for us to point that out. Yeah.

Erica: Yes, in fact, I was actually going to say the direct quote that his father-

Tanya: I preempted you.

Erica: No, no preempt means that we're vibing together. I just wanted to add one thing in the actual language because I think it's very telling. He said, "Jonathan, I did not have an education, so I do not know the answers to your questions, but one day you will have the education I missed and you'll teach me the answers."

The idea that the children return the parents. And I think it's again, to your point about the significance of continuity. And he says that he wrote this book while keeping his three children and his one daughter-in-law, quote unquote, constantly in mind. So this idea of this conversation across the generations, which was really different than making an intellectual stance about centrist orthodoxy.

And I think that it came out of an experiment. He opens the book, where he says a group of university students came to him, and they asked what they should study. And he recommended that they write to Jewish artists and leaders and other writers, and ask them why they're Jewish. And they planned the project together and the students wrote about 200 letters, but they only received six replies.

And Rabbi Sacks publishes three of them, or he mentioned the three of them were hostile to Judaism actually does publicize three of them were hostile about their Judaism, as if this was some kind of arcane relic that was unworthy of modernity and the students were upset and so was Rabbi Sacks.

And so he shared with the students three famous positive quotes about Jews. One from from a former American president, John Adams, one from the Russian literary figure, Leo Tolstoy, and then the historian, Paul Johnson. But I think that what happened is that he felt that he needed to make the case himself. He sent the students out on this mission. And he then had to write the book or write the answers that they didn't get as to why be Jewish.

And I want to say something about the time that I spent with Rabbi Sacks. There's just so much I could say far more than the time that we have together, Tanya. About what it was like to be in the presence of an extraordinary giant. I've been very gifted in my life to study with remarkable Torah teachers. And when I think about Rabbi Sacks, what it was like to be in the front row to his classroom, Jews' College was a small institution, the classroom was small. But again, that larger-than-life presence. And someone said to me, and I think it's really true, that one of the reasons that Rabbi Sacks' books are so popular and his teachings have traveled so far is that sometimes you read an author and you think, wow, I really know so little, and that person knows so much, but Rabbi Sacks brought you into a world of philosophers, demographers, sociologists obviously Jewish thinkers, classical commentary, Talmud, and he says you'd read Rabbi Sacks and you'd feel smarter, so he did something for you that was very powerful.

And I'll say that I ran a center, a Sixth Form center, (for those not familiar with the Sixth Form, it would be the equivalent of [high-school] juniors and seniors) who were studying, very bright students. 

And Rabbi Sacks... we held a Shabbaton for those students and Rabbi Sacks. I taught with him on many student Shabbatonim. He was very involved in student life. It was this, when I think about his career and I think what he has to teach all of us as teachers is how do you, get to the highest echelon of intellectual thought and then speak to a simple congregant who comes for services because I did spend many Shabbatot in Marble Arch where he was the Rabbi, and to watch him hold the hands of a senior and sing a song with him. And at the same time, be in a class and see the heights of the intellectual achievement that he could reach. And the students were so important to him because he really, people give lip service to students. Oh, the next generation, "l'dor va dor", but he was in that space. He was going to the Jewish society in Oxford and Cambridge. He was speaking, he was teaching, he cared about having conversations with students. So I think in this way, in some way, this book represents the conversation that perhaps he kept having with students on different levels about Jewish identity and the significance of Jewish identity and the contribution of Judaism in the world.

Tanya: So I think what you said is so important here and it frames for us how we're going to enter into this book. This is our first book on the series and I've chosen specifically to start with this book because I think that this book is, in some senses a watershed, in Rabbi Sacks' thinking.

Until this moment, if you look at all the previous books, which are now being republished by Koren you have Tradition in an Untraditional Age, Crisis and Covenant, Arguments for the Sake of Heaven, they're all brilliant, absolutely brilliant books and worthy of being read. Some lay people may find them very challenging. They're more academic, as you said, in some senses, they almost sit in the ivory tower. This is the first time that Rabbi Sacks recognises the need to bring that ivory tower down to the lay person. What he maintains, and I think this is his brilliance, he maintains a very high level of intellectual rigor. And philosophical foundation, founding philosophical principles that in many senses, orient the book. And also they percolate at the bottom of the writings.

Now, you can read the book and you'll fall in love with it. And I want to tell our listeners I very often have people say, I want to read Rabbi Sacks. Where should I start? This is the book I tell them to start with. In my mind, this is the call, the four books I've chosen. I've frame them in a certain way. And the first book I, this is the book I've called "The Call". Rabbi Sacks' call to us. I call it his PR project of Judaism, right?

It's a thin book. It's an easy to read book. And one thing I will say, because I want our listeners to continue listening, they're going to at least listen to this, you will read the book and you will come out a prouder Jew. You will come out with somebody who knows and understands and feels proud to own their Judaism.

And I think that's what Rabbi Sacks wanted. He wanted simply to offer to the average Jew on the street, and even the Jew wherever he was, offer them a, I don't know, like a crown. That's how I see it. A crown to give them, this crown with jewels on that they are able to put on their heads every single day and say, I am proud to be a Jew.

And I think today more than ever, in the college campuses, in America, in Israel, on the battlefields, every Jew today Is in some senses needs this, even if we feel pride, which many of us do, and many of us have tapped back into our Judaism, maybe, after becoming a little bit ambivalent to a degree, but I think this gives us it to me, it's like the cherry on the top of the pudding.

It really makes you want not just to be a Jew, but to be a proud Jew. So I think it's really important that we understand that context of what he's writing, why he's writing and to take us to the next part, which is this idea of the agenda. What is Rabbi Sacks doing in this book? So we spoke about the idea of it being in some sense, a manifesto of Judaism. When he was writing, maybe we were still in a modern world, but I think we were veering into the postmodern world, certainly by the year 2000 and in a postmodern world, we have a wide range of choices, infinite choices in some ways. And therefore the question Rabbi Sacks, I think is addressing here is if we have so many choices, why be Jewish? What makes us want to make the choice to be Jewish? And he, in the last chapter, he speaks about assimilation and ambivalence, which in my mind are the two greatest dangers that he sees posing to Judaism in this century and in the coming decades. And this is his answer. I wonder what you think about that.

Erica: I think you're right, obviously. And I think the book hits people in different ways. I think it is an easy read on one level, but it's a read that lingers. And you find yourself asking a lot of the questions. Or asking yourself the question of why I am Jewish as he answers, why be Jewish?

Tanya: Talking about why be Jewish brings us to our next part where we're going to outline the book because that's exactly the question he opens the book up with, why be Jewish. The book's divided into four parts.

He has the question, the journey. vision and the future. The first part, which is entitled the question sets up the question that we've discussed already, why be Jewish? He explores it from the biblical perspective. 

He brings the idea of the burning palace, which is crucial to understand the type of Judaism that he's championing here in this book and in general. I know we're not going to have time to address this element of the book, so I want to just take a moment to outline it for our listeners. In chapter 5, entitled A Palace in Flames, that's the name of the chapter, and it opens the second section of the book, which he calls the Journey.

He draws on a very famous Midrash, a homiletical text that imagines Avraham's journey starting in protest. What do we mean by that? So he walks past the burning palace and he's looking. Where is its owner? Why is the castle aflame? Why is no one bothering to put out the flames?

And in the Midrash, the owner of the palace looks out and says, I'm here. And Rabbi Sacks reading of this Midrash is I think both radical, but also quintessentially Sacksian in the sense that he says it represents Avraham's cry against the dissonance of the world that he sees, the burning and the evil and the destruction and the desire and the hope, of the world that he wants, the world as it ought to be. And this gap between the two, between the world as it is, and between the world as we want it to be, as it ought to be, that is the gap where humans can do one of two things. They can either say, there's no palace, there's no owner, there's no God. C'est la vie, that's the way it is. It is what it is.

Or they can say, there is no flames. There's no evil, there's no injustice. It's all just an illusion, a veil almost, right, to the good that really exists, which is all God, right? And that's a kind of theodicy, where we justify or explain evil. Rabbi Sacks rejects both of these responses, and he argues instead that Judaism actually presents a third way.

And that is what? That there are flames, there is evil and injustice and it's real. It's not a veil and it's not an illusion, it's real. But there is an owner and the owner is God, the owner who creates the world. And what the Midrash in fact is doing, creates the world, creates the castle, the palace in, in, in the analogy.

And what the Midrash in fact is doing, by imagining the owner calling out to the person passing by from the flames is God, addressing human beings and asking them to put the flames out.

And I just want to quote Rabbi Sacks. He says, God can, but may not put out the fire for if he does, man is not free. What does he mean? So classic in some sense, the classic free will argument, only man can put out the fire, but he does not do it alone. God tells him how, and that's why morality is covenantal for Judaism, because it's a task that's shared between heaven and earth, between man and God.

And it only works if we see the evil and we feel the injustice, and then we are called upon by God in some sense, in a covenantal union to help God. In this sacred task fixing and healing the world. And God gives us the strength. He sees in us the potential and gives us the strength to keep going.

Even when we don't necessarily or cannot necessarily reach the final end goal.

Tanya: And in the third part, he talks about the vision. The vision shows us what is the vision of Judaism? How do we apply all these ideas and all these theories in real life on the ground, in the real world? And in the fourth part, finally, he speaks about the future. And in my mind, the fourth part is one of the most beautiful pieces of writings. I always advocated for the final chapter to be a chapter every single teenage Jew, not just teenage Jew, but certainly begin with the teenagers should be reading. I was involved in a very important project just now that published that in Hebrew and took it out to many Chayalim [soldiers]. 

We published about a hundred thousand booklets and we more even 200,000 booklets, we took them out to the Chayalim in Israel on the bases, in Hebrew. I think it's a super important chapter and we'll come to it as well. So that's the basic outline of the book. And now let's jump into what you're saying, Erica, because I think the identity here, as you were talking about is one of the most I would say almost pivotal parts of the beginning, certainly the beginning section of the book.

Erica: Yeah. The beginning, I think it, it informs it throughout. I have a copy in Hebrew of the text that was given out to chayalim I find it very inspiring. Sits on my desk to, to think about where Rabbi Sacks teachings have traveled to and how important when you're fighting a very perilous, treacherous protracted war that you have this inspiration, the sense of what you're fighting for.

And I think I think it was very fitting that a chapter of this particular book was taken. I think there are basically six themes as I see them that emerge. One of the ways when I'm studying Rabbi Sacks' books that I think about the difference and distinctions and the similarities of them is looking at the table of content and then looking at the index, and seeing certain things that come up for him again and again. I certainly, the index is a lot of fun because often you'll find Eminem and Mick Jagger and, the Beatles and then, interspersed with Mill or Descartes or something which is always it's always a great intellectual salad.

Tanya: the Rambam, obviously.

Erica: Yeah. Yeah. That goes without saying all the classics, but but all the, all these sort of secondary figures that populate his writing.

Tanya: Yeah,

Erica: And in this book he does, of course, there's a table of contents and you shared the basic structure and yet there's certain ideas that keep coming back in multiple chapters.

So I, what I wanted to do in my research to prepare for today is to take apart and analyze the component parts that are the building blocks of identity. And I want to do that within a psychological framework. Something that I teach quite a bit is thin and thick identities.

Clifford Geertz came up with this as an anthropologist, these categories. Michael Walter talked about thin and thick when it came to political science, political theory. But I think they were really important as psychological categories of religious identity.

So in this idea of thin and thick identities, I think that we're in a time where so many Jews who are assimilated, certainly if they're intermarried, they're not connected, they're disengaged, their Jewish identity is thin. It may be a fact of their existence, but it's not a meaningful fact of their existence.

And the danger of thin identities, and we all have thin identities, could be that we played music at one point, we were athletic at one point, we were chess players at one point, and it was a serious part of identity. We're vegetarians. It's something that, That we did for principle or enjoyment that we invested a lot of time in but those identities sometimes disappear over time.

And then of course, there are thick identities that are who we are. They're what informs other parts of our identities. And usually we break those up into the ABCs of identity, affective behavioral and cognitive. So the things that we feel, the things that we do and the things that we think about.

And I think what Rabbi Sacks was doing was trying to touch on these different aspects that a thick identity, as opposed to he's addressing people with a thin Jewish identity, and he's explaining what might give them a thicker Jewish identity. And in order to check all those boxes, you have to take people into the emotions, the sense of pride, the sense of longevity of the Jew, the sense of the contributions that Jews make in the world.

You have to talk behaviourally because what are, what rituals and observance, what mitzvot, what commandments do people do that inform their lives? And then there's the intellectual piece, which is how do we think about different constructs? I want to and I think this was important because Judaism, unlike Christianity, is not about a dogma or set of beliefs. It's also a nationality, it's also a cultural identity. There's so many different pieces of this. You're not a Jew because you accept a set of beliefs. You're a Jew because you're born Jewish, you convert into Judaism. So I think on some level, part of his explanation of why be Jewish also has to be how is Judaism different than other faiths, which he does sprinkle in. 

So if you're ready, I want to frame this in a few categories and give some quotes to support it.

So one of them, the first one is the significance of continuity in thinking about identity. And I wanna just read with your permission, read two quotes that in that vein on, in the prologue he writes, to be a Jew is to inherit a faith from those who came before us to live it. And to hand it on to those who will come after us to be a Jew is a link in the chain of the generations.

And I think that's a beautiful articulation of something that many of us feel and think about. I remember when my son had his siddur party, and one of the things that the children did is they made those little construction paper chains and they carried it and encircled the entire audience.

And it was this very beautiful gesture upon receiving a book that will chart much of the course of your prayerful life, that you're also saying this language was something that those before me appreciated and those after me. 

So Rabbi Sacks talks about continuity, and then he actually makes an even bigger, more grandiose statement, which is in chapter one, Judaism is a religion of continuity. It depends for its very existence on the willingness of successive generations to hand on their faith and way of life to their children. And on the loyalty of children to the heritage of their past.

And I think what concerned him and maybe prompted some of this book is that the most vulnerable time in continuity is the actual passing of the baton, right?

That's when you risk dropping it. He says, in order for continuity to work, there has to be an agreement, number one, that someone is willing to pass it on. And I think what we found is a lot of people in Rabbi Sacks' generation were not so willing in the Britain of his time. Were not really holding onto something with the kind of strength and commitment that enabled them and the knowledge to pass it on. It's not only about the recipient, it's can you make this into a gift that someone else wants?

Tanya: So I think that's what he speaks about in the chapter on ambivalence. He said, one of the greatest changes is not just assimilation, but ambivalence. When I actually don't really understand why this is important to me. And therefore, if it's not going to be important, I'm not going to look after it. I'm not going to care for it, I'm not going to pass it on. 

It reminds me very much of, I think there's an analogy the Deridda brings in his philosophy about a letter an envelope that is passed on, from one person from one generation to the next, and it's a letter and you can do, it's in an envelope and you have two choices. You can either just pass the envelope on without opening the letter, but at some point people are going to turn around and say well, it's not really worth anything. I'm just going to forget, or they'll forget about it or they'll not open it. You have, and the choice, the other choices to open the letter. When you open the letter, you're making the letter vulnerable. You're opening the letter and in some senses you're reading it and then you're asking questions and you're challenging, and maybe you're protesting and maybe you're saying, oh, this doesn't really apply to me, or maybe it does. Maybe you might damage it. Maybe you might change it. Maybe something might happen to it. But that letter then becomes relevant.The letter then becomes something that you adopt and become meaningful for you and you'll pass it on to your children. So in my mind this imagery of the letter and the envelope is so poignant and relates so deeply to what Rabbi Sacks is saying here.

In some sense, he's saying to us, Open up the envelope, right? Open up. It might be that there's things that you're not going to love and it might be there's things that you're going to protest and it might be the things that are not going to feel relevant to you at this particular moment, but you're also going to find some things that are going to be deeply meaningful and impactful for you and in some sense, they're going to, trigger, are going to push you to pass it to the next generation. 

Erica: Yeah. And I love the letter, I love the letter image that you just brought in, it's very powerful. I want to also offer a different image, which is apparent inherited furniture from a grandparent and the furniture was worth something. But the grandchildren who were the next to receive it said, I don't want this. And instead of saying this has worth, let me find out what it's worth, let me take some piece of this. Because in contrast to a letter, which is relatively small, the furniture is really, it's your surroundings, it makes your home. And part of it is, what's the rejection of the past that comes with the, receiving of something in the future. Because you're going to have to own it in your way.

I think a lot about this in my own life my own family. Like Rabbi Sacks, I did not grow up in an observant family. I didn't have this tradition to take on. My grandfather, whose name was Avraham, alav ha'shalom, was an Auschwitz survivor. He started wearing tefillin again when he was 75, the age of Avraham Avinu. And I think a lot about what it means to have Judaism as your primal language, but have a break from it in some way, and then what it means at 75 to begin a journey, since journeys also features so importantly in the book. So the generational continuity doesn't only have to work one way. And that's the powerful story that he tells about his father, which is, now you can teach me, his father says to his son. So it's not that it's only top down, it's bottom up. And I think that's part of the profundity of the continuity landscape that Rabbi Sacks creates throughout the book.

Tanya: And on top of that Erica, I think it's actually fundamental, and he speaks about this not so much in this book, but certainly in other places, maybe more in his earlier books, about the idea of Torah Sheba'al Peh and Torah Sheb'chtav, and notion of Torah Sheba'al Peh, the Oral Law and the Written Law, and the Oral Law being a law that is dependent on each generation interpreting the basic foundations, the basic principles of the Written Law.

So what your imagery of this, that the thing that goes backwards and forwards to me is the Oral and the Written Law. The Written Law has its source in an event at Sinai, but the Oral Law is something that continues in some sense to oscillate throughout the generations. And Rabbi Sacks was very conscious, I think, of that movement of the Oral and the Written Law. He was very conservative (with a small “c”) about Halachic Judaism, because he believed that there had to be boundaries in place to maintain our particularity. And that's why for him, Judaism, on the one hand can be something so inclusive and so beautiful and so wide, but on the other hand has to have certain boundaries and maybe with that, and I know you want to continue, we go back to this idea of the identity and the boundaries of identity, because I think one of the things he was deeply, or one of the philosophical schools of thought that he was deeply influenced by was communitarianism.

Which essentially is the idea that the self, if we're talking about the self and we're talking about identity, it's the idea that the self is not just an atomized self, the self is born in to certain encumbered conditions and certain things, certain fates . The family we're born into, the faith we're born into, maybe the nation, the place, the time, the era. These are things that we don't have a choice in. But there is always choice.

The question is, where are the contours of that freedom? Do I define where the self is free, and where the self is not free? Where the self has to just, in some sense, surrender to certain conditions of my fate or my birth or whatever you want to call it. And in other senses where I'm able to actually choose my destiny, choose what I want to do, choose how I'm going to play my story and my narrative out in the world. 

I think what he's saying in this book, there are some things we don't choose. born Jewish. Judaism says that when we are born Jewish, we remain Jewish. Even if we convert to Christianity, we're still a Jew. There are some things that are incumbent upon us to accept. That's the incumbent self, but there are things that we can choose. We can choose we write the next page. And here I bring in the library analogy. 

In chapter four entitled The Letter in the Scroll, Rabbi Sacks asked us to imagine that we're in this vast library and in this library we can pick up any book. We can immerse ourselves in its story and then return it to the shelf when we're done. And every book that we pick up will enrich us in some way.

We're going to take something from it, but it doesn't define us. This, he says, is a bit like identity in the Western contemporary culture. It's like a browser identity. There's many ways of living, but none of them actually make any claim on us. But, amongst all of those millions of books, Rabbi Sacks says, there is only one that actually has our name on it.

That has our story in it, the story of our ancestors. And this book is the story of who I am. This book does define my identity and therefore makes a claim on me. So Judaism is different because it connects us to something beyond this idea of a human being as a free floating atom that many take our lives to be. And it asks us, how do we write the next page in our people's story?

We are a letter in that scroll. Without us that book is not complete. So Rabbi Sacks says, I have the freedom of choosing how I pass the baton on. What the letter I pass on is going to look like, right? The message, the meaning I'm giving over when I'm passing that thing on. That's where the choices. That's where the freedom is. So I'm curious to know Erica, how that kind of ties in with also what you were talking about in terms of the contours of identity.

Erica: Yeah. So I, I actually was getting to that point on it. When looking at these six component parts of identity .The next one after continuity is faith and fate. The relationship of faith and fate which is, to your point what you're born with, what's accidental in your life, what's intentional and essential in your life.

I just want to share quotes from chapter one, chapter two, and chapter nine. In chapter one, he says, “Jewish identity is not a faith, but a fate. It's not an identity we assume, but one into which we are born. So there's the birth side or certainly the conversion side.” And then in chapter two, he says, “Judaism is a supreme expression of religion as freedom and hence of the priority of faith over fate.”

So there's fate, but in the higher order of things there's faith. In other words, there's the commitment of faith that there's the intention of faith. To be a member of a faithful community is not something that you can simply be born into. It's something that you work hard at that you earn. And in chapter nine, I think, he brings these two together in a powerful way. He says, “At Sinai, the Israelites were transformed from a community of fate into a community of faith. From an "Am" to an "Eidah", meaning a body of politic under the sovereignty of God, whose written constitution was the Torah."

So the fate aspect, like the Abrahamic, I'm going to travel, I'm going to end up at a location, I'm going to have children, I'll create a tribe. Then we get the Torah. Then we have Exodus and we get the Torah. And those two things, they're one, the crucible that forms us as a nation, but then the faith is the moment of revelation at Sinai.

So the idea of fate and faith are both aspects of what it means to be Jewish and what it means to have a Jewish identity. As long as we understand that faith ultimately eclipses fate in that process. And that's going to tie in 

Tanya: Can I just ask you, what do you think he means in this book by faith? It puzzles me because sometimes he speaks about it in many different contexts. I'm just interested to know when you're talking about the idea of fate and faith, could we define for the listeners what you think Rabbi Sacks when he's talking about the idea of faith, what do you think he's really talking about?

Erica: I think he's talking about a very deep and profound belief system that involves a relationship with God. And we'll talk about covenant as one of the six aspects of identity that he references. But being part of this covenantal relationship with God and with the nation that you see yourself as braided into a story.

And that's part of the letter in the scroll where once you assume this letter in the scroll, you are part of the building blocks of this story moving forward. But the story doesn't really have meaning or shared glue unless you're part of this faith endeavor, this faith enterprise that the nation enters into and that as you enter into it you're becoming part of this historical story, you're taking a role on the stage.

That's different than saying, you know, I was born Jewish, it's not really important to me. Or, it's an identity the way that my skin colour or my eye colour is an identity. So faith is the belief that actually will shape the way you think, the way you behave, and what you feel, that effective behaviour.

Tanya: Could we define it as the thin and the thick, the fate is the thin, like you said at the beginning, is the thin identity, as Rav Soloveitchik says you don't have a choice, you're fated and, but it's very thin, it's your very thin identity. And the faith is the thick identity?

It's when I actually buy in to my people and my people, and it can be buying into their ritual, the narrative or their story, but it's a very thick sense of identity.

Erica: Yeah, and it's a good segue to number three, because I think one of the things we're seeing now, in the diaspora not only the unity that's emerged post October 7th in Israel but the sense that for many Jews who were inconspicuous about their Judaism, but now on college campuses or in their offices are really forced to, they're fated, their Judaism is named they're singled out.

And for many of them, they're trying to find a community of belonging that makes this identity, which they're fated to have, have some significance to them. And so I think one of the things that we're going to see in the aftermath of the terrible year that we've experienced and the tragedies that are not over and the healing is not even begun, is that there'll be an emergence of people who are exploring what this means, exploring what Judaism means.

And that gets, to from faith to “mishpacha”, which is the family aspect. As a scholar of Rabbi Sacks, you know that family was incredibly important. It was the baseline for community. It was the baseline for the faith community. If you didn't have a family, he's very concerned.

He - Rabbi Sacks - very frequently talked about loneliness, talked about the breakdown of societal bonds. In The Home We Build Together which is a book that really enjoyed a British readership more than, I don't think it had a lot of traction I'm not sure if it was published in the United States, but-

Tanya: It's just been published in Hebrew and I think it's, I've seen it being sold, in almost every Steimatzky it's on the front shelf, so I'm hoping it will have a much larger audience here at a very timely moment here in Israel. Yeah.

Erica: Yeah, so this idea of, what multiculturalism means what a society in the UK means and a lot of that has to do with the psychic bonds that people feel towards each other that come from the family. So in chapter three he says being Jewish is not something private and personal, but something collective and historical.

It meant being part of an extended family, many of whose members I did not know, but to whom I nonetheless felt connected by bonds of kinship and responsibility. And I say that in how timely his words are, almost 25 years later in thinking about this sense of kinship to people I do not know.

I don't know a hostage, but my heart bleeds for a hostage. And it doesn't matter that I don't know that person because that person is part of my family. When that person please God, all of our hostages should be released. When that person is released, the celebration is the celebration of a family.

Later on, he says in truth, the whole of Jewish consciousness is tied to the strength of the family for without an ordered family, we could not envisage an ordered world. So I just want to repeat that because it's so profound for without an ordered family, we could not envisage . An ordered world, right?

The sense of order that we get, the sense of the, of moral stamina that we get really develops in the family unit. Now just to, walk us through this sort of continuity, fate, faith, mishpacha, family, and then we get to literacy. Because for Rabbi Sacks and that's really also what assuming a letter in the scroll is a document, it's laws, it's stories, it's the master narrative of our people. And if you can't access that then we can't assume that your identity will be based on knowledge, on textual knowledge, on literacy. And of course, this becomes a theme throughout all of his writings.

In chapter three, he says, "the citadels of liberty are houses of study. Its heroes are teachers, its passion is education in the life of the mind." You can feel profoundly Jewish. You can be, Oh, I'm so proud of Israel. I waved the flag. But if I also don't open the book, then in some way, that's also a betrayal.

This isn't about allegiance and loyalty as if we were on a sports team. This is about feeling that I've assumed my letter in the scroll because the scroll means something to me. I understand its content. 

Tanya: I've opened up the envelope and I've made it apply and I've applied it to this moment, to my life, to my narrative. Yeah. It's beautiful that.

Erica: And he says in, two places in chapter eight "to be a Jew is to argue with heaven for the sake of heaven." You can't argue with God unless you have God's Torah, right? You can argue with God, sure, but argue on God's terms, right? In other words, you said this. And so this idea of the feistiness, the vitality of learning, it's not only that learning is static and it's in a reference book or it's an encyclopaedia, it's a living, breathing document that informs a life. And then later he says in that same chapter in Judaism, "God is not in the answer, but in the question." As in, you don't have to have the answers. It was, again, outside of classical study where you take a large tome that's a classically written something and you read it and you may make some kind of personal relevance of it. But here, the idea of arguing, of owning, of questioning, that's how you make a claim, stake a claim to Judaism. 

Tanya: Yeah, Ian Leslie in his book Curious, (I don't know if you've come across this, it's a brilliant book) he speaks about two kinds of questions and he says there's questions that are puzzles and you haven't answered them, you put them aside, they remain in a box and you've got the answer. And there's questions that are mysteries. Like you have books that are puzzles like Agatha Christie's and books that are mysteries like Harry Potter. And he says, a mystery is a continual journey. And in some senses, that's what Rabbi Sacks is telling us. He's telling us that Judaism is about the questioning. It's about constantly questioning. If you look at, obviously he begins the story with Avraham Avinu and he brings in the beautiful homily of the passing a burning palace and Avraham asking where's the palace's owner?

And he talks about this idea of this continual conversation between heaven and earth, where man asked the question, God responds, and God's asked the question and man responds. And I think that kind of image, that motif of this continual question is if we bring in Ian Leslie's paradigms, it's the mystery and the mystery is what alive.

It's what keeps us going. It's what calls us to radical responsibility. It's what calls us to work in this world. Because if we had answers, the answers set it aside and we're okay, we'll carry on with our lives. No, the questions push us to be better, to change, to transform. So I think it's beautiful what you said that I think it really resonates.

Erica: Rilke, the poet, in his letters to a young poet, talks about loving the questions, right? In other words, just really embracing them and loving them, which is, I think really central to the way that Rabbi Sacks taught also as a student. 

Okay. So number five is that to be Jewish is to be a beacon of morality.

There is, there's something that we have to do in the world. It's not merely enough to be a link in a chain. It's to see injustice in the world in the prophetic sense and to respond in the prophetic sense. And so in chapter eight, he says Judaism is an ongoing moral revolution. For Judaism, the criterion of the good society is not wealth, power, or prowess, but the simple question, does it respect the individual as an image of God?

And so the moral revolution is a godly revolution also, because it means that you can see the infinite worth of each human being. And so in, part of the creating a moral society is seeing that you are a player in that right that part of your letter is that you will embody the justice seeking ethos of the prophets and so I think that's that sense that you're taking on not only belief, but an ethical mandate to make a difference in the world. Certainly that reaches its crescendo in his writings in To Heal a Fractured World, which is a book that we give out to all of our graduate students many of our undergraduate students. 

The sixth is really about love, because I think taking on responsibilities that are arduous, but without love? Love gives the color, love gives the warmth , love gives the embrace, right? And love is connected to, obviously, the sense of family.

And for Rabbi Sacks, love came in those covenantal bonds. And in chapter seven, he writes, at the heart of Judaism is a covenant of love. Judaism has often been seen as a religion of law and justice rather than love and compassion. Obviously, taking on Christian critics who regarded Judaism as minute laws that was devoid of this larger sense of of mercy .

This is quite untrue, he writes. To be sure, Judaism is a religion of law and justice between human beings. Because only where there's law can there be a just society, and Judaism is nothing if not a religion of society. But between God and humanity, there's a bond of love. And it's one of the things I think sometimes we don't say enough in teaching and to our children, to our grandchildren is that God loves you.

God loves you. And God loves you and God wants the best for you. And so this isn't only about guilt or legal obligation or how hard you have to work on the brokenness of the world. Love is what all of identity is moving towards. And so even if we were to, sequence these these six, the idea of continuity of faith and fate of family, of literacy, of morality, and then love, it's almost, I don't think he meant it sequentially, but I think that that seems to me to be the place where all of this is ultimately going.

Tanya: And I have to tell you, I live in a funny kind of almost eclectic place. I live in a Yemenite Moshav in Israel. There was a group of us that came and we created a new group within the Moshav 17 years ago. And the funniest thing is that the rabbi is Chabad, is a Lubavitch, Yemenite. Okay. One of the things that I've seen here in this Moshav, also because you have the Sephardi element of it, and also because you have the Lubavitch element of it, is that they talk openly about loving God and Hashem loving us and God loving us. And it's not, no one's embarrassed. And they're talking about it all the time. And I think that Rabbi Sacks actually adopts this from the influence, and we know that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was deeply influential on Rabbi Sacks. In fact, one of the first things he did was to translate some of his works. So I think this really, you see it inform his thinking, this idea of love as being part of that matrix of our relationship with God. So I think it's beautiful that you took us to that point, because I wouldn't necessarily have emphasized that point in the book, but it's definitely there.

Erica: Yeah it's there and it's easy to miss if you're reading it as an intellectual. I think he wants to take you somewhere. And I think people are drawn to where there's joy and where there's love. I think we're all drawn to be in those places. 

I want to just conclude today with two statements from the book that have a particular application that's meant a great deal to me, I'm going to get a little farklemt.

I took a group of students from Yeshiva University and a few faculty members in January to volunteer in Israel and to meet people who are serving in a variety of capacities and to go to the south and to feel the suffering and to come back and do something about it. And we had the unbelievable opportunity sponsored by Terry and Andrew Herenstein to be part of a Sefer Torah dedication.

A mom who lost two sons on October 7th in Sderot, wanted one thing in the world. She wanted a Sefer Torah to be in their yeshiva because they could no longer learn there. And we brought our students and the Torah, some of them wrote a letter in that scroll, and they danced it to the place where each of these men were slain, Ariel and Roi, and they took the Torah to the yeshiva and danced there, and the whole city came out.

And on the bus ride down in a very sort of cracked voice I taught the two pieces that I'm going to read. Because they, from the very first reading that I've had of this book, they made me really appreciate the materiality, the physicality of a Torah. A Torah isn't only a theoretical concept, it's a scroll that we dress and we sing to and we bless and we dance with. And to see the "Nechama", the consolation that it brought to this mother and to her family and to the town, meant that something that these two young, beautiful souls cared about and invested in was going to live.

Even if they weren't alive. So these are the two quotes. Every Jew is a letter. Each Jewish family is a word. Every community is a sentence. And the Jewish people at any one time are a paragraph. The Jewish people through time constitute a story. The strangest and most moving story in the annals of humankind.

 And then he says on page 46, “I'm a Jew because knowing the story of my people, I hear their call to write the next chapter. I did not come from nowhere. I have a past and if any past commands anyone, this past commands me. I'm a Jew because only if I remain a Jew, will the story of a hundred generations live on in me. I continue their journey because having come this far, I may not let it and them fail. I cannot be the missing letter in the scroll.”

And so to read that as students actually wrote a letter in a scroll that honoured those who sacrificed their lives, so that our people could remain free in a state that we have been away from for 2000 years, to me, just, it was a moment when my life the things that I care about my life and my own study of Rabbi Sacks, it all collapsed into this harmonious very powerful force of inspiration as to why we should be here, why we should be Jewish and why individuals matter in that story.

Thank you so much for having me today.

Tanya: So beautiful, Erica. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you being with us and giving us your unique perspective on this book. Thank you. 

Tanya: I'm Dr. Tanya White, and you've been listening to Books & Beyond: The Rabbi Sacks Podcast. Our next episode, which is already live, features a unique format that takes us on an exciting journey beyond the book, weaving together the insights of four extraordinary voices in the Jewish world, we've created a compelling narrative that tackles timely questions arising from the book's themes.

Joining us are Natan Sharansky, Sivan Rahav Meir, Rabbi Dr. Meir Soloveitchik, and Joanna Benarroch, each bringing their unique perspectives to this transformative conversation

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 Johnny Lipczer. We cannot finish without holding in our hearts and minds that at the time of recording, one 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. 

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