Episode 6: To Heal A Fractured World (Part 2)

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 Alvin and Anita Kaplan, Avram Aaron HaKohen, Ben Moshe Nisan HaKohen and Dvora, Hannah Pearl, Bat Malka Zisel and David.

The world is undeniably broken. Suffering, pain, violence, and division are everywhere we look. In A Letter in the Scroll, Rabbi Sacks urged us to take responsibility, to stand in the gap between the world as it is, and the world as it should be. That was ‘The Call’. In this, episode 6, we will explore the mission through his book, To Heal a Fractured World. 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. To Heal a Fractured World showcases some of Rabbi Sacks’ most important ideas.

Responsibility, covenant, the balance between the universal and the particular. But this isn't just a book of lofty ideals. It's about the small daily actions that create extraordinary change. Like all second episodes in this series, this, episode six, is a carefully curated journey of voices in dialogue with Rabbi Sacks’ ideas.

We'll hear from those who knew him best, his brother Alan, and his daughter Gila, who share insights into the ideas that shaped him. Then we'll meet two remarkable individuals living out his vision. Yoav Heller in Israel, building bridges in a divided society, and Daniel Lubetzky in America, building bridges in a divided society as well, spreading kindness through his work with KIND Snacks.

Despite the book's title that suggests grappling with issues like climate change and world poverty, its origins were situated in a far more modest question that Rabbi Sacks was asked by his brother, Alan.

Allen:  I was talking to my brother often about, on the one hand spiritual life, spiritual advancement, and on the other hand, life in the rat race. And out of those discussions came, I suppose, my question, am I leading a valid Jewish life working as a corporate lawyer, from whatever hour of the morning to whatever hour in the evening, or should I really be Reducing that, focusing more on spiritual pastimes, spiritual activities, learning. And again, out of that discussion came this book, which he proudly presented one day as the answer to my question. And of course, he truly believed that the role of a Jew in the world was to be an ambassador.

And an ambassador is somebody who carries himself or herself in the world in whatever he's doing or she's doing. It may be a doctor, a lawyer, or another professional, maybe a bus driver. But the way you carry yourself in the world, The way you the world, the way you carry yourself is a matter in which people should take pride that here is a Jewish person behaving in a certain way, which makes us feel good and respectful about being Jewish.

Tanya: It might seem surprising that Rabbi Sacks’ response to his brother’s question, how a Jewish lawyer in Israel can lead a meaningful Jewish life, resulted in his book To Heal A Fractured World, a title that evokes grand universal gestures. this paradox lies at the heart of Rabbi Sacks message.

Healing the world doesn't begin with sweeping revolutions, but with individual character formation. For a Jew, this means a life rooted in Torah, mitzvot, halacha, and the cultivation of virtues - middot - an era of social activism, where the focus often rests on on Systematic Change and Visible Impact, Rabbi Sacks offers a counterpoint.

The quiet, disciplined work of shaping who we are is the true foundation for repairing the world, he argues. This tension between Universal social activism and Jewish particularism was a driving force behind the book, as Gila shared with me in conversations about its creation.

Gila Sacks: I remember kind of two big themes in the development of the run up to him writing this book in particular. So one, and I can't say, I suppose, which was primary or if there was sequential, but one was a set of concerns or conversations. that I remember having with him over quite a period of time, and I'm sure he had many others, about the risk of disconnect between parts of the Jewish world where social justice and social action and a very universal, and in many ways very positive, but very universal message and approach to Judaism.

had really risen to the fore, but often at the expense, not always, but often at that point in time, at the expense of Judaism really rooted in halacha and in Jewish text and Jewish ideas. And there was a risk that I think he was seeing, we were seeing in different ways. of a separation, that somehow there would be a choice that you could have.

We don't need kind of that Judaism anymore of, you know, Judaism of law and of ritual, and there's some have something kind of, you know, archaic or parochial about some of that. No, we can do Judaism a different way, a Judaism that is super universal, maybe much more engaging for some communities, maybe much more engaging for young people that really is about going out and doing good in the world.

There were a lot of things kind of, there's a lot positive in that, but there's a lot of things wrong with that assertion. Fundamentally that the two, two modes, two ways of thinking about Judaism are separate, and that you can go and be Jewish just by kind of doing good in the world separated from a particularly Jewish and rooted and specific way of being and doing in the world. So part of what I think this book came from was a drive to show that these two things are integrally, inherently bound together, and that a social action or social justice focused approach to Judaism or to being living out one's Judaism, doesn't require letting go of some other way of being Jewish.

And to the contrary, I think what he was trying to do was to show that there is a very specific, and maybe we'll come onto this more, there is a very specific, a set of very specific principles and practices and rules around how to do good, how to be in the world. And they are absolutely bound up in and not separate from Jewish law and text and philosophy

Tanya: So on the one hand, To Heal A Fractured World was written to address a trend in Jewish activism that embraces a universal vision but divorces responsibility for the world from Judaism's particular tradition and laws. At the same time, Rabbi Sacks was equally critical of the opposite tendency within Jewish life, a focus so narrowly confined to the parameters of Jewish law and ritual that it eschewed any responsibility for the wider world

Gila Sacks: I talked about the choice maybe for some of the more kind of, you know, progressive, in the broadest sense, parts of the community, but the same was true maybe for the other end of the community, to be able to say ethics and responsibility are not a kind of fluffy add on that kind of liberal American Jews are somehow talking about.

This is as much part of your Judaism and needs to be treated with the same level of seriousness with which you treat other parts of Jewish law and practice. So I think it's, I suppose maybe there's some of those two things coming together

Tanya: This book is Rabbi Sacks’ response to two prevailing outlooks on redemption, ge'ulah, that seek to transform the world through dramatic and radical overhauls. The first is a religious perspective that passively waits for divine intervention, envisioning an apocalyptic moment when God will intervene to fix everything.

The second is a secular vision, epitomized by thinkers like Karl Marx, which advocates for ever increasing revolutionary destruction of the status quo to achieve a utopian society through human effort. While Marx was a vocal critic of religious passivity, famously calling religion the opium of the masses, his vision ironically mirrored the apocalyptic framework he opposed.

Both approaches, though seemingly at odds, are two sides of the same coin. They reject the world as it is, insisting that redemption can only come through destruction and total reconstruction. Both perspectives offer what Rabbi Sacks sees as false promises, quick fixes to profound and complex problems such as inequality, environmental crisis, and religious violence.

Rabbi Sacks rejects these revolutionary models, instead proposing a distinctly Jewish vision of redemption, one rooted in belief in God, And in God's belief in humanity. This vision emphasizes the long and often arduous process of transformation, grounded in the slow work of cultivating character, fostering empathy, compassion, commitment to tradition, and active engagement with the world.

Change. According to Rabbi Sacks, it's not about sweeping revolutions, but about transforming the world. one step at a time. Alan shared fascinating insights into three figures who exemplified this kind of patient, values driven engagement with the world, a model that aligns with Rabbi Sacks’ vision of how true and lasting redemption can be achieved.

Allen: my father always asked two questions about a lawyer, a doctor, a rabbi, or anyone. The first question would be, is this person a benadam? And the second question, is he a good lawyer? He very rarely got to the second question.

Because if he didn't answer the first question properly, that was it. You know, my brother, I've mentioned this a number of times, my brother had three photographs on his desk. He had a photograph of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he had a photograph of Joseph Soloveitchik, and he had a photograph of my father.

And he took, something from each of those. He took from Rabbi Solveitchik, the willingness to interconnect, to absorb and convert, as you could say, the world of secular philosophy into the world of Judaism and halacha. He took from Rabbi Solveitchik this whole idea of challenging the world.

in the form of outreach, taking responsibility for something beyond yourself, beyond your family out there. And from my father, he took this unswerving Jewish pride. I always mentioned that, and I have to apologise to my mother for very rarely mentioning her, but my mother was a of constant, small acts of kindness.

I think that something that Rabbi Soloveitchik and the Lubavitcher Rebbe, to take two pinnacles, I mean, there are many others, but to take these two giants, something about them is they were not afraid of coming into connection with the world.

Today, unfortunately, we see the Haredi world petrified of coming into contact with the world because of all the damage that it might do to their lifestyle and their worldview. Rabbi Soloveitchik was not afraid to interconnect with the secular world of philosophy. And the Lubavitcher Rebbe was certainly was not afraid of sending his emissaries out into the world to deal with the problems of saving or touching every Jew.

And I think My brother took that. He took my father's inner stubbornness. He took the outwardness of the Rebbe and of Rabbi Soloveitchik And that made him an outward person. He could have been a very inward looking person, focused on the Jewish community and dealt with standing and stature. He chose a different path. He chose a different path to go out and to take Judaism out into the world. First and foremost for the Jews, but then For the world, because the Jews have a message for the world. The Jews have a responsibility for the world. They don't just have a responsibility for their own shul or their own community.

He thought that people should be engaged with the world. and be the best, not, just be the best. If you can't be the best you can be, but do it in a way that you feel proud as a Jew and people feel proud seeing you as a Jew.

Tanya: In the introduction of To Heal A Fractured World, Rabbi Sacks confesses his love for the drama of ideas, explaining that, “ideas change people for good and bad. They shape how we interpret the world and what happens to us.”

Like all of his books, this one is rooted in ideas and concepts. But here, instead of focusing on what Ancient Greece called the virtue of democracy, Rabbi Sacks explores what he terms the democracy of virtue, the good that is real because it is done by ordinary people. He calls on readers to connect with the Jewish folk tradition of the Lamed Vavnikim (the 36 hidden righteous people whose merit sustains the world.)

These are not famous or visible heroes, but humble, unassuming individuals, like in the ancient folk tradition, woodcutters or horse drivers. Rabbi Sacks shares that in his own work, he has encountered many modern day Lamed Vavnikim and meeting them, he says, Open quote, has been a greater education than any ethics text, end quote, these are what he calls text people, individuals whose lives are so shaped by virtue and moral character that it infuses everything they do.

There is an unmistakable resonance with Chabad thought in this vision. As Alan Sacks shared, Rabbi Sacks was deeply influenced by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the late Lubavitcher Rebbe. For all his intellectual and philosophical reputation, was Rabbi Sacks at heart a Chabad thinker? It's an intriguing question that adds another layer to his approach to Jewish thought and practice

Gila Sacks:   Absolutely, he was a Chabadnik at heart. Although he said to me on a number of occasions, you know, the Rebbe asked many things of me, but he never asked me to be a Qabadnik. Which I think is quite important. In a way, I think it was quite important for him to be like, one foot in, one foot out, in terms of the work he was trying to do.

Absolutely. I mean, the stories about how the Rebbe shaped his whole life are very famous very well told stories, but really genuinely very true. I really do believe that those were absolutely foundational encounters for him, and really sort of set up everything else. Look, I guess in kind of, you know, a couple of main ways.

So firstly, just very fundamentally, the Rebbe's approach, and not only, not a philosophy, but like active approach, the way he lived and the way he led, was like built 100%, as far as I could see, on helping people to step up to responsibility. So, yeah, it's a famous story, but you know, when my dad was a, was like a 19 year old kid from nowhere and turns up to see the Rebbe.

Rabbi Sacks: It was a life changing experience. And the interesting thing was that he did not really let me ask him questions. He asked me questions. He was interviewing me. And he said to me, for instance, something like this, How many Jewish students at Cambridge University?

I said, I don't know, but around a thousand. He said, How many Jewish students go to the Jewish Society, get involved in Jewish life? I said, About a hundred. He said, you mean 90 percent are just completely disengaged? I said, yes. He said, what are you doing about it? And I, being very English at the time, started a sentence with the following words.

In the situation in which I find myself, which is a really English way of saying, could you ask me something else, please? And the Rebbe, believe it or not, he's a very, very polite man, actually interrupted me in the middle of that sentence, and he said, And you don't! Find yourself in a situation. You put yourself in a situation.

And therefore I think you should put yourself in a different situation. And this was absolutely mind blowing. There were hundreds of people outside waiting for their interview. And here is this great man, essentially telling me to become a leader, which is the last thing in the world. I wanted to be. And many years later, I said, what I learned at that moment was that people thought of this great man as a religious leader with thousands of followers.

I said, yes, that's true, but that's the least interesting thing about him. I said, good leaders create followers. Great leaders create leaders. And that. is what he did at that moment. And that moment never left me. It changed my entire life. Didn't change it immediately. It changed it slowly and gradually.

But when you are told by one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the 20th century, you are going to have to lead and you're going to have to lead because you are in that situation where you can do something. That did actually change my life.

Gila Sacks:  there's a reason he told that story more than any other story, because, all sorts of things came from that that, it wasn't a one off encounter, and he didn't just kind of let him go back to Cambridge he made him stay. And it was a, being asked hard questions. And it wasn't, obviously it wasn't just something the Rebbe saw in my father.

He saw this in many people. and the unbelievably powerful thing I think you still see is that the people that the Rebbe asked to step up and lead are still leading. It didn't just hang, you know, they heard it and they went on and handed that responsibility to other people. So this very particular combination of demanding a lot of people, but giving them the confidence that they can stand tall and do it, I think is something you see really lived out in Chabad philosophy and Chabad leadership. That confidence is very powerful. My father used to say, when people would ask him, you know, what was the secret of your success or variants on that question? And one of the things he would say was most important is finding. people who believe in you more than you believe in yourself. And that I think is what the Rebbe did and enables other people to do. So I think that ability to not make responsibility feel like a burden, okay, because I do think that's an enormous risk. It can feel like a very heavy weight, and a heavy weight alongside a lot of other weight that comes with keeping halacha and carrying the history of our people on our shoulders.

So wait, now I'm responsible for the whole world as well? That can be a very heavy weight. And an ability to turn that into a confident and positive and joyous thing is something I think that Chabad does and did in a very powerful way. And I think the second aspect of that is to live in two worlds. So not just a world of religion, a world of secular philosophy, but kind of more extreme than that, a world of mysticism, of deep spiritual reflection and encounter and experience. And also, you know, Cambridge philosophy, and everything that comes with that, and not see that as in tension, not see that as as difficult thought, right, but as something that. absolutely can guide each other. I'm going to get this story wrong.

I'll give it a try. He would sometimes refer to, I think he asked the Rebbe, you know, how do I do this? Like, how can I I want to be able to fully immerse myself in Judaism and in Jewish learning and so on. But I also love Shakespeare and Beethoven and Everything that comes with Western culture and civilisation and so on. And the Rebbe told him the story of there were two men who were, schleppers, And one of them spent his days carrying rocks, and one of them spent his days carrying diamonds. And someone could ask them both, Tomorrow, don't carry rocks and carry diamonds, I've got a sack of emeralds for you to carry.

And for the person who's used to carrying rocks, it's just another heavy sack. And for the person who's used to carrying diamonds, he knows it's different to diamonds, but it's also special. And it's a very simple story, but I think it meant a lot. To my father's understanding and ability to convey that this again, it wasn't that just one can manage both.

It's something much more positive and confident in that. It's your ability to understand and appreciate some things in the world that help you be able to appreciate and understand other things in the world. And again, if we come back to kind of the core themes of this book, I think that's really fundamental.

you can't take your Judaism, your Jewish values and ethics out into the world. Unless you really understand your Judaism, and you really understand the world, right? It needs both of those things for it to be meaningful. And that, isn't to be taken lightly, that's quite a task

Tanya: Two central elements of Rabbi Sacks thought, as Gila alludes to here, seem to draw directly from the teachings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The idea of leadership, specifically belief in a person's potential for leadership and responsibility, and the relationship between the universal and the particular.

For Rabbi Sacks, this relationship had a clear answer. The more deeply you engage with your particular religion, the better equipped you are to understand and appreciate others traditions, cultures, and faiths. Valuing your own heritage gives you the framework to respect and connect with others in theirs.

This was part of Rabbi Sacks global vision for Judaism, one he refers to constantly in his writings and lectures.

Rabbi Sacks: This globalizing world has to stress our commonalities. We're each in the image of God, but it has to value our differences as well. We are each. in an image different from everyone else. As the rabbi said, when human beings mint a coin, mint many coins in one mould, they all come out alike.

God makes everyone in the same mould, in his image, yet we all come out different. That is the message the world needs to hear in the 21st century, and that is the message we should be delivering to ourselves and for others. Let me urge that you go out and transform the world, and do so out of a deep Jewish commitment.

And therefore, when you go out to the world, daven every day, learn a little Torah every day, and then go out and change the world. Do your bit to make the world that is a little closer. to the world that ought to be. That way you will bring blessing to the world and pride to the Jewish people.

Tanya: But let's return for a moment to the first idea Gila mentioned, leadership and responsibility. In chapter 11 of To Heal A Fractured World, titled ‘Divine Initiative, Human Initiative,’ Rabbi Sacks presents a theologically bold idea that what matters most in Judaism is not just our faith in God, but God's faith in us.

It is this form of faith that, as we mentioned previously, cultivates the type of change Rabbi Sacks advocated. Slow, incremental, sustainable. To frame this idea, he traces a movement in the Bible that mirrors the parent child relationship. Early on, God acts as a parent who does everything for his children.

Miracles, salvation, direct intervention. But as the relationship matures, humanity gradually assumes responsibility. Learning to act independently. Eventually, the parent teaches the child to take ownership, culminating in a partnership where God and humanity covenant together to bring about redemption.

Not in one sweeping moment, but incrementally over time through shared action and love. What transforms us, Rabbi Sacks argues, isn't what God does for us, but what we do in response to his call. And that response is made possible because of God's profound faith in us. A belief that empowers us to rise to the responsibility. He entrusts us with-

Joanna: - he saw faith in life. So, you know, as I come back to this phrase again and again, “a Judaism engaged with the world”, but it was who he was, it was how he lived his life. It shaped his thinking the way it literally drove him as a person to do the things that he did. And he would have believed with complete and utter faith that God had faith in him. It is one person one day at a time and you can effect change. It's the butterfly effect. those are the things that have an impact on the world around us.

And he felt very strongly that each of us has a talent. Each of us has a purpose and where we can make the most difference is where what we can do meets the needs of what needs to be done. And he believed that with a passion. And I think just the other thing about Rabbi Sacks was that not only did he feel that God had faith in us, Rabbi Sacks had faith in people and he had faith in us and believed in what we were doing And encouraged us to be the best that we could be. And I think that was a unique talent of his. He really saw the best in people. I mean, one of the things I talked about the other day, I was speaking to a group, and I said, one of the things about Rabbi Sacks is, you know, we talked about his middot. He never spoke Lashon Hara, he never spoke evil about anybody. And that's not something that's so straightforward. He would literally shut us down. He saw the good in people and he would always look for the good. Always look to see how he could make things better. Active listening and hearing the other side. It was a unique perspective that he brought.

Tanya: That was Joanna Benarroch , whom you might remember from episode 2. She’s the CEO of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, and was Rabbi Sacks‘ right-hand for two decades. Joanna shared how Rabbi Sacks had an incredible ability to empower his team, encouraging them to rise to every occasion. I can personally attest to this.

On the occasions I met to seek his advice, he had a remarkable way of helping me see my own potential and abilities, challenging me to step up and lead in ways I hadn't fully recognised before. Gila also spoke about how this approach coloured so much of his interactions with others. He understood that changing reality, whether within ourselves or others, or the world around us requires courage and perseverance.

He knew that hard things had to be done and that disillusionment could easily set in. Yet his unique ability to inspire belief in others allowed them to push forward and meet the challenges ahead

Gila Sacks: I think he was very deliberate in thinking through the range of messages people need to hear in order to have the strength and the courage to do hard things, firstly, okay? And he spent a lot of time trying to help people not even trying to kind of tell people to do good, but trying to help people recognise the good that they do.

You've got to give people the confidence and the strength to believe things can change and that they can be a part of that. I mean, like, I see this all the time so I work in government, change is really hard. I see it all the time in my work almost the hardest thing is to give people the confidence to believe that things can change.

And if they can change a small thing and realise they did it. It's so much easier for them to then change a big thing because confidence and courage and an ability to handle risk differently it's not the answer, but it's a huge part of the answer.

Okay. So I think part of it is the straight truth. It is true that every small act in its own terms and in the terms that you don't know when you do it can have enormous value. But I also think there's something about you can't get people to engage in the big hard stuff, until they believe they can do something. One of the hardest things about the world we live in and the world he was writing for is that people don't really believe they can change stuff.

Tanya: Earlier we discussed how this book is, in part, Rabbi Sacks response to Marx's critique of religion. Marx claimed that faith anesthetises us to suffering, reconciling people to poverty, disease and death with the belief that this is the will of God. To change the world, Marx concluded, religion must go. But as Rabbi Sacks points out, Marx's revolutionary dream of utopia led to some of the most brutal regimes in human history.

Rabbi Sacks argues that Biblical faith is not about resignation to suffering, but about sacred discontent, protesting injustice through radical responsibility. A responsibility born in engagement with the world as it is, rather than revolutionary overhaul. As Rabbi Sacks says, open quote, to imitate God is to be alert to the poverty, suffering, and loneliness of others, end quote.

Opium desensitises us to pain. The Bible sensitises us to it. The world will not improve on its own. The Bible begins not with man's cry to God, but with God's cry to us. In our last episode, we heard Michal and Dara reflect on Mordechai's call to Esther. Deliverance will come, but you are positioned to bring it about.

The question is, can we hear that call? Can we act knowing it will take more than a generation and it will demand self reflection, hard work, and finding redemption in the most unlikely of places. Redemptive acts. are not about fire and lightning as Rabbi Sacks often reminds us, they're like God's revelation to Elijah on Mount Carmel, not in the wind or the earthquake, but in the still, small voice.

Redemption is born in those quiet, everyday moments of grace and kindness.

The kind that may seem small, but carry immense power. This philosophy emphasises virtue as much as duty. Focusing on the small, meaningful actions we can take within our messy, fallible human lives. It asks each person to hear their particular call and make a difference in their immediate sphere.

 Alan Sacks explains that this philosophy of change is why the book doesn't speak in abstract terms but focuses on real people.

Allen: It's a beautiful book, an incredibly popular book, perhaps because it's not talking about anything abstract and intellectual, like Radical Then Radical Now, Morality, and certainly many of the others are more difficult .The Great Partnership.

It's a book about you and me. I know all the people in that book. They're all real people, disguised, thinly disguised, with different names being used, but I know all of those people. And they're all put on a pinnacle by Rabbi Sacks because they were ordinary people who did special things. When I say special things, nobody climbed Everest, nobody split the atom, there were no open heart surgeons.

They were people who influenced the people around them by the way they behaved, ordinary people. And if you look over the years of Rabbi Sacks commentaries on the Torah, Covenant and Conversation, he refers to many people over the years, sometimes by name, sometimes not by name, but none of them are Rosh HaYeshiva or leading rabbis or spiritual thinkers.

They are ordinary people doing ordinary things. Sometimes there's one I think even about a man who never failed to take his wife a cup of tea in bed. These are matters which for my brother meant something because he would say, if you see how someone behaves towards others, you know what that person is inside.

That's why To Heal A Fractured World is such an important book, but also such an accessible book. But it doesn't touch on the Rabbi Sacks who was “Nasi Elohim Betocheinu” Rabbi Sacks would walk into a room and it doesn't matter whether there was a president of the United States of America or the prime minister of England or the future king.

He would walk in as a prince. A man whom dignitaries would respect for being Jewish. He had something to say that they respected and he carried himself with dignity. Well, again, I don't think that To Heal A Fractured World brings out that aspect of Rabbi Sacks, his achievements. But Rabbi Sacks wouldn't want everybody to strive for that.

Rabbi Sacks said, you are who you are, decide who the best you can be. And if you can touch some other people and make their lives feel a little better, by medical achievements, by, acts of kindness, I remember him writing about civility you'll be able to tell me, I can't remember who wrote the book Civility, about a professor, a black professor who had moved into a neighbourhood, where clearly blacks were not welcome, and he was sitting with his brother on the steps, and a woman comes across the street and gives him a cake. Her name was Kestenbaum.

Rabbi Sacks: There's an African-American, a Lutheran, called Stephen Carter who tells a story in one of his books. It's a fascinating story and a perfect illustration of what it is to live the responsible life. I gather in the early 1960s, Washington was quite a racially segregated city. There were predominantly white neighbourhoods, predominantly black neighbourhoods.

And he tells the story of how as a young boy, he and his family moved into a white area of Washington where they were the first black family. He says, our first morning in the neighbourhood, we sat on the front steps to see how people would welcome us. They didn't. They didn't even look at us.

It was as if we were invisible. And I felt to myself, we should never have come here. We will never belong here. And while I was thinking those thoughts, a lady on the opposite side of the street, her arms laden with shopping, turned towards us and gave us an enormous smile and a wave. Then she disappeared into her house opposite where we were living.

And then, a few moments later, she came out with a tray laden with drinks and cookies, and came over to me and my brothers and sisters, and said, how wonderful to have you here. That moment changed my life. And it taught me that I could belong here. That lady, he says, whose name was Sarah Kestenbaum, and who died all too young,

was an Orthodox Jewish lady. He said, Jews have a word for this kind of thing. They call it “chessed”, meaning kindness, especially to strangers, and especially when it's hard. That moment changed my life.

Allen: Now that changed that person's life in some small way. Now that's what Rabbi Sacks is talking about. Don't think you have to be Rabbi Sacks to change the world.

 We start with the bedrock of the Jewish requirement to bring God into our world. But then, let's go out into the world and make it a better place. We are here as ambassadors.

He's not going to bend Judaism to meet the world. He's going to try and influence the world to be along the tram lines that Judaism wants it to be , a world of social justice, a world of Chessed, Mishpat, Tzedakah u'Mishpat. That's the way he wanted to be.

Tanya: Daniel Lubetzky is a renowned business entrepreneur in America, whose story we'll delve into in the second half of this episode. But first I want to share an intimate portrait of his father, the person who most influenced him and taught him the meaning of living a life of responsibility. A value Daniel sees as quintessentially Jewish.

It too is a story of discovering kindness in the most unlikely place with ripples that continue to be felt decades later, despite the horrors his father endured during the Holocaust. He chose to believe in the transformative power of small acts to change the world. Inspired by this legacy. Daniel embraced the call to action and dedicated himself to making a difference

Daniel Lubetzky: First of all the name KIND was given in honour of my father. He passed away the year that we conceived the company, what turned out to be called kind. And we named it Kind in his honour because of the story that I told you about how he lived his life trying to spread kindness for others, and just trying to put smiles on people's faces in spite of what he went through and how he remembered that he survived partly because of the kindness including of German soldiers that most of them were monsters, but there were some people that helped him survive including a German soldier that threw a potato by his feet when people were not watching. And he chose to live his life by remembering that story. My sister and I have this debate, well, Daniel, you over do it in talking about this issue.

Why are you talking about the kind German soldier where there were so many? Well, he chose to talk about it and he chose to remember his life through that formative influence. Like it's, for me, it's very interesting that he told us that story because he wanted us to remember that not all Germans were bad.

My dad was a survivor of Dachau, a Holocaust survivor. But what defined him differently from most is that in spite of all the horrors that he went through he lived his life with so much kindness without forgetting the horrors of the Holocaust. It was a very rare combination.

My father had a number of friends that also had survived the Holocaust throughout his life. And most people fall into two categories. They were either, they had to shut it out, they could not talk about it. Or they were completely consumed and embittered by it. And my dad was able to talk about it and still be a force of light and kindness and positivity.

When he would talk about it, he would cry and it would consume him, but then he would spring back to. Making jokes and being a bridge builder and just trying to live his life as if his purpose in life was to make people's days better and tell jokes and just was just such a jovial guy and he was very Jewish.

He was not very religious. But he was very spiritual in a very deep sense, and both him and my mom were bridge builders,

and these were conversations that I had with Rabbi Sacks often about, you know, how do we need to live our lives? How do we need to build bonds while being true to our people, being true to humanity also.

 I don't think I realised how much it impacted me till I grew up later. Like, I think that a lot of who I am and how I live has to do with being the son of a Holocaust survivor, but I didn't realise that early on. I only, have connected some of those dots in the last few years. Like, I love building bridges, but I'm almost obsessive about it.

And I think part of it is really beautiful. Part of it is, I think, fear of what my father went through and a determination to not let that happen to my children, to my family. And sometimes it evolves into insecurity where I hate when people speak ill of me or lie about me. And it just.

gets under my skin. And what I want to teach my kids to do is live righteously, but don't let that consume you. But I have a lot of traits in me that I think are connected to his experience.

Tanya: Later in the episode, we'll hear from Daniel about his hands on work rooted in the philosophy of building bridges through small incremental steps rather than grand revolutionary gestures. Even speaking to Daniel virtually, it was evident that his success stems not only from his business acumen, but also from his extraordinary ability to connect with people on a deep level and truly see them.

What stood out most, however, was the profound connection he felt to his father and the sense of responsibility he carried to honour his legacy. This strong, often unspoken link between identity and responsibility forms a central theme in To Heal A Fractured World. Rabbi Sacks delves into how aligning with one's Jewish identity embracing responsibility for one's people lays the foundation for taking responsibility for the wider world.

As Gila observed, this idea is not just a thread running through this book, but a cornerstone of Rabbi Sacks' philosophy as a whole.

Gila Sacks: I think there are a couple of very fundamental themes which play out through this book and much more broadly through his work. I think, and they are kind of very deeply connected to each other. I think, firstly, the absolutely fundamental belief that people are responsible and that things in the world can change and that people can change them and that's what it means to be human.

If you are part of a family and part of a story and part of a people, that gives you a particular role to play in the world.

And so I think the relational aspect of responsibility is also very central here. You know, we can't assume that to be responsible in the world means being equally responsible and equally connected to all people at all times. A way of navigating responsibility, which starts from a very strong recognition of relationships and of what it means to build and have a marriage or a family or a community and be responsible in that space.

I think a lot of what he does, in this book, but also in a lot of his commentary on Torah, for example, is to look at the way in which the local and immediate ways we play out our identity and our responsibility are the foundation, the learning ground for a broader ethic. So there's a conceptual lens of “I'm going to bring my particular ethic or contribution into a universal sphere and responsibility” and that's how I will act. But I think there's also a much more practical personal relationship focused element to that question and that dynamic. Whereby, and which, I mean, in very obvious ways, right, you see playing out through, Sefer Bereshit and through the transition from being a family into a nation and what you learn and what goes wrong there.

Humanity didn't work out how to run societies until it worked out you know, how to parent. And I think there's a lot in that he keeps coming back to.

Tanya: There's a common saying, “charity begins at home.” For Rabbi Sacks, it might be rephrased as “responsibility for the world starts at home.” It begins with the individual and expands outward to interpersonal relationships, family, community, religion, nation, and finally the world. Creating a series like this comes with a challenge.

The temptation to turn it into a hagiography, idealising a person to the point that they feel distant and unreal. Rabbi Sacks would have resisted that. He often spoke against being placed on a pedestal. In fact, he often wrote about the importance of even seeing biblical figures as fully human, despite being connected to God in a way we can't fully understand.

Judaism doesn't believe in sainthood. Instead, it believes in the hard work of confronting our flaws and growing through them. God doesn't ask for grand revolutions or sweeping transformations, whether of character or the world. Both are unsustainable. What he asks for is far more profound to see ourselves and the world as they truly are imperfections and all, and to take steady deliberate steps towards betterment.

Gila and Alan both highlighted this about Rabbi Sacks. He wasn't perfect, and it was his awareness of his own imperfections that shaped his philosophy and who he became. This honesty gave him the insight and humility to focus on the slow, meaningful work of change, within ourselves and in the world around us.

It's a philosophy of progress that embraces humanity in all it's messy beautiful imperfection.

Gila Sacks: He was a human and he was flawed. The thing I think that was the most, in terms of his like personal characteristics, the thing I think that is the most impressive, and I really did not fully appreciate it, I understood it, but not fully until after he died, and people spoke to us, and I read things, was, like, he was constantly working on himself.

Constantly. He took learning, in the broadest sense learning from people, learning from experiences, so seriously. I've said in other contexts, but the day before he died he was still working on himself. He got sick very, I mean, thankfully it was very quick, but he he couldn't speak very much and it was COVID.

So we couldn't go to the hospital. So he would phone us like quite a lot in the last few weeks, but he couldn't really talk. And he said to his doctor the day before he died, you know, it's good this cause I'm really learning to listen. Okay? And he knew he wasn't always a great listener, and he really thought about it very hard, for a whole bunch of reasons.

And really right until the end. He was really working on himself. And he was a different person in so many ways. Even, he was a different grandpa than he was a father. He was a different, you know, post Chief Rabbi than he was a Chief Rabbi. And that wasn't just people age and mellow.

Like he really learnt and worked very hard at learning.  Someone told me actually, like during the shiva week this story that I, I hadn't heard that when he was a young rabbi or at some point he wanted to redecorate our house.

 There wasn't much money, he wanted to wallpaper the house, there wasn't much money. So he got some builders in to do one room, watched them really carefully, and then wallpapered the house. And I just love that story, because you can do anything I'm a rabbi, but I'm gonna learn how to wallpaper . And B if there's something you want to figure out learn. Ask someone, find someone, and learn, right? So, he really worked on himself. He really worked on himself. So that's one thing I'd say. He would say I think someone said to Churchill what's your definition of success? And he said, you know, moving from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. Now I always took this with a bit of a pinch of salt because there were ups and downs, but I wouldn't say he moved from failure really without any loss of enthusiasm, but he was definitely very reflective about things that were hard and it didn't come easily.

Maybe the last thing I'd say, and it's a cliche, but it was 100 percent true. When he died, and he writes about this in this book and in other books, right? What do people say about you when you die? And when he died, without exception, what were the things people said to us? Remember that he, you know, when I had each of my babies, he was the first person on the phone.

When I was sick and he was every day he's on the phone. Five times a day he's on the phone. He was at everyone's Simcha and he was, or, you know, I'm, it was a young rabbi or I was a young teacher, I was a student and I was struggling with things and he made time for me and I left standing taller, right.

And I believed I could do it. And those are the stories. So someone said to me at the time. My brother said actually, you know, I took it for granted isn't that how everyone should behave? But people don't take it for the recipient doesn't take it for granted. And so yeah, it is the small stuff. And you don't know the impact that those small things can have. And yeah, he wrote a lot of books and he left us, thank God, with a lot. But the thing he really left was people whose lives he touched. In some very simple ways. And that's something we learn a lot from.

Allen: With all of his greatness, with all of the praise that was lavished on him, with all of the devotion and adulation. He bowed down before the people, retained his humility. He was never patronising.

He was never more superior than the people around him, whether they be the princes or the prime ministers or the doctors and lawyers and academics, and especially the students with whom he interacted. And we haven't talked about his role as a teacher at all, which is of course massive.

He was somebody who bowed down before the people. He wanted to find out more about you than he wanted to tell about himself. And this is an act of greatness to be somebody of such power, such influence, such adulation, and yet bow down before the people, I think is a mark of a great character.

So if I were to say what was his greatest achievement, I would say it was to be Jonathan Sacks, even though he was Chief Rabbi, Lord, Professor, and all the rest of it. He would quote Bill Clinton to say compliments are fine as long as you don't inhale.That's the way  he was constantly appreciative of the people around him.

Tanya: The name of this podcast series, Books and Beyond, reflects its vision. Four years ago, I launched a class at Matan Hasharon aimed at moving beyond the cursory overviews typical of traditional lectures. I created a Bet Midrash dedicated to studying Jewish philosophy.

As part of this, we spent two years immersed in Rabbi Sacks' writings- reading, debating, and critically assessing his ideas while exploring how they intersect with our reality. On October the 7th, we had just finished reading Future Tense. Despite our shock and grief, we turned back to the book and began asking hard questions about its relevance in an unprecedented shattered reality.

Because as we recognise, ideas are only as valuable as their ability to be acted upon in the real world. I had already conceived the idea of this podcast, but it was in that moment that the name Books & Beyond was born. This series would, of course, study and unpack the books, but it would also ask how they reach beyond. How, in Rabbi Sacks own words, they move from being text books to becoming texts lived out in the real world by text people.  

In that spirit, the second half of this episode delves into the “Beyond” by speaking with two text people. Individuals who have brought Rabbi Sacks' ideas to life within the messy, complex realities on the ground. One in Israel and one in America.

Yoav Heller: There is a defining term in Rabbi Sacks' writing and it's the word responsibility. Rabbi Sacks time and time again, he goes into the individual and says, and you could see it repetitively that eventually Judaism is a lot about taking responsibility

At some time we tell people we need to fix Israel, we need to fix society, we need to fix politics. But then people tell us, why aren't you talking about politicians, about the press? And we're telling them because they're not the problem. Actually, they're a symptom, but we tell people we are the problem. But we are also the solution. When I say we, it's not me.

It's me. It's you, Tanya. It's every Israeli. And we tell them that's a very fundamental basis of what Israel will be about if there will be here a “tikkun” a fixing and Rabbi Sacks talks a lot about the responsibility of individual as a part of the collective.

Tanya: You just heard Dr. Yoav Heller, the founder of Israeli grassroots organisation, Harivon Haravi'i, the fourth quarter. Yoav explains what his organisation is and why it was founded.

Yoav Heller: It's a movement, a grassroots movement that was established almost three years ago when Naftali Bennett was the prime minister of Israel. And it aims to actually change the whole dynamics of Israeli society, Israeli democracy, and Israeli politics from what we call politics of zero sum game to politics of hospitality, wide agreements.

Politics of covenant. Basically the term “Rivon Harevii” the fourth quarter comes from the fact that Israel celebrated 75 and we're in our fourth quarter of existence. And we saw a quote by David Ben Gurion that says in 1948, that one day when Israel will be in its seventies, a new generation will come about.

And that generation will not know the Holocaust survivors. Or the pioneers and will not be able only to dwell on the stories of the past, but rather will need to write the stories of the future, or maybe in the words of Rabbi Sacks, the covenant of the future that is based on the past. And the fourth quarter is a global phenomenon is not in history with American civil war happened in the fourth quarter of the first fourth quarter of existence of the United States, the USSR fell apart in the fourth quarter France went into a big crisis in the fourth quarter in the first fourth quarter of existence and of course in the Jewish history twice. The fourth quarter when we had sovereignty, we did not survive beyond the sovereignty beyond the fourth quarter. So we think we arrived in a very historical time to the Israelis We and we predicted that if we do not establish the foundations of society and then politics in order to change the whole dynamics, then this endeavour, this great endeavour of the Zionist state might fall apart.

Tanya: Harivon's belief is that in the fourth quarter, years 75 to 100 of a state's existence, there is a heightened risk of internal collapse, as seen in the eras of Solomon and the Hasmoneans.

To counter this, they established a grassroots movement called the Four years ago to help Israel thrive during this critical period. Their goal is to build a broad centrist coalition, not a political entity, but a platform fostering dialogue, trust, and community across all sectors of Israeli society. I attended one of their events which drew over 5, 000 people from across Israeli society.

Yoav's language, imagery, and vision felt unmistakably Saxion. And then he mentioned Rabbi Sacks directly. Intrigued, I looked up his speeches on YouTube and saw how deeply Rabbi Sacks had shaped both him and the vision of Harivon. I had to know more. Why had a secular Israeli Jew been so profoundly moved by Rabbi Sacks' ideas?

Yoav Heller: So the story of the forming of of the fourth quarter movement. And once again, it aligns also with the influence of Rabbi Sacks on the founders, we're four founders. And basically we thought to ourselves the following: we are all one of us was more in the military, the second were in business, me and the CEO she was also with me in an organisation called ”Maoz”, which work with elites, which is very important. But at some point we understood that the big issue is the distrust within Israeli society. We understood that politics in the 21st century polarisation is not a bug, it's a feature. It's here to stay and actually we felt that the Israeli citizen does not understand the danger of polarisation to all of its facets of life, like polarisation means you'll have less security.

Polarisation means you'll have less welfare economy and so on. So then we said we can go top down into politics. Let's form a party or something like that, but we saw that all efforts actually not only in Israel, but in the world of good people, it's almost arrogant to think that you're just more special than the others in the political system because there are good people there.

And you will be the one that by yourself, you will change this massive phenomenon of polarisation which is as Rabbi Sacks says, this is a wounded world. We're a wounded people. We hurt one another. So we suddenly said to ourselves, and reading a lot of what Rabbi Sacks talks about civic society, and talks about the difference between the priest and the prophet. That's also fundamental is writing. We suddenly understood that maybe we should take the long way and the long way is a bottom up way is let's go to the citizen with our legs. House by house to all Israelis and bring the word and invite them actually to come out of the computer, to come out of Facebook and Instagram and so on and actually look to one another in the eyes and say let's form a movement which is a civic political movement.

It aims to change politics, not less than that but actually with the influence, with the force of the people that are taking responsibility, not blaming anyone else. So that is why grassroots, which people still until today, look at us as a bit crazy, because people have a disbelief of how could we actually change these enormous phenomenons, this enormous polarisation.

But I think more and more people are believers. And I think also another thing is important. You don't need 10 million people in the grassroot in order to create the change. You actually need early adopters. And that's where I shift from Rabbi Sacks to technology, although he talks about technology also.

We need early adopters. You need a million people. And you know what? You need 500, 000 people that embed these ideas. And bring this paradigm to the Israeli society.

Tanya: Yoav had read Rabbi Sacks extensively, and through his books, he had been deeply impacted by his ideas and thought. Though he had never met him in person, Yoav found in Rabbi Sacks' writings a message that spoke directly to the challenges of Israeli society.

It was a message that offered a hybrid vision of Jewish identity and liberal democratic values. A message that highlighted the power of a story, a shared narrative capable of uniting individuals and communities. Inspired by these ideas, Harivon Haravi'i dedicated significant time to engaging with people from diverse walks of life, working together to craft a new Israeli story.

From Rabbi Sacks, Yoav understood that the way to heal a fractured world was not through power, but through influence. Not through revolution, but through evolution. Not through sweeping overhaul, but through the sacred, meticulous, and often arduous work of individuals committed to the idea of a better society.

And perhaps most importantly, Yoav and his colleagues embrace the profound truth that it is the long road to freedom, undertaken with patience and perseverance, that ultimately pays the greatest dividends.

Yoav Heller: And then I think at some point in the hardest days, what I tell myself, it's only about a tipping point.

It's just about a tipping point. And you know, and the shortcuts are tempting because at the end of the day, you sit down and you see, we're a big movement. right now. We're 158, 000 people, very diverse, very interesting. But if you go to the press, we're barely covered. We had a conference the “Courage Conference” is based on the courage and the hope of Rabbi Sacks.

5,000 people came when Ayalon was closed and the train, some of the train was closed and there was no artists, no celebrity. 5, 000 people came, in order to stand together and we launched there, the covenant, the Israeli story that we wrote with thousands of people, not even one journalist wrote about it.

But instead of going and feeling sorry for ourselves, we tell people this is the long path. This is the hard way of how do you fix a society, and I just remind you that Rabbi Sacks  talks about the fact that society, he talks about in 2009 already, that society is broken because it started, I will translate them into Israeli.

It started with a melting pot, that's good instincts. But then he said it became chaos so that's why I think the idea of grassroot that brings a place to everyone and goes the long way into changing Israeli society the broken society that will change politics is a very important notion for grassroots.

Tanya: The change that Yoav refers to, that is not found in revolution or top down, but instead in evolution and bottom up. Another person who believes deeply in this form of change is Daniel Lubetzky, who we already heard from.

Daniel is the founder of Kind Snacks and Builders, a global initiative to replace us versus them division. He is the newest shark on ABC's Shark Tank and the author of the New York Times bestseller, Do the Kind Thing. Let's hear what Rabbi Sacks says about him in his book, Morality:

Rabbi Sacks zt"l: I came to know Daniel through his efforts for peace in the Middle East. Daniel entered business in the first place as a side project while engaged in research about legislative means to foster economic relationships between Israelis and Palestinians. While doing his research, he started a business, Peace Works, that brought together Israelis, Palestinians, Turks, and Egyptians to make food based on local specialities, encouraging, through economic cooperation, friendships between groups of people who would not normally mix.

Subsequently, His concern with obesity in the United States and the unhealthiness of many snacks led him to create a new business based on a series of snack bars with pure natural ingredients under the label of “KIND.” What makes Daniel a new kind of entrepreneur is the way he conceptualises business as a force for social and moral transformation. In his head offices in New York, profit and not for profit enterprises work side by side in the same space. Among other initiatives, he's been working on ways of getting children to learn about the shared values that bring us together in common humanity.

Tanya: I asked Daniel about how social change happens. In his answer, you will hear echoed so many elements of Rabbi Sacks' thought on the issue.

Daniel Lubetzky: Another thing that I talk about is the How instead of the What. And what you're talking about Tanya, about living our daily lives, every moment matters, it's about the how do we conduct ourselves when we're walking in an airport, when we are walking on the streets, when we're talking to strangers. Every single moment, it really far more defines who we are than a particular mission we may have, like, if I'm committed to make peace in the Middle East and this or that, but I treat people with disdain and I'm a jerk along the way, I'm actually net a negative force for society.

And it's fascinating to me that some people don't realise that. I've met some people that are diplomats who are supposed to be building bridges and the way they treat each other, the way they treat others is not with kindness and respect. And I'm not saying anybody doesn't make mistakes. Every one of us makes we're all perfectly imperfect. But the "how," the daily moments, those little interactions really define us more than anything else, because those are the ones that are made up of our life. They're 99 percent of who we are. All the single moments added up and how we choose to live will, will ultimately not just define who we are, but the world we live in.

If all of us choose to build bridges and to treat people with respect and kindness and to do mitzvot, then I think this will become a better world and vice versa. The more that we see on social media, people just tear each other apart, and the more that all this hate gets spread through rigid ideologies and rigid tribal toxic polarisation forces, the more that we will then inherit and become that.

So it's upon all of us according to Rabbi Sacks approach. For me, my Judaism, was shaped by my experience as a Mexican Jew. I went to the Yiddish school in Mexico. They taught us Yiddish before they taught us English or Hebrew, Yiddish. It was like an immigrant school and they taught us Isaac Bashevis Singer and Sholem Aleichem.

And for me, one of the most important stories that marked me that I still think about, that I must've heard when I was in, I don't know, fifth grade, sixth grade, maybe seventh grade, was about this rabbi that used to leave his town and a bunch of people in the community were like, is he violating the Shabbat?

Like, why is he every Shabbat he leaves and they were upset that he was violating Shabbat. So they sent this nosy member of the community to follow him and this person followed him and it was like, Oh yeah, this guy's up to no good. He's going to the next shtetl and why is he going to the next shtetl and traveling on Shabbat?

And then they found out that what he was doing is helping a family in need. And there was a family that was barely able to eat and he would bring the wood and he would bring them food so they could have a warm home and that he was there to feed them. And so that for me is Judaism. Judaism is about tikkun olam, it's about kindness - chessed - about trying to bring kindness to the world and it's you know, it is very much in Pirkei Avot and in all of the precepts of our fathers and it's what connects me the most to how I see my role in this world, how I aspire to see it.  

Tanya: I was curious to know from Daniel how his connection to his Jewish roots, culture and tradition had shaped and inspired his social activism. Was there a specific moment or event that served as a turning point for him?

Daniel Lubetzky: When my father passed away, I hadn't met Rabbi Sacks at that time. This was 2003 and I went to Rabbi Aryeh Scheinberg, who was my dad's very dear friend and our family's rabbi in San Antonio, Texas.

I told him, Rabbi, I know my dad wanted, he mentioned that he did Kaddish for his father and I'm not very religious. I don't know how to pray. I don't get it, I don't understand why would God want me to pray? Like why would God care about us exalting God like feels so it doesn't connect with me.

And the rabbi said, do me one favour Daniel, go and do Kaddish every day. And if ever you're not able to do Kaddish because you're traveling and you have to skip it, read Pirkei Avot. And I read Pirkei Avot and I did Kaddish every day and I learned to meditate and to connect internally and with my Judaism.

I grew so much. It was a very weird year, Tanya, because the year that my father passed away was probably one of the hardest years of my life. He was my mentor, my best friend. It also was probably one of the greatest spiritual growth years of my life. And also, a very successful year professionally. It was very weird.

It was the year that I launched the One Voice Movement with my friend Mohamed Daouche to try to help build a movement of Israelis and Palestinians standing against extremism and wanting to break the shackles of extremism and move towards conflict resolution. And it was the year that I launched KIND and it was a very interesting painful but powerful year and I think it had a lot to do with my going to temple every day and doing kaddish every day.

Tanya: This daily ritual of reciting Kaddish, the mourner's prayer for his father, became more than just an act of remembrance for Daniel.

It served as a connection to something far greater, his people, his heritage, and perhaps even to God. Through this connection, Daniel found himself growing, both ethically and Jewishly. Embracing his particular identity didn't turn him inward. Instead, it gave him the strength to look outward and tackle larger, universal challenges.

In that moment, he wasn't just living his own story. He was embodying one of the central messages of To Heal A Fractured World, that by finding meaning and grounding in our own unique traditions, we can build bridges to repair and heal the world around us. He was touching on one of the main themes in Rabbi Sacks' work, the relationship between the particular and the universal.

When I spoke to Yoav it became clear that his organisation had chosen a unique approach to counter polarisation and internal strife in Israel, finding common ground, learning to truly listen, and creating change through influence rather than power. Their mission embraces identity, tradition, and history with a vision of writing a shared Israeli story together.

For Daniel, however, a Mexican born American Jew, the son of Holocaust survivors, and a highly successful entrepreneur, the challenge is somewhat different. In many ways, it mirrors the one Rabbi Sacks faced in Britain. On the one hand, Daniel's particular identity calls him to focus on the specific challenges facing his own people.

On the other hand, he is deeply engaged in a universal conversation, grappling with issues that transcend borders and communities. Daniel began his journey in social activism with an initiative to build bridges between Palestinians and Jews, a cause he remains deeply passionate about. Today, his organisation - Builders - takes a broader approach but maintains the same goal to transform how people think about society.

In this work, Daniel sees the reflection of a core idea at the heart of Rabbi Sacks' philosophy. The dynamic interplay between the particular and the universal. It's about honouring the uniqueness of one's identity while simultaneously contributing to the greater collective story and conversation of humankind.

Daniel Lubetzky: This pin that I'm wearing is the Builders Movement, which is committed to try to help builders stand up against destroyers. Builders build rather than divide, destroy, and demolish, which is what dividers and destroyers do. Builders have to unite, bring light, and build together. And, you know, the last year since October 7th has been very painful to a lot of us across the world.

And it reminded me of a conversation I had with Rabbi Sacks many years ago, when I asked him about whether my role, was too particularistic to try to help the Jewish people or universalistic trying to help the world. Which was a conversation I was having with a British friend of mine who's not Jewish, Harriet Green, who loved the work I was doing and helped shape a lot of how I thought about these things.

And You know, I told him that sometimes I struggle because I felt the need to both prevent what happened to my father from happening again to any other Jewish people, but I also wanted to prevent it from to any human being and to build universal bridges. And Rabbi Sacks talked about how that is an essential balance that all of us as humans have to contend with and that you need to do both.

You need to find a way to both advance your particularistic goals of defending the Jewish people and the universal goals of including by alliance building. We talked a lot, Rabbi Sacks and I about alliance building. As you know, he was an incredible leader in building bridges in the UK. He was, in my opinion, if there had been a Chief Rabbi for the world, like a pope, he probably would have been a contender for that role, right?

Like he was, he a foremost leader for the Jewish people, but he was also a human leader. He was a person that in the United Kingdom in particular, but across the world was respected as a bridge builder. And he stood up against injustices in the United Kingdom. And sometimes he would get criticised, why are you not focusing on just the Jewish concerns?

And he would obviously explain that is not sustainable or acceptable or virtuous to your point. That it's upon us as Jewish people to stand up against all forms of injustice and to build those alliances, both for strategic reasons and because that's a moral right thing to do.

After October 7th and after seeing the, some historic allies not stand up for the Jewish people, I started asking myself whether I was part of the problem rather than part of the solution, whether I needed to adjust my style of philanthropy. And interestingly, over the last year, I've come back to remember Rabbi Sacks lesson and to think that no, it is both.

You have to stand up against antisemitism and you have to stand up against all forms of hate. When you narrowly only try to challenge one form of racism. You don't ultimately actually achieve fighting even that form of racism because it becomes superficial

Tanya: In the first part of this episode, we explored the book as a polemic against a Marxist approach to fixing the world, a method that promises quick solutions to humanity's deepest problems, envisioning a utopia achieved by tearing down the status quo and starting anew. Rabbi Sacks, in contrast, advocates for gradual bottom up change, rooted in dialogue,

engagement and the slow but steady work of building something lasting. When we spoke to Yoav, he reflected on the early conversations among his organisation's founding members. He described the long painstaking road of fostering dialogue and incremental change within Israeli society. Progress achieved not through sweeping revolutions, but through meaningful grassroots engagements.

Turning to Daniel, I asked how in his role within a large and influential corporate organisation, he grapples with the social issues in America that threaten to fracture society. Did he see parallels between Rabbi Sacks' vision of the long road to change and his own experiences? Did he also see this as a response or perhaps even a protest against the allure of quick fixes and radical overhauls? Daniel's answer was fascinating and revealing.

Daniel Lubetzky: Here in the United States with all these rigid ideologies or what they call identity politics. Following the summer of George Floyd, team members came to my office telling me I had to sign this document and I looked at it and it wasn't the Kind ideology of philosophy. It was a very, like, almost neo-Marxist document that said we are evil because we're white and I'm like, I can't sign this stuff.

That doesn't make sense. You're just gonna in a short term be performative, but in the long term, it's not going to actually be sustainable. And we took the cathartic pain of what happened with that summer and went through and went deeper into trying to evolve and grow. And there were things that were doing wrong that we needed to do better.

We, Started recruiting more historically black universities are things that I'm very proud of, but the things that were sustainable and the right things to do that we're now doing still, you know, five years later. As opposed to things that some corporations, when did they check the marks said these things are not and the way some people are being taught, quote, unquote, to be tolerant, it's actually teaching intolerance. These quote, unquote, anti racist ideologies are actually yielding more racism because they're not teaching you to authentically learn to be a builder. Talk about and think about all with compassion, with curiosity, with courage, with kindness, with creativity.

Like instead of teaching people to actually understand how heuristics work and how do we fight all forms of generalisations, we're just being taught about these archetypes of being a victim or being a oppressor. And those rigid ideologies end up leading to the wrong thing, right? It ends up making people cast themselves as forever victims or forever not able to be protagonists in their own lives or forever oppressors that no matter what they do, they can't stop being an oppressor. That's not good for anybody. We need to help every human being understand what you were talking about, Tanya, that every one of us is a protagonist even in our own life and in the world, that every one of us don't just have the power to shape our lives, we have the power to shape our world, and with that power comes the responsibility to do that and to every single day live our lives with purpose to try to make sure that every single day we are shaping the world in the way we want to have it.

Tanya: Daniel touched on the theme of responsibility, a concept that lies at the heart of Rabbi Sacks' writings. As I've mentioned in previous episodes, Rabbi Sacks’ philosophy can be envisioned as forming a three pronged triangle. At one point is human freedom, at the second, human responsibility, and at the third, covenant.

Each depends on the other, creating a dynamic balance that underpins his vision of a just and moral society. When drawing from Rabbi Sacks work to inspire his activism, Yoav also talks about these same foundational ideas.

Yoav Heller: Rabbi Sacks talks about two terms that we think are crucial in order to actually fix our society. One is the term of covenant. And then the second is the contract. Let's say a word about it. We tell people, look, Rabbi Sacks says the covenant is the brit that God had with Moses and Moses with Bnei Yisrael at Har Sinai.

So if you want a constitution, we need first of all, before the contract, we need actually the value based story where the trust between us is created. And many Israelis are now, and that's practically the problem of Israel and the whole Western world. We're lacking trust. So in order to regain trust, we need to go to the fundamentals of our story, of the values, and that's the covenant.

Tanya: Yoav views the cultivation of trust, a core value of covenant, as a crucial remedy for the polarisation gripping Israel today. He believes trust is the foundation for building a more cohesive and resilient society. When I turned to Daniel, I asked him what kind of change he believes is needed in America to combat polarisation, antisemitism, and the divisive dynamics of identity politics.

His response brought us back to the theme of responsibility. But this time framed within the context of the victim oppressor narrative, a lens that's become prevalent in today's cultural discourse. Daniel's perspective offered a thought provoking take on how moving beyond this binary of the victim oppressor could foster a healthier, more unified society.

Daniel Lubetzky: To divide, demolish, and diminish, those are destroyers. But the vast majority of people are human beings that have good intent. And we need to become builders by taking action to bring people together, bring light to the world, build together, and become builders.

 The problem with the victim versus oppressor dialectic is not just that it's so binary that you have to be one or the other, which obviously in real life, we live in the grey and there's a lot more nuance. It's also that the framework prevents you from having purpose and shaping how your world is.

Because if you're a victim, then you see the world as a complaint. You have no power. Do we really want to teach any kid to be a victim rather than to be a protagonist in their own life and to change the world? Do you really want to tell people that they're an oppressor and no matter how they act or what they do, they're not going to be able to like that, both those it's very fatalistic and reduces all of society into exactly what we don't want to be.

It's literally the opposite of what I want to be, which is encourage every human being to understand that instead of being destroyers, we all have to be builders. And the vast majority of human beings, the vast, overwhelming majority of human beings aspire to become builders.

Tanya: I was eager to hear Daniel's thoughts on whether in light of the events of 7.10 and the surge of antisemitism, as well as the extreme hatred he'd witnessed, both against Jews in particular and Israel more broadly, he still believed in the potential for building bridges and combating hatred. Or had the ship already sunk, could there still be hope for fostering understanding in such a deeply fractured world?

Daniel Lubetzky: It's very, very important people to understand that just like Al Qaeda had a strategy, it was evil but it had a strategy when they brought down the planes. So does Hamas have a strategy. It's a horrible evil but very smart strategy, they want to divide us.

Hamas's objective is literally to help invade people's minds and prevent Israelis and Jews from being bridge builders and to turn us into us versus them. And we can't allow terrorists to do that. We have to defeat and obliterate terrorists while bringing kindness and bridges to people that want to be our partners.

We have to do both. Yitzchak Rabin used to talk about how he's going to pursue peace as if there's no terror and fight terror as if there's no peace. You have to stand up against your enemies and obliterate them before they hurt you have to defend yourself and win but at the same time we need to build those bridges And that's literally what hamas wants us not to do.

So we need to remember we can't play into them. We need to understand that the vast majority of the world does not reside in your feed of your social media. It is incredibly distorting. Most of my Jewish friends and family, all they do is watch this horrible stuff and we're sending it to each other. And it's advancing Hamas's goals.

We do need to be informed, but we need to pace ourselves with our consumption of social media. And instead go into the  real world and build those bridges. Let me give you an example of the college campuses.

Columbia University, it's one of the most toxic campuses. You've seen some of the horrible things of this person calling to lynch the Jews and saying, be thankful that I'm not killing all the Jews. It's horrible stuff. And from looking at the news and watching some of those marches on social media, you'd think that they represent a huge number of people, but it's the rule of 1%.

Out of 6, 000 campuses, there were only 60 encampments. So only 1 percent of the campuses in the United States had encampments. You'd think that it was 50 percent from looking at the media. Within each of those places, the number of people that are outrightly anti semitic, it's probably 1 percent or less. It's still a very big problem we need to start fighting.

And similarly, at Columbia, there's a handful of people that are rabidly anti semitic, and there's a few hundred that are being wooed by them and acting in very inappropriate ways. But that same year, Columbia elected a Jewish student as their student representative.

It was an Israeli woman that got elected head of the Columbia students. An Israeli woman got elected and Zionistic, a woman that cares about fostering peace, but very proudly Jewish and Zionistic. And she got elected head of the student union. It blows people's minds because you would not imagine, but you cannot allow social media to distort you.

Where I find hope is in my daily walks, where I meet human beings and I discover, I remember that most people, 87 percent of people have the potential to become builders and we just need to, every one of us live that life that way.

Tanya: Some might call Daniel naive. Others might see him as overly optimistic. But during our conversation, what stood out to me was how deeply his father's story had shaped him. A story of unexpected kindness in the darkest of places and an unrelenting determination to make the world better than the one he had witnessed.

I saw in Daniel a profound faith in people, in the world, and in humanity's capacity for good. He shared how his faith resonated with the message he took from his meetings with Rabbi Sacks, who similarly embodied a belief in our ability to be builders of a better future. It's a sentiment we've heard echoed throughout this series.

Rabbi Sacks’ faith in people wasn't just an idea, it was a defining characteristic. It's a quality that Daniel also carries with him, a shared belief in the potential of humanity to rise above and build anew.

Daniel Lubetzky: When we were building the One Voice movement, this was around 2003, more or less, 2004, and we came to the United Kingdom, and at that point we were just getting going.

And he invited the entire community, the Jewish community and other communities across the United Kingdom to his home and talked about us. And Muhammad Darausheh and I talked to the Muslim community, the Christian community, we had the Archbishop Canterbury, we had a number of imams.  The fact that he saw in us worthy to invest in opening his house and his relationships and introduce us to people, just talked about how much he understood the importance of building bridges, how much he understood the importance of supporting young people to advance those goals. I can think of two other very important moments that I had with Rabbi Sacks. One is when he came to my office at Kind, and we talked for about two hours. And my uncle and my mom happened to be visiting. So they joined, so it became kind of like a family meeting and therapy session.

But Rabbi Sacks was just such an elegant man. What was incredible about him is he could interact with heads of state and not miss a beat, right? Like, he was like a head of state. And he could be talking between my mom and my uncle and I, like, getting into a family feud and just beautifully navigate all of us to elevate all of us.

He was just a beautiful human being. When he was at kind and we talked a little bit about it, he learned a little bit about what I've done through Kind and how Jewish ethics had informed a lot about my values and about my commitment to build with  kindness, you know, to not just make healthy snacks, but also to inspire kindness in all of us.

And we discussed that and we agreed that we were going to write a book together. And we're planning to write a book about how Jewish ethics informs business ethics and how and I was in his queue and he's like, you're there. We're almost there. Unfortunately he left us too soon and I never got a chance to do that, but I hope somebody will do this because I think Jewish values really inform so much more than we realise and really can answer a lot of the questions that we have today.

And some of the books that he wrote are just incredibly important pieces of that puzzle that we need to get to and read because they'll help all of us, particularly during these very difficult times.

Tanya: As I wrapped up my conversations with Yoav and Daniel, I asked them what kept them going. What gave them the strength to persevere in their tireless efforts even when disillusionment set in, when their work seemed fruitless or when others told them they were fighting a losing battle.

Both of them pointed to the same idea from Rabbi Sacks, an idea that also opens our series, the distinction between optimism and hope.

Yoav Heller: We have hundreds of activists out of our 150, 000 that go all over Israel and bring the word of the movement and invite people to take part. And we're always asked before we start talking, are you going to give them some hope or optimism because people can't bear the despair anymore?

And then I tell people, okay, so to your question, am I optimistic? So I tell them, look, I'm not a magician of optimism because as Rabbi Sacks says, sometimes you see the reality and it's hard to be optimistic. And he says, optimism is almost a trait. It's a bit of naivety. It's, Some of us are optimistic and some of us are pessimistic by nature.

He says the more interesting term is hope and that goes back to responsibility. He says “What is hope? Hope is the ability to imagine a better world, but not only to imagine it, actually to pursue a better world because imagining is not enough.” Let's take Theodor Herzl the prophet of the State of Israel, he did not only envision the State of Israel, not look at a better future, he actually pursued it and it was a nightmare for him. And I think that these days I tell people and we tell people we should be hopeful, we should actually create by ourselves that hope and that is actually how you manufacture reality. But then comes another term that Rabbi Sacks uses - and actually we coined our annual conference on that term - He says in order to be hopeful together actually in times of despair, you actually need to be brave.

Why? Because you know you come into a room right now in Israel and say I have hope for a better future. People look at you like you're a little bit delusional. And by the way I'm empathetic to that feeling. Everything here in the past year is tough even. The last three weeks which were much better in the way that we appear militarily and so on still we're getting every day very difficult news and I think above all we still have also 101 hostages, kidnapped people in Gaza so we can't be just joyful. So I think the issue of let's create hope and let's combine it with the fact that in order to be hopeful together we need actually You To be brave to be courageous.

Maybe that's a better word. That's a fundamental idea I think in Rabbi Sacks’ writing and for us, it's formative for the future of Israel.

Tanya: Hope - Yoav explained - compels us to take responsibility. It's not enough to simply imagine a better world. We have to actively work to make it a reality. Responsibility is at the heart of hope.

In Daniel's book, Do the Kind Thing, he writes a powerful line that resonated with me. “Some people dub me an optimist, but I think that misses the point. I consider myself an actionist. A person who does not accept things as they are and commits to changing them, hopefully for the better.” As I read those words, I couldn't help but hear echoes of Rabbi Sacks. So I asked Daniel about it.

Daniel Lubetzky: What happened to me with the quote that you're referring to is that a lot of people, when I started doing work to build bridges between Israelis and Arabs, would say, Daniel, you're so optimistic. And I would look inside, I'm like, I don't think that's the word that defines me.

 I worry all the time. Like, I'm a Mexican Jewish neurotic guy. I'm always worried about everything. But what I realised is for me, optimism or pessimism were not the words that define me. The words that define me is determination and what I came up with the term actionism, very much rooted in Rabbi Sacks’ philosophy to just do what you need to do.

And also, obviously, Rabbi Hillel, who said, you know, it's not up to you to finish the task, but it's also not for you to desist from starting. And so every one of us in the world that we live in have to understand that if we do not fill the world with kindness and fill it with a positivity that we wanted to have, that void will be filled by forces of darkness that are on the vanguard right now. And there's a lot of forces of toxic polarisation that are trying to divide us as humanity, as Jews, as others.

Tanya: I don't know if Daniel knew this, but Rabbi Tarfon's timeless words stood at the top of Rabbi Sacks' website for over a decade while he was Chief Rabbi. They encapsulated his philosophy and they still do. The road is long, the task is great, and the work is much.

Yet even faced with a daunting journey, Rabbi Sacks reminds us of our responsibility to act. Systematic change begins with small, incremental steps towards a better, more perfected world. And it starts, with us by answering our unique call, committing to the hard work of living a life of virtue, nurturing interpersonal relationships, practicing kindness, and staying faithful to a divine mission.

We are not expected to complete the work, but neither are we are we free to abandon it. We have a duty, a sacred obligation, to leave the world a little better, a little kinder, and a little more just than when we found it.

And in Daniel's words, in Yoav's work, and in the lives of so many inspired by Rabbi Sacks, we see this responsibility in action. This is hope, not just an abstract idea but as a living, breathing force that moves us to make a difference.

The task is great. The road is long, but we walk it step by step with faith in the world we can build together.

Rabbi Sacks zt"l: Never, ever think that we can't change the world. We can, one day at a time, one life at a time, one act at a time. And that is the only way you change the world.

Tanya: I'm Dr. Tanya White, and you have been listening to Books & Beyond: the Rabbi Sacks podcast. On our next episode, Rabbi Dr. Sam Lebens and I take a deep dive into the fourth and final book of our series, Morality. We explore its prescient themes of democracy and danger, identity politics, post truth world, and Rabbi Sacks’ vision for a moral society. Don't miss it.

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 podcast, 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 minds and hearts that at the time of recording 94 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.