H eadlines
Former UK Chief Rabbi and Jewish ‘Intellectual
Giant’ Jonathan Sacks, Dies at 72
OB ITUARY
BEN HARRIS, CNAAN LIPHSHIZ,
GABE FRIEDMAN | JTA.ORG
RABBI JONATHAN SACKS,
the former chief rabbi of the
United Kingdom whose exten-
sive writings and frequent media
appearances commanded a
global following among Jews
and non-Jews alike, has died.

Sacks, 72 died Nov. 7, his
Twitter account announced.

He was in the midst of a third
bout of cancer, which he had
to mixing religion and politics,
something he discussed, along
with his latest book, “Morality:
Restoring the Common Good
in Divided Times,” and an
array of other hot-button topics
with the Jewish Telegraphic
Agency in August.

“When anger erupts in a
body politic, there is quite often
a justified cause. But then the
political domain has got to take
that anger and deal with it very
fast,” he said then. “Because
anger exposes the problem but
never delivers the solution.”
He was a towering intellect whose
eloquence, insights and kindness reached well
beyond the Jewish community.”
KEIR STARMER
announced in October.

Sacks was among the world’s
leading exponents of Orthodox
Judaism for a global audience.

In his 22 years as chief rabbi,
he emerged as the most visible
Jewish leader in the United
Kingdom and one of the
European continent’s leading
Jewish voices, offering Jewish
wisdom to the masses through a
regular segment he produced for
the BBC. He had a close relation-
ship with former British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, who called
Sacks “an intellectual giant” and
presented him with a lifetime
achievement award in 2018.

Sacks was also an immensely
prolific author, addressing
pressing social and political
issues in a succession of well
received books. His popular
commentary on the prayer
book, published by Koren,
helped to dethrone the more
traditionalist Artscroll Siddur
as the preeminent prayer
book in American Modern
Orthodox synagogues.

Sacks was normally averse
8 NOVEMBER 12, 2020
Jonathan Sacks seen as the chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, circa 2000.
But he did take public stances
on two topics that were often
ensnared with European politics:
Israel and anti-Semitism.

Sacks spoke out publicly
as Britain’s Labour Party was
engulfed in an anti-Semitism
scandal under its previous
leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling
Corbyn an anti-Semite.

“We have an anti-Semite as
the leader of the Labour Party
and her majesty’s opposition.

That is why Jews feel so threat-
ened by Mr. Corbyn and those
who support him,” Sacks said
in 2018 during an interview
with the New Statesman.

That judgment paved the
way for the current British
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to
harshly condemn the Labour
Party, a precedent-setting
event in British Jewish life.

Corbyn was replaced in
April by centrist Keir Starmer,
who has apologized for how
anti-Semitism was allowed
to flourish in Labour’s ranks
under Corbyn. Starmer, who
is married to a Jewish woman,
expressed his condolences to
“the entire Jewish world” in a
tweet on Saturday.

“He was a towering intellect
whose eloquence, insights and
kindness reached well beyond
the Jewish community. I have
no doubt that his legacy will
live on for many generations,”
Starmer wrote.

Sacks was also vocal in his
opposition to the forces that
lead to anti-Semitism on the far
left and the far right, as he wrote
in a JTA op-ed in January.

“Anti-Semitism has little to
do with Jews — they are its
object, not its cause — and
everything to do with dysfunc-
tion in the communities that
harbor it,” he wrote.

In 2017, in a widely circu-
lated YouTube video, Sacks
called anti-Zionism a new form
of anti-Semitism, arguing that
it denies Jews the “right to
exist collectively with the same
rights as everyone else.”
The video was based on a
2016 speech Sacks delivered in
Brussels, which is widely seen
JEWISH EXPONENT
as having paved the way to
Britain’s adoption later that year
of the International Holocaust
Remembrance Alliance’s defini-
tion of anti-Semitism.

But the video went far
beyond political and academic
circles, and became symbolic
of Sacks’ ability to reach
mainstream audiences. Rachel
Riley, a famous British Jewish
game show television host, last
year shared the video, telling her
over 600,000 Twitter followers
that it is “the best explanation of
antisemitism I’ve seen.”
Sacks branched out beyond
religious and Jewish cultural
thought as well. In 2017 he
delivered a TED Talk about
“facing the future without fear”
and what he called a “fateful
moment” in Western history
after the election of Donald
Trump as president, citing
Thomas Paine and anthropol-
ogists to make an argument
about returning a culture of
togetherness. Born in London in 1948,
Sacks studied at Cambridge
John Downing/Getty Images via JTA
University. While a student
there in the ’60s, he visited Rabbi
Menachem Schneerson — the
spiritual leader who is credited
with turning the Chasidic
Chabad-Lubavitch movement
into a powerful organizing force
of Jewry around the world —
in New York City. Sacks credits
that meeting with inspiring
him to get involved with Jewish
studies, as he detailed in a series
of videos for Chabad.org in 2011.

He became the rabbi of the
Golders Green synagogue in
London’s most Orthodox neigh-
borhood in the late ’70s and
then rabbi of the Marble Arch
synagogue in central London.

The U.K. Board of Deputies
of British Jews President Marie
van der Zyl released a state-
ment on Nov. 7.

“Rabbi Sacks was a giant
of both the Jewish commu-
nity and wider society. His
astounding intellect and
courageous moral voice were a
blessing to all who encountered
him in person, in writing or in
broadcast,” van der Zyl said. l
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