[incomplete transcript]
It’s hard to express one’s feelings… how very very deep our sympathy.
In speaking about Rabbi Sacks, z”l, on this terribly sad day, I am thinking about the man who, in the words of the Archbishop of Canterbury last night, devoted so much of his life to reflecting on God at the most profound level. I would add that he didn’t just reflect. He wrote and taught until the last, making that connection with God a reality for millions around the world.
Rabbi Sacks was a force for good, almost without parallel in the modern jewish world. A man of charisma and charm. Even mentioning his name, especially to Americans, creates a frisson of excitement. People knew him as a scholar, philosopher, a teacher, a leader, but most important, a courageous mensch. A naturally shy man who could electrify an auditorium.
This morning I rewatched the earth-shattering short speech he gave in the House of Lords about antisemitism. A carefully timed intervention and writing about the oldest hatred. It has been game-changing. And he had a way, I believe unique in our times, of attracting skeptics, atheists, people deeply suspicious about rabbis and religion, to engage with his unique brand of orthodox spirituality. Rabbi Sacks embodied a concept that I discovered 25 years ago, in the writings of the Ushbitzer Rebbe which has profoundly influenced my thinking. Yesterday those of us who were fortunate enough to be in the shul would have heard the binding of Isaac being read… Avraham is encouraged to embrace doubt, uncertainty, human beings when faced with an impossible contradiction of the sort that Avraham experienced have a natural tendency to shy away, to parse what is going on in their lives, God must want A and not B, or B and not A, or to put the duvet over their heads and be paralysed entirely by the uncertainty. For the Ushbitzer the challenge of the Akeidah was for Avraham to realise that he could have a meaningful spiritual life, to progress and continue notwithstanding in the uncertainty, to embrace it and even - using a word that Rabbi Sacks was fond of - antifragile, meaning to grow from the experience of dealing with the difficulty.
We were blessed that in this era Rabbi Sacks, rabban shel kol yisrael, we were granted a teacher who personified this idea. He never shied away from difficult issues; he never claimed that faith and Jewish practice were straightforward, in a post-enlightenment epistemological framework. He was fearless in tackling tough issues and unfashionable subjects. morality, sexuality, faith, overbates deconstructionism, and his bête noire. Moral relativism. There was no thinker, speaker, author or advocate that he would take on and win, in his own inimitable way. This meant he was able to expand the tent of faith and adherence to orthodoxy beyond what anyone could imagine. And in this, Rabbi Sacks more verebbi, was a modern day avraham, allowing, empowering and even giving permission for people to believe and practice judaism, even when they aren;t sure, and might never be sure. There’s been a consistent message from the rabbinate since the awful news began to spread last night. The overwhelming messages rabbi sacks was there for me. He gave me support and encouragement. He helped me out when I had a personal crisis. He was there when something went wrong in my professional life. He supported hundreds of rabbis and others, and further afield in his quiet understated way. His impact on the rabbinate is incalculable, and the void caused by his passing, unfathomable. I learned many things from him. Vicky and I had the enormous zechut to get to know rabbi sacks as the rabbi and rebbetzin of their shul for the past seven years, as personal friends and as active, engaged congregants. And it's been an inspiration, repeating some of the things that my colleagues have said, to watch Jonathan and Elaine's relationship. Their love. The closeness. The support, extraordinary bond between them. Their openness, both in personal relationships and even in interviews in the press. And their overwhelming love for their children and grandchildren and to see it all close up. I can only imagine the pain.
Few Dunstan Roaders will forget Rabbi Sacks jumping on a chair on the night of Simchat Torah, and shouting in yiddish to the astonishment of people. Then he buttoned his jacket back up and went home.
At the Templeton award ceremony, the austere organisers were astonished when he broke into song…
And I won’t forget, Elaine, you might remember that he gave a drasha in honour of his 70th birthday…. And I said the following. Dunstan Road must be the only place in the world, where the most famous Rabbi in the world is the stand-in when the rabbi is on holiday. The following shabbos, the chazzan began, and he had a coughing fit, and I stood in. and afterwards rabbi sacks came up to me, and he said, you know, dr is the only shul in the road where the rabbi is the stand-in for the chazzan.
My personal relationship with rabbi sacks meant more to me than I can say. And it has been a tremendous spur to my personal professional development. In my role as Chief Strategist of university jewish chaplaincy, of which he was co-founder and life president, he was ….
encouraging and always deeply interested in the challenges of jewish students, especially around assimilation and anti-zionism…
The most eloquent spokesman for Judaism of our generation. The pre-eminent global jewish voice, he raised the profile of united synagogue and of British Jewry worldwide. We the rabbinate were in awe of him, and so proud that he was our Chief Rabbi, and then afterward our ambassador to the world. In many senses, all modern jews are students of rabbi sacks, whether they know it or not, whether they acknowledge it or not and whether they like it or not.
And I'm reminded of Satmar Chassid who came to see me one shushan purim, I don’t know why he wanted to come, and he sat there and he said he was beginning to struggle with ideas outside of the box in which he’d grown up. And he said, ‘I've started to read the writings of that Rabbi Sacks’, and this had transformed his world.
Despite his genius, and it was genius, he was always willing to learn. I was thrilled last year that in a drasha on Shemini Atzeret he quoted a book that I'd recommended in a drasha. And he often asked me for sources I'd cited that he hadn’t heard before. No one ever had an ordinary interaction with him. He was a man that could influence people's lives with a single interaction, and with a twinkle in his eye. As some of you may have seen, a message sent by the very well-known anglican Giles Fraser who is a close friend of mine, who - Giles and Lynn ate a while ago with Jonathan and Elaine at our house, and you may remember, dancing with his children, Giles has Jewish children and a Jewish wife, and this has absolutely transformed the way in which they are bringing up their children, to give them jewish content in their lives. extraordinary.
All who care about right and wrong and morality share your loss and your pain as the world mourns along with you.
30 years ago Rabbi Sacks spoke about what was important to him….
He chose books because they endure. And despite his sad and untimely passing, his many books, broadcasts, his lucidity, his extraordinary ability to distil complex ideas into meaningful inspirational content for a broad audience, will all live on. The loss is immeasurable, but the light that Rabbi Lord Sacks casts in every corner of the globe, his extraordinary creativity, these are the legacy of a once in a generation towering transcendent figure who none of us will ever forget.
His paths and words will forever remain an inspiration.
