Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth of Great Britain and renowned spiritual leader, philosopher, and author, died last week. Sacks was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 and awarded a life peerage in the House of Lords in 2009, taking the title Baron Sacks, of Aldgate in the City of London. He was the winner of numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize, American National Jewish Book Award (4 times), The Norman Lamm Prize at Yeshiva University and the Jerusalem Prize. Rabbi Sacks wrote and spoke eloquently on many subjects, including interfaith dialogue, Torah vehokhmah (Torah and Wisdom), materialism, secularism, anti-Semitism and more. Which of the following are among Rabbi Sacks’s writings?

National Poverty Hearing: Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks by cooperniall is licensed under CC BY 2.0

A. During the debate on Great Britain leaving the European Union, Rabbi Sacks criticized the political divisiveness, writing in 2018, “Anyone who engages in divisiveness transgresses a Divine prohibition, as it is written: ‘And he shall not be as Korach and his company’ when the Torah wishes to tell us not to agitate disputes and perpetuate disunity, it does so by saying: Don’t be like Korach….”  

B. In 2014, Rabbi Sacks wrote an essay on the topic of love versus justice. In the essay he stated, “Judaism is a religion of love...But love is not enough. You cannot build a family, let alone a society, on love alone. For that you need justice also...In the 1960s the Beatles sang ‘All you need is love.’ Would that it were so, but it is not.”

C. In 2019, Rabbi Sacks criticized the Labor Party for anti-Semitic comments by leader Jeremy Corbyn, writing, “I do not normally get involved in partisan politics. But I cannot close my eyes to the heinous statements by Mr. Corbyn and too many of his supporters. The party leadership have never understood that their failure is not just one of procedure, which can be remedied with additional staff or new processes. It is a failure to see this as a human problem rather than a political one. It is a failure of culture. It is a failure of leadership. A new poison–sanctioned from the top–has taken root in the Labour party.”

D. In 2015, Rabbi Sacks wrote an essay imploring Jews to be proactive in working to reduce global warming. He listed numerous quotes from the Torah, the Talmud and other sources, starting with Genesis 2:15, “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it.” He went on to criticize those who do not believe in climate science, writing, “It’s a family joke that when I was a tiny child I turned from the window out of which I was watching a snowstorm, and hopefully asked, ‘Momma, do we believe in winter?’ ”

E. Rabbi Sacks criticized consumerism, writing in 2011, “The consumer society was laid down by the late Steve Jobs coming down the mountain with two tablets, iPad 1 and iPad 2, and the result is that we now have a culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, I, I, I.”

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