Israel Needs Ethical Soul Search: Sacks

As several senior Israeli government officials are mired in controversy, the Jewish State is in serious need of ethical soul-searching, Commonwealth Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks said this week.

“The way I see it is this: Zionism has achieved its first great objective – creating a Jewish state it is time now to achieve the second great objective – which is a Jewish society, and that is something quite different.”

This society would be predicated on a “sense of Jewish ethics permeating the great institutions of society”, he said.

Rabbi Sacks’ refusal to blindly support Israel is well documented – and has been the subject of controversy throughout his 15-year tenure.

In 2002, he told the Guardian that “there are things that happen [in Israel] on a daily basis which make me feel very uncomfortable as a Jew”, which sparked a storm of protest across the Jewish world, and which he later clarified.

In two wide-ranging interviews with the AJN, Rabbi Sacks fielded questions on the Orthodox-Progressive divide, the importance of secular education and the surge in radical Islam.

Rejecting the notion that Muslims are the “new Jews”, Rabbi Sacks argued: “Jews have had, since the destruction of the First Temple, 26 centuries’ experience of being a minority. Most Muslims have not had the historical experience of being a minority and therefore they are faced with a situation for which Islam has not yet written the script.”

He said Islam did not share Judaism’s commandment to obey civil law – as exemplified in Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles – “which is why you get the call for shari’a law”.

He said Diaspora Jewry’s gravitation towards shtieblach over established “cathedral” – style shuls was helping to make “Judaism a participative enterprise – not a spectator sport”.

Rabbi Sacks told the AJN that Australian Jewry was “comfortable in its skin [it] has come of age in terms of its institutions, [and] is poised for religious growth”.

But he added that such religious growth could be accelerated by embracing new technologies such as the internet.
“We have to see these [new technologies] as a gift by God that speaks to the Jewish people in a most remarkable way.

“We have the technology to do it and it’s ridiculous that we are so slow on the uptake.”

In Australia as a guest of businessman and Chabad identity Rabbi Joseph Gutnick, Rabbi Sacks delivered the third annual Rabbi Chaim Gutnick Memorial oration in Melbourne.

He told around 1000 people in Melbourne last Wednesday and 700 people at Sydney’s Great Synagogue on Tuesday that a better world begins with one mitzvah.

“Like the man throwing a starfish back into the sea, we can save the world, one day, one life, one act at a time.”

During his visit, Rabbi Sacks also visited the Jewish Museum of Australia, addressed students at Monash University, numerous shuls and Jewish schools in Sydney and Melbourne, and met with members of the rabbinate, communal lay leaders and inter-faith councils, as well as NSW Governor Professor Marie Bashir.

Born in England in 1948, Rabbi Sacks is a graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge universities and is the author of numerous books, including The Dignity of Difference and To Heal a Fractured World. During his tenure, he instigated the “Decade of Jewish Renewal”, a project aimed at curbing Britain’s intermarriage and assimilation rates.

He was accompanied to Australia by his wife, Lady Elaine Sacks.