Ahead of US elections, a former chief rabbi sees words as the great uniter

NEW YORK – Judaism is the world we create with words, says Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

“Language cuts to the heart of what it means to be a Jew,” Sacks told an audience in New York this week. “‘And God said: Let there be light; and there was light.’ Torah is telling us something remarkable in that sentence: words can create. Words can create worlds, and ours is supremely a religion of words.”

Sacks, considered a leading moral commentator, reflected on the power of religious texts to shape individual lives, culture and the course of history on April 5 at The Center for Jewish History.

His talk, “The People and the Book – the World We Make with Words,” was timely given the British rabbi’s mission to make the Jewish voice resonate amidst the sound of fury of today’s political and cultural climate. And while he’s concerned the Jewish people are splitting in two – secular and observant – he said he believes a renewed sense of shared literary history can help overcome that divide.

“Finding a common language and narrative is vital. The thing that really damages the Jewish people is when there are deep splits internally,” said Sacks, 67, speaking with The Times of Israel after the event. “When we are united as a people, nothing can destroy us. When we are divided unfortunate things happen. A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

‘Words can create worlds, and ours is supremely a religion of words’

Sacks pointed to “929,” an online Israeli initiative aimed at bringing the Bible into the national conversation, as one way to bridge the Jewish community’s growing divisions. Any Hebrew speaker, regardless of observance or gender, can come together to learn a chapter of the Bible every day. That represents a wonderful way forward for the community at large, Sacks said.

Sacks, who spent 22 years as chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, has authored 25 books, most recently “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence.” He has advised several British prime ministers, including John Major and David Cameron.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks says, ‘Not in God’s Name’ was very consciously written for an audience that is predominantly not Jewish. (courtesy)

Sacks is also the recent recipient of the 2016 Templeton Prize, which bestows some $1.5 million on a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension. In the past, the rabbi has lamented the diminishing voice of religion in the public sphere. However, Sacks made clear he isn’t calling upon politicians to inject religion into their oratory, particularly in the Diaspora community where he says religion belongs solely in the private sphere.

“I never like to mix religion and politics, but I do miss the prophetic voice. Prophets were people who related faith to history, to events,” he said. “There are many current issues that are religious; poverty is also a religious issue. Discrimination is also a religious issue. The difficulties women have is also a religious issue.”

As for his remarks, to those seated in the sold-out auditorium Sacks explored how words and texts have molded 4,000 years of Jewish history and how Jews have interpreted and added to these texts through political challenges and cultural changes.

First came the Torah, he said. Then for the next thousand years Jews wrote commentary about the Torah, and then for another thousand years they wrote commentary on the commentary, he said.

‘There are many current issues that are religious; poverty is also a religious issue’

“Somehow or another Jews have always defined themselves through writing and through books,” Sacks said.

And while Sacks celebrated the way people use words to derive meaning, build stories, and disseminate information, he called the invention of the alphabet one of the most revolutionary events in the arena of information technology.

“The alphabet reduces all human knowledge to 22 or 26 symbols, theoretically everyone has access to knowledge. In principal Judaism has an egalitarian thrust; anyone has access to knowledge,” he said.

He pointed to a passage in Judges 8 when Gideon prepares to fight the Midianites. He stops in Succoth and asks for food. The town leaders tell him, first you fight the Midianites and then you can eat. He goes, he fights, and he returns. On his way back he stops a young boy and asks him to write down the names of the 77 leaders of Succoth.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks speaks on the power of religious texts to shape lives at The Center for Jewish History in New York, April 5, 2016. (courtesy)

To Sacks this is both a fascinating and apt example of how 3,000 years ago, even a boy in the street knew how to write.

Yet, there were long stretches – thousands of years actually – where many, particularly women, were excluded from that knowledge, said Lynn Kaye, assistant professor in the Ohio State University’s department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

“Historically, many were excluded from learning Jewish sacred texts, Jewish women were barred, until very recently, from that knowledge,” said Kaye in conversation with Sacks after his remarks. “As we move to greater egalitarianism, as we honor Jewish literary history, we have to look at this.”

Sacks agreed, calling the absence of a women’s voice from commentary on the sacred texts a terrible exclusion. Moreover, he called on the Jewish community as a whole to become more inclusive when it comes to studying texts.

“It’s time now for all of us, not just the religious, to reclaim our texts. Let us make Jewish texts so compelling that people will want to study them,” he said. “When the Pew 2013 study came out, one of the statistics I found most troubling was that 94 percent of American Jews were proud to be Jewish, but 48 percent can’t read the [Hebrew] Aleph-Bet.”