Several years ago, our community was privileged to host Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, zt”l. Before he addressed the over 1,000 people in attendance at BRS, I spontaneously asked him if I could record a short interview. He graciously agreed, despite the last-minute request and the fact that he was about to give a major public talk. That recording sat dormant in my phone until I was moved to share it after we tragically lost Rabbi Sacks last year. This week, to commemorate Rabbi Lord Sacks’s first yahrtzeit, here is a condensed and edited transcript of that conversation.
You are a beacon of faith – you promote faith, you teach faith, and you inspire faith, not only among the Jewish community and Jewish people but around the world. Do you ever struggle with faith? Do you ever feel that you confront doubt? And in those moments of uncertainty, what do you do to overcome it?
Let me be very blunt with you. I have had many crises of faith. But I have never had a crisis of faith in Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I have had many crises of faith in man. One crisis began as soon as I began to understand the Holocaust and to understand that this took place in the heart of civilized Europe, not some third world country in some medieval century.
The biggest question of faith I had was: knowing all this was going to happen, how come Hakadosh Baruch Hu had faith in us? But I never lacked faith in God because I never expected the impossible from Him. I know perfectly well that He placed each of us here for a purpose and we are supposed to discern that and to walk ahead.
For me, the critical moment that defined my faith was achieved when I learned Parshas Chayei Sarah. It begins with the death of Sarah. There is Avraham, having lost his life companion at the age of 137. At that point, he has received from Hashem three promises: Number one – I will give you the land. He promised that to him seven times. Number two – I will give you children – He promised that to Avraham four times. I will make you a great nation, they will be as many as the stars in the sky, as the sand on the seashore. And finally, I will make you not one nation but many nations.
But he has only one son.
Where was the father of many nations? Where was the infinite number of descendants? What did Avraham do at that moment when he should have had a crisis of faith?
He understood that God said “Walk on ahead of me” – התהלך לפני והיה תמים. So, he bought the first plot of land. He then made sure his son got married so he would have Jewish grandchildren. Later, in a strange episode, he takes an additional wife named Keturah and has six more children, who become the fathers of many nations.
In other words, instead of expecting G-d to do it for him, Avrohom realized that God was expecting him to do the hard work for Him. Once I understood that I never ever had a crisis of faith.
What do you do when you run into a rough patch when you’re having trouble connecting with davening, when you feel distant, when it’s not flowing, and you don’t feel as much the presence of the Almighty?
There are several things one can do: Number one I try to listen as I’m davening and be surprised by one phrase or one sentence, and that will be my meditation for the day. I’ll daven on that. It may stay with me for a week.
For example, we say every day in Pesukei D’zimrah: מונה מספר לכוכבים לכולם שמות יקרא, God creates the cosmos and knows the name of every star. That’s God the Creator. Then it says בונה ירושלים ה׳ נדחי ישראל יכנס – God builds Jerusalem and ingathers the exiles. That’s God as the shaper of history. But in between those two verses is a middle verse: הרופא לשבורי לב ומחבש לעצבותם – Who heals the broken heart, administers to their wounds. There is Dovid Hamelech telling us that sometimes healing one person’s broken heart is as important as creating a universe or shaping history. You can live off that one sentence for a year.
Never try to find kavana for the whole of prayer. It doesn’t work, for heaven’s sake. One little thing at a time. The second point is that prayer has to be sung. I’ve said many times that when language seeks to break free of the gravitational pull of earth, it modulates from speech to song. I’ve spent a lot of time in my chief rabbinate encouraging chazzanim to write new liturgical music, to use songs to make the service more participative, and to encourage shul choirs. I’m not an expert in music but I made that a key element. We used a lot of musical creativity I think that music frees the spirit and if you are ever short of kavanah, you need to have the nigun, the song, to daven with.
Thirdly, something might just catch you if you create the silence in your soul to listen. When I’m at a critical point in my life, which is pretty much every day, I just listen: Hashem, what are You telling me? Somehow prayer orients you. I call prayer “Jewish cognitive behavioral therapy.” It changes the way you look at the world; it changes the way you feel about the world.
We are always promoting more Talmud Torah and chessed opportunities. We are involved in activism on behalf of Israel and Israel relationships. Some are involved in social action and social justice. What do you think that the Orthodox community can be spending more productive time promoting that is being overlooked? Are there initiatives and emphases that the Orthodox community should be focusing on that we are neglecting?
I think there are two that are being neglected. The first is, all that goes with the affective dimension of Judaism, the emotional life. There’s some nice Jewish music here, but some of the most popular music is actually non-Jewish pop music set to Jewish words or acapella, which is great. I love it. The Maccabeats – I’m their biggest fan. But I like to see music coming from the Jewish soul. I think we haven’t done enough with the affective dimension, and music is probably the most important.
We write everyone else’s music. Irving Berlin wrote “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas,”, Mahler’s eighth symphony, Catholic mass. Where do we write our music? I think we are missing the aesthetics of it and music is the most obvious example. Cinema, too, isn’t used enough in this regard. There’s just been a film called Menashe, a very moving film about Charedim in New York. I think we haven’t done enough with that to tell people what the life of faith does for you. I have so many stories that I think ought to be made into film. Stories of ordinary people I know who have done extraordinary things.
Second, I absolutely think the Modern Orthodox community is missing out badly on kiruv. The difference between material possessions and spiritual possessions is that the more you share material possessions the less you have. But when it comes to a spiritual possession, the more you share the more you have. That is why Chabad can send out people all over the world where there is no Yiddishkeit whatsoever, and you or I would lose our Yiddishkeit overnight because there’s no support system. Yet, they are able to keep it, because they share it.
The Modern Orthodox community should be going out on campuses. Do you know how many Jews we lose on campus? 90% minimum! Yet we’re not going out there. Every campus should host a nice modern Orthodox minyan, davening three times a day, Daf Yomi, and everything lemehadrin. But they aren’t taking it out to people who don’t have it. When you don’t give, something in your spirit dies.
A personal question: When we look at your life and productivity, whether the trajectory of ascending to the chief rabbinate, publishing 30 books, 17 honorary degrees, being named a Lord, etc., it just seems that you have had success after success, triumph after triumph. Have you ever experienced failure? Have you ever had any challenges that you couldn’t overcome and what gave you the tenacity to persevere?
Ha! Have I ever experienced failure?! My goodness me! Oooh! [Laughter.]
I nearly failed my first year in university. I nearly failed my second year in university. I was turned down for virtually every job that I applied for. Since I was a kid, I wanted to write a book. I started when I was 20 and I gave it every minute of spare time that I had. Even when Elaine and I went to a concert I would be writing notes during intervals or between movements during a symphony. Yet, I failed for 20 years! From 20 to 40 I had a whole huge file cabinet of books I started and never finished.
What changed is I happened to be reading the preface to “Plays Unpleasant” by George Bernard Shaw. It opens by saying that if you’re going to write a book, write it by the time you’re 40 or forget it. I thought it was Min Hashamayim. Someone is telling me something because I had no idea why I happened to read that passage by that writer at that time. I thought to myself that it was my last chance. So, I wrote my first book at 40 and then I wrote a book a year ever since.
Winston Churchill put it beautifully – success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm. The secret was marrying someone who believes in you and then to just keep going. Never stop! All of the things that came much later, most of them unexpected – very moving but not the עיקר – it’s just “keeping on going” day after day.
That wonderful Medrash in hakdamah of Ein Yaakov asks what is the main pasuk in the Torah? One [Tanna] said that it’s loving your fellow man, ואהבת לרעך כמוך. A second said שמע ישראל, it’s about accepting the yoke of Heaven. Then, Ben Pazzi says את הכבש אחד תעשה בבקר… bringing the daily sacrifice in the morning and in the evening. It’s about Shacharis, Mincha, Ma’ariv. That’s life! You keep hammering away and eventually you’ll get there.
The only thing that is absolutely necessary is that you have to key into your mental satellite navigation system, your destination. Because if you don’t know where you’re trying to get to, you’ll never get there. I knew I wanted to write a book. It took 20 years of failure until I finally succeeded in the twenty-first year.
Are there specific moments that you felt Hashem’s guiding Hand in your life, that things could have gone in different directions, and those moments specifically stand out that it guided you to where you are now?
I feel that way most of the time! I nearly drowned on my honeymoon. I couldn’t swim and I had just gone under for the fifth time. We were in Italy and there was no one near me. I remember thinking just before I was about to die – what a way to begin a honeymoon. And, what’s the Italian word for help?
Every day מודה אני – שהחזרת בי נשמתי. I’ve twice suffered life threatening medical conditions, two forms of cancer. Both times I met the people that I needed to meet at the right time. My father a”h, who never had an education, left school when he was 15. But he had an emunah peshutah – a simple faith. He just believed that Hashem would take him where he needed to be. I think I learned that from him. You put your trust in Hakadosh Baruch Hu; He knows better than you. I feel that every single day – without exaggeration. It’s a mental exercise. I will constantly say to myself or to Elaine – why did that happen?
I’ll give you the weirdest example: In 2010 I received from Princeton Theological Seminary an award called the Abraham Kuyper Prize, awarded to somebody who has made a significant contribution to Dutch Neo-Calvinist theology. I don’t know how many Rabbeim have such a thing. I was thinking then – what does Hashem want me to have this for? Two years later the Dutch parliament banned shechita. The Dutch community is quite small, and they asked me to address the Twin Houses of Dutch Parliament. Abraham Kuyper, whose award I won, was Prime Minister of Holland a century ago. He was also Minister of Religion. So, I began my speech by saying that you might be asking what a member of the British Parliament is doing addressing the Dutch Parliament? But I may be the only rabbi that has the prize for his contribution to Dutch Neo-Calvinist theology. It gave me a kind of visiting card and I said, ‘Thank you, Hashem – now I understand why that happened’.
But it’s a constant discipline.
It takes the simple question – what can I do, or what am I being called on to do, given that this has happened? We are sitting here now in your wonderful community of Boca Raton. And I’m asking myself – why did I davka have to come to Boca Raton?
I found out the answer only about twenty minutes ago, shortly before we began this conversation when I was given a lift in a car by someone who was telling me all the wonderful ways in which you’re bringing the community together. I suddenly realized that I had to be in Boca Raton because Boca Raton is showing the rest of the Jewish world how it’s done. This is not mindfulness. This is l’havdil Yosef Hatzaddik saying – why have I been sold as a slave? Why am I here in prison? Eventually he is able to say to his brothers לא אתם שלחתם אותי כי אם אלקים – I worked it out. It wasn’t you who was doing this to me. It was part of Hashem’s plan. That’s a mental discipline.
{reposted from the Rabbi’s site}