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With the pass­ing of Rab­bi Lord Jonathan Sacks, a schol­ar, writer and for­mer Chief Rab­bi of the Unit­ed Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tions of the Com­mon­wealth, the world has lost a tow­er­ing moral and intel­lec­tu­al fig­ure at a time when it is most in need of peo­ple of his cal­i­bre.

For Rab­bi Sacks there was no hard and fast divi­sion between Jew­ish and sec­u­lar knowl­edge.  There was just knowl­edge.  More impor­tant was the wis­dom that comes with knowl­edge , and he had it in abun­dance.  His favoured adage was Torah vehokhmah, ‘Torah and Wis­dom’. As one of his admir­ers not­ed, “Torah, for Jonathan Sacks rep­re­sents the par­tic­u­lar­is­tic, inher­it­ed teach­ings of Judaism, while hokhmah (wis­dom) refers to the uni­ver­sal realm of the sci­ences and human­i­ties.”

He had an extra­or­di­nary com­mand of Jew­ish learn­ing, moral phi­los­o­phy and ethics, and a won­der­ful abil­i­ty to con­vey his ideas to a wide audi­ence, regard­less of their lev­el of edu­ca­tion.  When he vis­it­ed Aus­tralia some years ago, reli­gious lead­ers and oth­ers from many faith com­mu­ni­ties came to hear him speak, and were over­flow­ing in their praise of his eru­di­tion and insights.

His books were wide­ly quot­ed, most espe­cial­ly The Dig­ni­ty of Dif­fer­ence, a plea for human­i­ty, com­pas­sion and mutu­al respect.  In an age of mate­r­i­al abun­dance and spir­i­tu­al pover­ty, Jonathan Sacks’ writ­ings and radio broad­casts made acces­si­ble his pro­found under­stand­ing of the human con­di­tion and the nature of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and moral­i­ty.  For this he was revered by mil­lions of peo­ple of all back­grounds and reli­gions.

The Jew­ish world, and the whole of human­i­ty, has been left much the poor­er for his pass­ing.

Con­tact
Peter Wertheim | Co-CEO
ph: 02 8353 8505 | m: 0408 160 904 | fax 02 9361 588
e: pwertheim@ecaj.org.au| www.ecaj.org.au