In conversation with Prof. Ron Heifetz

Opening remarks

Moderator: So perhaps starting with you Chief Rabbi, if you'd like to share with us for a few minutes some thoughts on your own leadership journey. 

Rabbi Sacks: Oh, well I'm just about to leave so... I don't know actually, I think it began simply with a certain impatience, I love moving the furniture, I love upsetting people, I love jumping into ponds before I discover I can't swim and therefore I think I just found myself where it was beginning at university, thinking, you know, maybe we can lighten things up a little bit and I think that's been where I've been ever since.

I just want to say, sorry, in parenthesis, can I just personally say how moving it is for me to see Jennifer and Austin and Lisa and the Science Foundation here. I hope and feel, as we all feel tonight, that this incredible organisation has really taken everything that Adam was and stood for and made sure that his influence continues to inspire successive generations of people walking down the road he walked down and ensuring that his memory really is blessed. So we thank you for your, everything you have done and we thank everyone who's been involved in helping Adam to continue being an inspiration to all of us.

And secondly, what an immense privilege I feel it is to be sitting next to this man who is just a totally, I mean he's just an absolute giant on the field of leadership. The only honest writer on leadership I've ever come across.

Everyone else on leadership writes books saying leadership is fun. Ron writes books saying leadership is hell but do it anyway. And he is just, you must read his books, they're absolutely superb.

I think I was driven by one particular passion which has stayed with me from my earliest days to today. And that is, if you look at the history of Judaism, you see it was a revolutionary force in the world. It produced one of the most learned and literate people there has ever been.

What's his name? Johnson, what's his name? Paul Johnson, in his “History of the Jews” called Rabbinic Judaism, “an ancient and highly efficient social machine for the production of intellectuals.” It was a revolutionary and fearless force. And the more I looked at Jewish life around me and the more I read, the more I realised that somehow other Jews in Judaism have not really faced the problems of the modern world in the last two centuries.

We understand why. There was suffering from an onslaught of antisemitism, of the most horrendous dimensions culminating in the Holocaust. But somehow, Judaism was not engaging with the world.

And that drove me from then to today. And I just felt if somebody else isn't doing it, I'd better do so.

I have to say that throughout my career, had it not been for mentors and people who took the trouble to spend time with me and encourage me, including the Lubavitcher Rebbe and other people along the way, I wouldn't have been where I am today.

They believed in me more than I believed in myself. And we all have to find someone like that to help us along the way. And I just end with a memory - it's now actually 21 years - but a memory from the very beginning of my Chief Rabbinate, which I think might tell us how Anglo-Jewry changed.

It was the first time I was ever invited to speak to the Board of Deputies. And for some reason, feeling they had quite a young Chief Rabbi, they said to me, ‘Aren't you young for the job? And I said, ‘Don't worry, in this job, I'll age rapidly.’ And for some reason, I remember this very clearly, just to make me feel I wasn't entirely alone, they had put behind me on the platform of the old Woburn House, you remember, they had a kind of stage, the graduating year of the first year of the Adam Science Programme.

And I got up and I said to the Board of Deputies, ‘Everyone says Anglo-Jewry lacks young leaders.’ I said, ‘It's completely untrue. There is the evidence right behind me. What it lacks is people willing to make space for young members.’ 

There was the most icy silence. Except for one person, I never forget this, the late Lady Janner, Greville's late mother, who was about so high, but feisty beyond feisty, and she said to me at the end, as everyone was trying to avoid eye contact, ‘That's it, Chief Rabbi, you tell them!’ 

Well, I think Anglo-Jewry has now made space, not perhaps enough, but at least more than there was. And that is a tribute to the Adam Science Programme.

Professor Heifetz speaks

Moderator: I guess one of the things that's interesting, the age-old question that often people think about, is are leaders born, or are leaders something that you can develop and you can grow? And I'm guessing, possibly as an academic in the field, you might think one can grow and develop. But I'm interested in both your views about whether or not a leader is born, something we have innate within ourselves, or something we can grow and develop. Chief Rabbi?

Rabbi Sacks: When you look at the biblical leaders, you see that the common factor is this enormous reluctance to lead. Moses, being challenged by God to lead, refuses four times. I regard that as proof that Moses was the greatest prophet there ever was. He knew exactly what he was letting himself in for.

Jeremiah has this eloquent passage in which he says, ‘Your mission, Your word has brought me nothing but shame and ridicule and humiliation all day long. I try to stop speaking in Your name, but Your word within me is like a fire burning in my midst. I generally try to run away.’

I think in Judaism, people become leaders because they feel they can't not. Because there is a challenge, and nobody else is leading it, and so you do it. And that's why you do it. And I think you become a leader exactly as Ron mentioned, by just doing it. There's no other way. 

It's absolutely fascinating. If you look in Parashat Tzav, which deals with the sin offerings, you will see there's a whole lot of conditionals. If an individual sins, if they're Kohanim, if the whole community sins. But when it comes to the leader, when a leader sins. In other words, the Torah assumes that you cannot be a leader without making mistakes. And it is through those mistakes that you actually learn.

I don't think Judaism has a passion for charismatic leaders. I think Ron is absolutely right. Judaism is about diffusion of leadership all the way down. Moses, on his father-in-law's advice, sets up hierarchies of leaders of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. So on average, one Jew in eight was a leader.

Only that small a percentage, we know that probably every Jew is a leader. But we've always believed in delegating and empowering. We've also been good at challenging our leaders.

And the one thing that Judaism says is, you know, leadership is something you undertake with humility. And you do so not because you think you're better than anyone else, but because there is a cause. And somebody has to do it.

The opposite of the Jewish theory of leadership was summarised in a wonderful poem, which I just looked up on the way here, by Roger McGough. Does anyone remember the Liverpool poet Roger McGough? It's called “The Leader.” And it goes as follows:

I wanna be the leader

I wanna be the leader

Can I be the leader?

Can I? I can?

Promise? Promise?

Yippee! I'm the leader.

Now what shall we do? 

So I think people who want to be leaders, for the sake of being leaders, don't really have a place in the Jewish community in the limelight and survive for very long.

Leadership has to be fuelled by passion, educated by mistake, and driven by principle. 

Professor Heifetz speaks

Rabbi Sacks: Advice to my successor? Say no. 

Advice to my successor? Number one, have a really, really good sense of humour. Number two, have the luck that I did, which is marry the Chief Rebbetzen. Without Elaine, and without the support of our kids, but especially Elaine, it would have been very, we just wouldn't have, it wouldn't have happened.

And number three, I think the test of a community, which is just keep going, you know, at the really difficult times. I must tell you how I came across Professor Heifetz.

When I suffer from insomnia, I surf Amazon.com, which I believe we support singlehandedly, actually. And I was looking and I suddenly saw this book called “Leadership on the Line,” subtitled “Staying Alive Through the Dangers of Leadership.” And I must tell you, at a difficult time in my Chief Rabbinate, I was sustained by two things:

Number one, John Travolta and the Bee Gees singing “Staying Alive.” And the other, which you may have heard if you watched the Diamond Jubilee concert, the great poet of our time, Sir Elton John, singing “I'm Still Standing.” So, as soon as I saw that Ron had written a book called, subtitled “Staying Alive,” I realised that this was a book and eventually a man that I really needed to get to know.

So, sense of humour, strong support from your wife, and number three, just go.

Rabbi Sacks: Challenge number one is not to be afraid. I have to say this so importantly. When I open a Jewish paper - at least some Jewish papers - what do I see? Everyone hates us. Everyone hates us, everyone hates Israel. The truth is, yes, the Jewish people has enemies. But the Jewish people also has friends. Good and loyal friends. And we would have more if we went out to make them. And I do not want our kids to grow up thinking that to be a Jew is to be hated by the gentiles.

To be a Jew is to be loved by God. And to be a channel through which God's love flows to the world. Be it Jewish or non-Jewish. Be it Orthodox, Reform or secular. We have to be a channel to that love. So number one, we have to avoid negativity.

Number two, I believe the community has already begun an incredible road. I mean, let's give tribute to some of the great leaders in our time. I don't want to be invidious here, but I mean, because all our leaders are outstanding leaders.

But I think we owe, and I'm going to name names here, a very special debt of gratitude to a giant in leadership like Gerald Ronson. He is an absolute, outstanding example of an organisation, really, that has leadership delegated all the way through. And that is Gerald and Gail. Between them, they've given so much to our community. 

I think of a key individual, some key individuals, like Sir Trevor Chinn, who brought together Jewish Continuity and JIA to make UJIA. I think of people like David Lewis, David Young and Michael Levy, who brought together a whole lot of different welfare groups to create Jewish Care.

I think there will be further rationalisations in our community. And I think, you know, you keep needing to be rationalising and bringing the organisations together in creative synergies. So I think that's the second challenge.

And the third challenge is a big educational challenge. We have built more schools, Jewish day schools, in the last 20 years than at any comparable period in Anglo-Jewish history. 20 years ago, we had 25 percent of Jewish kids at Jewish day schools. Today, almost 70 percent. 

No community in the world has changed that far, that fast. And therefore, I think the real challenge will now be to raise our game, Jewishly, so that we lead not only as Jews, but lead in a Jewish sort of way.

Prof. Heifetz speaks