Lord Sacks

Former Chief Rabbi

JONATHAN SACKS, Lord Sacks, who has died at 72, was a philosopher, theologian, author, and politician who served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, thefigureheadof BritishJews, for22yearsuntil2013.

A respected figure both inside andoutside theJewish community, hisadmirersincluded thePrinceofWales, whosaid his“wisdom, scholarship and humanitywerewithoutequal”.

Lord Sacks was also a prolific author and a familiar figure on BBC radio, where he was a frequent contributor to Thought For The Day within the Radio 4 Today programme. He rose

to become the figurehead for British Jewry despite not having a traditional rabbinical background. His father, Louis, was a market trader who had come to London from Poland, and his mother, Louisa, had driven ambulances during the Blitz. Jonathan went to a grammar school in Finchley

and then to Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in philosophy.

It was a Greyhound bus trip across America in 1967, during which he met a number of senior religious figures, that persuaded him to abandon plans to become an accountant and to train as a rabbi instead. He was ordained in 1976 and became rabbi of London’s Golders Green synagogue two years later. At the same time he began lecturing in moral

philosophy at Middlesex Polytechnic and was a visiting professor at Essex University.

When in 1990 he succeeded Lord Immanuel Jakobovits as Chief Rabbi, he struck up a warm friendship with the newly- designated Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, with whom he shared a passion for Arsenal football club.

Knighted in 2005 and made a life peer in 2009, he used his place in the House of Lords as an outspoken defenderof Israel anda fierceopponentofanti- Semitism.