Jonathan Sacks: Former chief rabbi who tried to preserve Jewish traditions in a fast-changing world

In the summer of 1968, Jonathan Sacks was a 20-year-old student at the University of Cambridge planning a career as an accountant. But a religious fervour had also taken hold of him since the six-day Arab-Israeli war a year earlier, and he embarked on a trip to the United States to visit family and seek out rabbis whose work he was reading at that tumultuous moment in Israeli history.

Without exception, they advised him to visit Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. He was staying with his aunt in Los Angeles when he got word that the revered Brooklyn-based leader of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement of ultra-Orthodox Jews would see him – in three days. Sacks arrived in time, by Greyhound bus.

The New York meeting proved transformative. He said Schneerson peppered him with questions more than answers: why was Jewish life so lacking at Cambridge? Why were so many young Jews falling away from their intellectual and cultural heritage?

“Here I was, a nobody from nowhere, and here was one of the greatest leaders in the Jewish world challenging me not to accept the situation, but to change it,” Sacks recalled.

“Things are going wrong,” the rabbi told him. “Are you willing to be one of those who helps to put them right?”

When he returned to Cambridge, he ditched accountancy and vowed he would become an Orthodox rabbi. By the time of his death on 7 November at 72, Sacks held the title Lord Sacks, having been appointed, in 2009, to the House of Lords.

He had earlier served for 22 years (1991-2013) as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. His death, of cancer, was announced by his London office.

He was regarded as the most outspoken, influential but also most controversial of the seven British chief rabbis who have held the title since it was established by an act of parliament in 1870. His name was well-known far beyond his own faith as he built a reputation for trying to understand, accept and communicate with other faiths. He had a column in The Times, had a regular, high-rated slot on BBC Radio 4 and was a religious commentator on national TV.

He wrote more than 30 books on Orthodox Judaism, some aimed at preserving Jewish traditions in a fast-changing world, others dealing with modern issues affecting Jews and the wider community. His final book, Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times, published shortly before he died, lays out his thoughts on populism, identity politics and “the decline of the west”.

At an interfaith reception at the end of 2011, not long after the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, he laid into modern consumerism in front of the Queen: “The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad one and iPad two, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i. When you’re an individualist, egocentric culture and you only care about ‘i’, you don’t do terribly well.”

In seeming to lay direct blame on Jobs for promoting materialism and selfishness, Sacks created an uproar and was forced to clarify what he claimed was his intended meaning. “He admires both and indeed uses an iPhone and an iPad on a daily basis,” his office said at the time. “The chief rabbi was simply pointing out the potential dangers of consumerism when taken too far.”

Other controversies arose when he often walked the fine line between the views of ultra-Orthodox Jews and those on the Reform or Progressive wing. He tried to hold the entire British and Commonwealth Jewish community together on the interpretation of Judaism and on wider social issues, such as the increasing materialism within society, something close to his heart.

In his early days as a rabbi, some of his ultra-Orthodox peers nicknamed him “Boychik” (young boy), not necessarily as the usual term of endearment.

In 2002, while chief rabbi, he again sparked disagreement when, in a book titled The Dignity of Difference, he wrote of his admiration for other religions. “God has spoken to mankind in many languages: through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims,” he noted. “No one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth; no one civilisation encompasses all the spiritual, ethical and artistic expressions of mankind … In heaven, there is truth; on earth there are truths … God is greater than religion. He is only partially comprehended by any faith.”

The book was critically praised and won awards, but some ultra-Orthodox Jews were outraged. Although The Dignity of Difference clearly reflected his own beliefs, he was forced to apologise to ultra-Orthodox leaders, who accused him of “heresy”, and make significant changes to the second edition.

After retiring as chief rabbi in 2013, Sacks decided, as he told the Tablet magazine at the time, “to go global”, to spread an understanding of Orthodox Judaism beyond Britain and the Commonwealth. He became a professor at New York University and Yeshiva University, both in Manhattan. He was knighted by the Queen in 2005, making him at the time Sir Jonathan Sacks until he moved up to the House of Lords to take up his new title.

In 2016, he was awarded the Templeton Prize, previously won by exceptional individuals including the Dalai Lama and Mother Teresa.

He was a zealous supporter of Israel but unafraid to speak out on the problems in the Middle East. In a 2011 interview for the New Statesman, he was asked: “How should the Israeli-Palestinian problem be resolved?”

“A two-state solution,” he replied. “We [religious leaders] can shape an environment conducive to peace and we certainly have a role to play in protecting each other’s access to holy places, but beyond that, politics should be left to politicians.”

The oldest of four brothers, Jonathan Henry Sacks was born on 8 March 1948, in Lambeth, London.

His father sold textiles, and his mother worked in her family’s wine-importing business and had driven Red Cross ambulances during the Blitz.

Jonathan attended Christian-run primary and secondary schools in London before winning a place at Cambridge, the first in his family to reach university. Back from his life-changing visit to New York, by now wearing a skullcap and new beard, he met Elaine Taylor, a radiography student and it was, he said later, “love at first sight”.

He told The Sunday Times, “I bought a ring at Woolworths and got on one knee at Oxford Circus.” They married in 1970 and he completed his Cambridge studies two years later. He received a doctorate from King’s College London in 1981. In addition to his wife, survivors include three brothers, three children and nine grandchildren.

In 1991, when he was chief rabbi-elect, he was invited on to Desert Island Discs, where the presenter plays the interviewee’s favourite music tracks before posing the question: if you could take one luxury item on to a desert island, what would it be?

Without hesitation, he said he would want all 20 volumes of the Talmud and a large supply of pencils so that he could write comments in the margins.

Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi, born 8 March 1948, died 7 November 2020

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