Former Chief Rabbi who was praised for his inclusivity
Rabbi Lord Sacks 1948-2020
Jonathan Sacks, who has died aged 72, was the former Chief Rabbi of Britain – and a hugely respected voice in British intellectual life. As Chief Rabbi, he was the head of a large network of Orthodox congregations – not Reformist or ultraOrthodox ones. Yet he was regarded, by many Jews and non-Jews, as the leader of British Jewry; and though widely loved, he sometimes struggled in his efforts to balance the concerns of his various audiences. “There are great Jewish leaders and there are very few great Jewish followers, so leading the Jewish people turns out to be very difficult,” he observed.
The first crisis came in 1996, when he angered
Reform Jews by failing to attend the funeral of the Reform rabbi, Holocaust survivor and broadcaster Hugo Gryn. Ultra-Orthodox Jews were then enraged when he tried to make amends by attending a memorial event to Gryn. “So he did a volte-face,” said The Times. In a private letter to an ultra-Orthodox rabbi, he described Gryn as a member of a “false grouping”. That letter was leaked, adding more fuel to a bitter row. Sacks said he regretted the letter, and urged British Jews to find a way to co-exist with mutual respect. “We’re just too small as a community, we’ve suffered too much at the hands of others to inflict this suffering on ourselves.” Six years later, however, he found himself at the centre of another storm, over his book The
Dignity of Difference, in which he professed his admiration for other religions. His inclusivity won wide praise – but his claim that “no creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth” appalled some Orthodox Jews and he had to answer charges of heresy.
He was born in 1948 in London’s East End, the son of Louis and Louisa Sacks. His father was a market trader who, as Sacks put it, “sold shmatters in the Lane”. Later, the family moved to Finchley, where he attended a local grammar school. He won a place at
Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, to read philosophy; he graduated with a first.
Sacks had discovered “the mystery” of God in infancy – but his plan was to become an accountant. Two events in 1967 changed his path. The first was the Six Day War, when it seemed, he said, as if the “unthinkable” – a second Holocaust – was about to take place. The second was his meeting various Jewish leaders when he went on a bus tour of the US. He rose rapidly, said The Guardian. He received his ordination in 1976, and became rabbi of the Golders Green synagogue in 1978. A “compelling orator”, he had a “warm and lively approach to the complexity of being a diaspora Jew” – and by 1990, he was the clear choice to become the next Chief Rabbi. Sacks was an Arsenal fan, and shortly before his appointment, he accepted an invitation to meet fellow fan George Carey, soon to be the head of the Anglican Church, in a box at Highbury. The presence at the match of these two spiritual leaders did not aid the Gunners: they lost 6-2. Was this proof that God doesn’t exist, asked a newspaper diarist. God does exist, Sacks replied. “It’s just that He supports Manchester United.”
As Chief Rabbi, he condemned materialism, and the egocentric “culture of iPod, iPhone, iTune, i, i, i”. He spoke out against antiSemitism, and urged British Jews to coalesce around five values: “Love of every Jew, love of learning, love of God, a profound contribution to British society, and an unequivocal attachment to Israel.” On retiring in 2013, he withdrew from public life, re-emerging only to accuse Jeremy Corbyn of being an antiSemite. On Desert Island Discs in 1991, Sacks had chosen a devotional song which translates as My Soul Thirsts for You.
“Quite simply,” he told Sue Lawley, “I hope that someday something like that would be my epitaph: That his soul thirsted for God.” His wife, Elaine, and their three children survive him.