{"id":45631,"date":"2024-12-13T01:16:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-13T09:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=45631"},"modified":"2024-12-11T18:07:02","modified_gmt":"2024-12-12T02:07:02","slug":"a-voice-thats-missed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2024\/12\/13\/a-voice-thats-missed\/","title":{"rendered":"A voice that\u2019s missed"},"content":{"rendered":"

Four years have passed since the loss of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020), and more than one year since the outbreak of the Iron Swords conflict. In these turbulent times, we can only imagine the wisdom that Sacks \u2013 who was a global religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and respected moral voice \u2013 might have shared, the guidance he would have offered. His voice is profoundly missed, especially now, when his words could have offered clarity and hope. This longing to \u201chear\u201d his perspective propelled me on a journey.<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>To Be a Jew<\/i> is a booklet that was born from a deep desire to find meaning in the current historic moment. Distributed freely across the globe, with more than a quarter of a million copies printed in Hebrew and English \u2013 and soon to be available in additional languages \u2013 it shares the timeless lessons of Rabbi Sacks with all who seek them. Below is a small selection of his enduring wisdom. For the full booklet, available as a free download, visit sivanrahavmeir.com\/to-be-a-Jew.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Growth from crisis<\/b><\/p>\n

Every tragedy in Jewish history was followed by a new wave of creativity. The destruction of the First Temple led to the renewal of the Torah in the life of the nation, exemplified by the work of Ezra and Nehemiah. The destruction of the Second Temple led to the great works of the oral tradition, Midrash, Mishnah and the two Talmuds. The massacres of Jewish communities in northern Europe during the First Crusade led to the emergence of Hassidei Ashkenaz, the German-Jewish pietists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The medieval encounter with Christianity led to a renewal of Bible commentary. The meeting with Islam inspired a renaissance of Jewish philosophy. The Spanish Expulsion was followed by the mystical revival in Safed in the 16th century. The greatest catastrophe of all led to the greatest rebirth: a mere three years after standing eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Treblinka, the Jewish people responded by their greatest collective affirmation of life in 2,000 years, with the proclamation of the state of Israel.\u2026 Jews [do not] give way to defeat or despair. They are the people of hope.<\/p>\n

The Chinese ideogram for \u201ccrisis\u201d also means \u201copportunity.\u201d Perhaps that is why Chinese civilization has survived for so long. Hebrew, however, is more hopeful still. The word for crisis, mashber<\/i>, also means a \u201cchildbirth chair.\u201d The Jewish reflex is to see difficult times as birth pangs. Something new is being born.<\/p>\n

(Sacks, Future Tense, pp. 54-55)<\/em><\/p>\n

Response to terrorism<\/b><\/p>\n

The first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, said, \u201cIn Israel, to be a realist you have to believe in miracles.\u201d For Jews, faith is as necessary as life itself. Without it, the Jewish people would simply not have survived.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2001, after the Oslo peace process had broken down and the suicide bombings had begun, I told the then-Israeli ambassador: \u201cIn the past, Israel\u2019s enemies have tried to put it in a military crisis and failed. Then they tried to put it in a political crisis and failed. Now they are about to put it in a spiritual crisis, and they may succeed.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

That, ultimately, is what 21st-century terror is about, and Israel has been its most consistent target. The suicide bombings brought war from the battlefront to the buses of Haifa, the shops of Tel Aviv and the restaurants of Jerusalem. There were times when Jewish parents sent their children on the school bus not knowing whether they would see them alive again. The missiles of Hezbollah and Hamas placed two-thirds of Israel \u2013 the north and south \u2013 within their range. As I write, there are 7-year-old children in Sderot who have only known safety in a bomb shelter. The delegitimization of Israel among some media, academic and NGO circles has left its people feeling abandoned and alone. The aim is to intimidate and create despair, and it needs immense resources of faith and courage not to be affected. That is the spiritual crisis.<\/p>\n

(Sacks, Future Tense, pp. 18-19)<\/em><\/p>\n

Where is man?<\/b><\/p>\n

When I first stood at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the question that haunted me was not, \u201cWhere was God?\u201d God was in the command, \u201cYou shall not murder.\u201d God was in the words, \u201cYou shall not oppress the stranger.\u201d God was saying to humanity, \u201cYour brother\u2019s blood is crying to Me from the ground.\u201d God did not stop the first humans eating forbidden fruit. He did not stop Cain committing murder. He did not stop the Egyptians enslaving the Israelites. God does not save us from ourselves. That, according to the Talmud, is why creating man was such a risk that the angels advised against it. The question that haunts me after the Holocaust, as it does today in this new age of chaos, is \u201cWhere is man?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Sacks, Judaism\u2019s Life-Changing Ideas, p. 7)<\/em><\/p>\n

Everything has purpose<\/b><\/p>\n

Life is meaningful. We are not mere accidents of matter, generated by a universe that came into being for no reason and will one day, for no reason, cease to be. We are here because a loving God brought the universe, and life, and us, into existence \u2013 a God who knows our fears, hears our prayers, believes in us more than we believe in ourselves, who forgives us when we fail, lifts us when we fall and gives us the strength to overcome despair. The historian Paul Johnson once wrote: \u201cNo people has ever insisted more firmly than the Jews that history has a purpose and humanity a destiny.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

(Sacks, Ceremony & Celebration, p. 22)<\/em><\/p>\n

Everyone has a mission<\/b><\/p>\n

God enters our lives as a call from the future. It is as if we hear him beckoning to us from the far horizon of time, urging us to take a journey and undertake a task that, in ways we cannot fully understand, we were created for. That is the meaning of the word vocation, literally \u201ca calling,\u201d a mission, a task to which we are summoned.<\/p>\n

We are not here by accident. We are here because God wanted us to be, and because there is a task we were meant to fulfil. Discovering what that is, is not easy, and often takes many years and false starts.<\/p>\n

(Sacks, Studies in Spirituality, p. 24)\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

Sivan Rahav-Meir<\/b> is a primetime news anchor who lives in Jerusalem. She has a weekly podcast on <\/i>Tablet, called Sivan Says, and has published several books in English. Her \u201cDaily Thought\u201d on social media has hundreds of thousands of followers and is translated into 17 languages.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Four years have passed since the loss of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-2020), and more than one year since the outbreak of the Iron Swords conflict. In these turbulent times, we can only imagine the wisdom that Sacks \u2013 who was a global religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and respected moral voice \u2013 might have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[7077,218,22725,23711],"class_list":["post-45631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-jonathan-sacks","tag-judaism","tag-oct-7","tag-to-be-a-jew"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}