Rabbi Sacks: No idea has been more revolutionary than the one we express on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. The idea that the world is ruled by justice and it's our duty to pursue it wherever we can. Our task is to bring a little less hell and a little more heaven down here on earth, which is why this year I've come to Pristina in Kosovo, because it's in what's happening here that you can see what's at stake.
[music]
I supported the NATO intervention from the outset and the reason was simple. Not so long ago we said “Never again,” and yet here it was beginning to happen again. There were terrible human tragedies, towns and villages were being shelled. There were indiscriminate attacks on civilians in the name of security, families were being separated, thousands were in flight.
There are certain wrongs that have no national boundaries, that cry out to heaven and move us to act. And this, for me, was one.
This was an unusual conflict, one of the very few times in human history that a war was undertaken, not on grounds of national interest, but for moral reasons. To prevent ethnic cleansing and to defend human rights.
But can there be a moral war?
Is justice a word that belongs to international relations?
Is one nation or a group of nations ever justified in intervening in the internal affairs of another?
These are ultimate questions and how we answer them will shape the future of our world.
[music]
As long as human beings have walked the earth, there's been a certain view of the world and you can see it in nature. The strong dominate the weak, the powerful prey on the powerless, predators lie in wait for the injured and vulnerable. And if that's how it is in nature, maybe that's how it is in human nature.
Plato has one of his characters say that justice is just another name for the rule of the strong. And maybe that's what our world is - the rule, the conflict and the balance of power. Forget justice, it doesn't belong.
But somewhere long ago in ancient Israel, a different voice was heard. The voice our ancestors called God, saying, that may be how the world is, but it isn't how it ought to be and you can change it.
War, violence, persecution, injustice may be natural, but they're also wrong.
Human beings have freedom and choice and responsibility. So just because something's happened in the past, it doesn't have to keep happening. We can build a better world.
And with that voice, another set of values emerged, telling us that what matters isn't power, but how we defend the powerless. That right is sovereign over might. That justice isn't the rule of the strong. It's honouring God's image in every human being.
Life is sacred. Human beings have rights, and when those rights are threatened, we have to come to their defence.
[music]
It took a long time for those values to prevail, but they did, first nationally, then internationally. In 1948, the Nuremberg Trials and the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights established that there are universal standards of justice.
It's no defence to say ‘I was just obeying orders’ There are crimes against humanity as such. And at that moment, a possibility was born, that international intervention could be justified on moral grounds, to defend the rights of people facing persecution on a massive scale. Not because it's in our interest, but because of the claims of justice and humanity as such.
That, I believe, is what happened here.
[music]
People sometimes say to me, why do you keep on remembering the Holocaust? It's over, finished, it happened a long time ago. Forgive and forget.
To which my answer is, we don't remember for the sake of the past, but for the sake of the future. So that if we again see people deprived of rights, driven from their homes, dispossessed and crying for help, we don't just stand still and do nothing. People who forget the past, said Santayana, are destined to repeat it.
And there are certain things we just can't let happen again.
Kosovo wasn't another Holocaust. I don't mean to compare the two. But it did show that we've learned. The fact that so many countries were willing to come to the defence of a people not their own did show that justice means something in the lives of nations. It did more than give back Kosovo Albanians their home and their safety.
It sent a message to the nations of the world, saying, ‘Yes, you're independent, yes, you're a sovereign power, and we respect that. But human rights are non-negotiable and stand over all of us as a limit that can't be transgressed.’
[music]
Military intervention is a terrible thing. It's bloody and messy and innocent people get killed. There is no clean war. But sometimes it's the only weapon we have.
And I, for one, face the next century with more confidence, knowing that the world didn't stand by in the face of ethnic cleansing. Could we have faced the future if it had?
Just a few weeks ago, one of the members of my family, from Israel, was here with other youth leaders, taking part in one of the most beautiful things that happened during the war. They were working with children of the refugees, running summer camps, taking their minds off the trauma and getting them to smile again.
I've been enormously proud of what Jews from Britain, America and Israel have been doing during the conflict, setting up field hospitals, refugee camps and community centres. And now, at the request of the United Nations, they're organising the schools in Pristina, an important way of bringing back a sense of normality and healing. Together with the NATO troops and so many other relief agencies, they're helping to rebuild what was destroyed.
Not just buildings, but also lives, communities, a society. The things we only fully appreciate when they've been torn apart and we discover how hard it is to put it back together again.
And, of course, this is the work that counts, because war isn't an end.
It's only the chance of a new beginning. And here, in a region marked by conflict for centuries, a new way has to be found. And let faith teach us what it is, because if Judaism has anything to teach the world, it's that the fatherhood of God means the brotherhood of mankind.
Jew, Christian, Muslim, we worship the same God, even though we worship Him in different ways. And God is telling us that though we have many faiths, He has given us only one world in which we have to learn to live together.
War, violence, injustice, dishonour God and diminish us.
That was always true. Only now the stakes are immeasurably higher.
[Rabbi Sacks blows the shofar]
And in this, as in so many parts of the world driven by conflict, you begin to understand the power of one word to change the world - the word ‘forgiveness.’
Because only if the peoples of the region forgive one another will they break the cycle of revenge and retaliation that has scarred this land for centuries. Forgiveness is one of the great religious ideas. And only if we have the courage to forgive, are we able to break free of the prison of the past and turn enemies into friends.
As we approach the end of this, the bloodiest century in history, we've reached a crossroads in the human journey. The sheer scale of our technology has given us the most powerful double-edged weapon ever held by human hands.
We can use it to build or destroy, to kill or to heal, to create suffering or justice.
And how we use it will depend not only on governments, strategic alliances, international forces and global assemblies. They can make war, but peace is born in the human heart.
It depends on us, each one of us. What we cherish, what we remember, what we're prepared to fight for, our passion for justice.
And here in Kosovo, you see what's at stake.
Let all of us, Jew, Christian, Muslim, people of all faiths and those of none, dedicate the coming year to reflection and reconciliation, reflection on the suffering we cause one another, reconciliation in the name of God, whose children we are. Let all of us, mindful of the power of faith to mend what we've broken, stand up and say never again will we use the name of God to fuel conflict or justify hate.
That's how out of the rubble of war you begin to build a gateway of hope.
“See,” said Moses at the end of his life, “I've set before you the blessing and the curse, life and death. Therefore, choose life.”
May God write all of us, guardians of his world, into the Book of Life.
[music]
