Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Has Abdicated His Moral Responsibility

I've never met Jonathan Sacks. But his writing has had a deeper impact on my life than any other rabbi's.

I first came across it in a London synagogue in November 2010. Stapled together was Sacks's commentary on the week's Torah portion, Parshat Vayetzei, in which Jacob — after tricking his brother and father — flees to the house of his uncle.

In his commentary, Sacks compares Jacob to the character of Br'er Rabbit, who according to the Harvard literary scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., is depicted in African-American folklore as possessing “a fragile body but a deceptively strong mind.” Faced with his physically imposing brother, Esau, and his financially imposing uncle Laban, Sacks argues, Jacob pursues the same strategy as Br'er rabbit. “Using their intelligence to outwit their stronger opponents” both “are able to deconstruct and subvert, in small ways, the hierarchy of dominance favouring the rich and the strong. They represent the momentary freedom of the unfree, a protest against the random injustices of the world.”