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
queens prayer blessing
Jews have deep respect for the Queen and the royal family. We say a prayer for them every Sabbath in synagogue. We recite a special blessing on seeing the Queen.
book answers moses
Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, 'What happened?' but rather, 'How then shall I live?' And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
insecurity age firsts
The twenty-first century is, and will remain, the Age of Insecurity.
biblical should-have years
The build-up of personal and collective debt in America and Europe should have sent warning signals to anyone familiar with the biblical institutions of the Sabbatical and Jubilee years, created specifically because of the danger of people being trapped by debt.
talking europe dying
Europe is dying. That is one of the unsayable truths of our time. We are undergoing the moral equivalent of climate change and no one is talking about it.
religious queens church
In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued.
ideas age faces
Religion is the best antidote to the individualism of the consumer age. The idea that society can do without it flies in the face of history and, now, evolutionary biology.
thinking church worship
A Martian would think that the English worship at supermarkets, not in churches.
prayer perspective three
Part of the beauty of Judaism, and surely this is so for other faiths also, is that it gently restores control over time. Three times a day we stop what we are doing and turn to God in prayer. We recover perspective. We inhale a deep breath of eternity.
elderly organization volunteer
Jews know this in their bones. Our community could not exist for a day without its volunteers. They are the lifeblood of our organizations, whether they involve welfare, youth, education, care of the sick and elderly, or even protection against violence and abuse.
people holocaust one-day
Jews survived all the defeats, expulsions, persecutions and pogroms, the centuries in which they were regarded as a pariah people, even the Holocaust itself, because they never gave up the faith that one day they would be free to live as Jews without fear.
running commitment shopping
When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
community royal done
The royals - all of them, especially Prince Philip and Prince Charles - have done outstanding work with the faith communities.
religious people attendance
The evidence shows that religious people - defined by regular attendance at a place of worship - actually do make better neighbors.