Jonathan Sacks

Rabbi  Lord Sacks
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Rabbi Sacks at the 2006 National Poverty Hearing
Position	Chief Rabbi
Organisation	United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth
Began	1991
Ended	Incumbent
Predecessor	Sir Immanuel Jakobovits
Personal details
Born	March 8, 1948 (1948-03-08) (age 61) London, England
Nationality	British
Denomination	Orthodox
Alma mater	Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge New College, Oxford King's College London
Semicha	Jews' College and Etz Chaim Yeshiva (London)

Judaism portal

Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks, Kt (born 8 March 1948, London) is the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. His Hebrew name is Yaakov Zvi.

As the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the UK, he is the Chief Rabbi of the mainstream British orthodox synagogues, but not the religious authority for the Federation of Synagogues or the Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations or the progressive movements, Masorti, Reform and Liberal Judaism.^[1][2]

Education

Sacks was educated at St Mary's Primary School and Christ's College Finchley, Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge (MA), New College, Oxford, King's College London (PhD), Jews' College London and Etz Chaim Yeshiva (London).^[3]

Sacks studied philosophy for his PhD^{[citation needed]}. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates from the universities of: Cambridge; Glasgow; Haifa; Middlesex; Yeshiva University; Liverpool and St. Andrews, and is an honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius and King's College London.

Career

Sacks heads the Chief Rabbi's Cabinet^[3] consisting of fourteen other rabbis who advise him on a number of areas, such as Jewish education, Israel, Jewish-Christian relations, matters relating to the Beth Din (Jewish court), and several other areas of concern to the Jewish community. The Chief Rabbi's Cabinet meets on a quarterly basis and its members are entitled to represent the Chief Rabbi at public events.

Sacks had been Principal of Jews' College, London, the world's oldest rabbinical seminary, as well as rabbi of the Golders Green (1978–82) and Marble Arch (1983–90) Synagogues in London. He gained rabbinic ordination from Jews' College as well as from London's Etz Chaim Yeshiva (London).

Praise and recognition

In September 2001, the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred on him a doctorate of divinity in recognition of his first ten years in the Chief Rabbinate of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.

In 2004, his book "The Dignity of Difference" was awarded the Grawemeyer Award for Religion.

Sacks was knighted in the Queen's Birthday Honours List in 2005 'for services to the Community and to Inter-faith Relations'.^[4]

He was made an Honorary Freeman of the London Borough of Barnet in September 2006.^[5]

On 13 July 2009 it was announced that Sacks was recommended for a life peerage with a seat in the House of Lords by the House of Lords Appointments Commission.^[6][7] He took the style Baron Sacks of Aldgate in the City of London.^[8]

Controversies

Orthodox opposition

A group of rabbis, most notably Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv, accused Sacks of heresy against the tradition of Orthodox Judaism in his book The Dignity of Difference, in which he wrote words that implied an endorsement of pure relativism between religions, suggesting that Judaism is not the sole true religion (e.g. "No one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth"). This led him to amend the book for its second edition, though he refused to recall books already in the stores.^[9] In his "Preface to the Second Edition" of the book, Sacks wrote that certain passages in the book had been misconstrued: he had not intended to endorse cultural or religious relativism or to imply an equivalence between Judaism and other religions. He noted that mainstream rabbinic teachings insist that knowledge of righteousness and the possibility of a true relationship to God is available in non-Jewish cultures and religions as an on-going heritage from the time of Noah, so one does not need to be Jewish to attain to salvation.^[10] As this diversity of covenantal bonds implies, however, and as Rabbi Sacks has stressed in many of his writings, including in the revised edition of The Dignity of Difference, traditional Jewish sources do clearly deny that any one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth. Such an either-or view of universal truth he has in fact characterized as imperialistic, pagan and Platonic, and not Jewish at all.^[11]

Rabbi Gryn and Rabbi Jacobs

Sacks provoked considerable controversy in the Anglo-Jewish community when he refused to attend the funeral service of the late Reform Rabbi Hugo Gryn and a private letter he had written in Hebrew, which (in translation) asserted that Gryn was "among those who destroy the faith," was leaked and published. He wrote further that he was an "enemy" of the Reform, Liberal and Masorti movements, leading some to reject the notion that he is "Chief Rabbi" for all Jews in Britain. He attended a memorial meeting for Gryn, a move that brought the wrath of some in the ultra-Orthodox community.^[12][13] A similar stance was taken by Sacks and his Beth Din when they prevented the retired rabbi Louis Jacobs, who had helped establish the British branch of the Masorti movement, from being called up for the Reading of the Torah on the Saturday before his granddaughter's wedding.^[14]

Secularism and Europe's changing demographics

Sacks is deeply concerned with the corrosive effects of materialism and secularism in European society, arguing that it even undermines the basic values of family life and leads to selfishness. In 2009 Sacks gave an address claiming that Europeans have chosen consumerism over the self-sacrifice of parenting children, and that "the major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians." He argued that Europe is in population decline "because non-believers lack shared values of family and community that religion has."^{[15][16][17][18]}

Current positions

• Rabbi and Spiritual Leader, Western Marble Arch Synagogue, London (since May 1, 2004).
• Jakobovits Professor in modern Jewish thought, Jews' College London, 1982.
• Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth (since September 1, 1991).
• Visiting professor of theology at King's College London.
• Honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, 1993.
• Presentation (Honorary) fellow, King's College London, 1993.

Previous positions held

• Lecturer in moral philosophy, Middlesex Polytechnic, 1971–3.
• Lecturer, Jews' College London, 1973–82; director of its rabbinic facility, 1983–90; Principal, 1984–90.
• Visiting professor of philosophy at the University of Essex, 1989–90.
• Sherman lecturer at the University of Manchester, 1989.
• Riddell lecturer at the University of Newcastle.
• Cook lecturer at the University of Oxford, University of Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews.
• Visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Sacks is also a frequent guest on both television and radio, and regularly contributes to the national press. He delivered the 1990 BBC Reith Lectures on The Persistence of Faith.

Works by Jonathan Sacks

• Traditional alternatives: Orthodoxy and the future of the Jewish people (1989)
• Tradition in an Untraditional Age (1990)
• Persistence of Faith (1991)
• Arguments for the Sake of Heaven (1991)
• Crisis and Covenant (1992)
• One People? (1993)
• Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren? (1994)
• Community of Faith (1995)
• Torah Studies: Discourses by Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson (1996)
• The Politics of Hope (1997 revised 2nd edition 2000)
• Morals and Markets (1999)
• Celebrating Life (2000)
• Radical Then, Radical Now (published in America as A Letter in the Scroll) (2001)
• Dignity of Difference (2002) (Grawemeyer Award winner)
• The Chief Rabbi's Haggadah (2003)
• To Heal a Fractured World - The Ethics of Responsibility (2005)
• The Home We Build Together - Recreating Society (2007)
• The Koren Sacks Siddur (2009)
• Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible (2009)
• Future Tense (2009)

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jonathan Sacks

• Office of the Chief Rabbi
• The Koren Sacks Siddur website
• Amazon Author Page