Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks, Ktis a British rabbi, philosopher and scholar of Judaism...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth8 March 1948
religious media space
Religious ritual is a way of structuring time so that we, not employers, the market or the media, are in control. Life needs its pauses, its chapter breaks, if the soul is to have space to breathe.
differences world feels
In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened, by difference - that is what I have argued.
religious drama imagination
The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.
believe men challenges
Man was not made for the service of economies; economies were made to serve mankind; and men and women were made - so we believe - to serve one another, not just ourselves.
law rights justice
True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.
differences tolerance world
God has given us many faiths but only one world in which to co-exist. May your work help all of us to cherish our commonalities and feel enlarged by our differences.
prayer book self
Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the holy of holies of Jewish time. It is that rarest of phenomena, a Jewish festival without food. Instead it is a day of fasting and prayer, introspection and self-judgment when, collectively and repeatedly, we confess our sins and pray to be written into God's Book of Life.
levels high-level activity
A society in which there are high levels of voluntary activity will simply be a better, happier place than one where there are not.
mean wrestling angel
In Judaism faith means wrestling with God as Jacob once wrestled with an angel...
religious challenges supreme
The supreme religious challenge is to see God’s image in one who is not in our image.
emotional purpose excess
We are biological creatures. We are born, we live, we die. There is no transcendent purpose to existence. At best we are creatures of reason, and by using reason we can cure ourselves of emotional excess. Purged of both hope and fear, we find courage in the face of helplessness, insignificance and uncertainty.
certainty uncertainty
Faith is not a certainty. Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty.
faith religious past
The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.
children doctors years
Close to a billion people - one-eighth of the world's population - still live in hunger. Each year 2 million children die through malnutrition. This is happening at a time when doctors in Britain are warning of the spread of obesity. We are eating too much while others starve.