Lord Jonathan Sacks: The West’s Rabbi

When named Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Sacks was the 10th such rabbi since the office was established in Britain in 1704, and the sixth since it was formalized in 1845. In his installation address, Sacks called for “A Decade of Jewish Renewal” and set about reversing the trend of religious recession with a relentless focus on improving education for rabbis and their congregants. As the first chief rabbi born after the Shoah and the establishment of Israel, Sacks was therefore also the first chief rabbi shaped by a marked change in Jewish history. Before the 1940s, Europe was the home not only of most Jewish communities but also of Jewish scholarship and cultural achievement. After the catastrophe that befell European Jewry in the early and mid-1940s, and the astounding achievement of Zionism in the late 1940s, the center of Jewish gravity had migrated away from Europe and by the 1990s could be found in the United States and Israel. One consequence of that shift was that Jewish communal attitudes were less doleful, more confident, and Sacks’ early years in the chief rabbinate captured some of the reflected gleams of vitality from New York and Jerusalem to inspire the Jewish communities of Britain. Sacks’ most succinct presentation of Jewish religious life can be found in his 2001 A Letter in the Scroll.