In Memory of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, ztz'l

good evening welcome everyone to this important program sponsored by the orthodox union and lincoln square synagogue as we mark the first yard site rabbi jonathan sachs they heard sadiq raja my name is nathan diamond i'm the executive director of the ou's advocacy center and i'm going to be moderating this evening with our esteemed group of presenters um the program is going to first have an opening set of presentations from each of our esteemed presenters followed by a period of moderated conversation among them between them and then hopefully an opportunity for you all to submit your questions for a period of their responding to those questions and ideas that are on your minds in ways that you have made recording in progress may have been inspired by rabbi jonathan sax's torah or teachings and writings you can submit your questions through a form on the ou website it's at ou.org rabbi sachs and uh i invite you to do that as well at this point without any further ado i'm going to turn the virtual microphone over to rabbi joel robinson the senior rabbi of the lincoln square synagogue thank you so much for nathan and all my distinguished co-presenters at tonight's incredibly important very special events we were supposed to be live tonight at lincoln square synagogue we didn't want to take the responsibility of allowing people particular speakers coming from out of state to take any risks to told especially after what happened in the last storm and therefore we got gathered together online i know in in tremendous numbers to pay respect but lacking inevitably the emotion the very real emotion that would have filled the room at the realization that it is already a year since rabbi jonathan sex passed and more importantly by jonathan sacks secrets of jacob and david aria is no longer amongst us i want to start before i begin my own remarks by thanking and acknowledging all of our co-hosts tonight congregation of shalom congregation of sedec congregation rahmat aura congregation sheridan israel the karbala synagogue hudson yard synagogue yeshua yeshua kemp mill synagogue in maryland parque synagogue hillary veem westside institutional synagogue west side jewish center we at lincoln square are honored to be joining with them and of course the orthodox union in order to be able to have tonight's extremely important events each of the speakers and and many many thanks to nathan diamond to you for coordinating bringing this all together all of the speakers tonight have um uh chosen different aspects of the way the rabbi sacks impacted not just the jewish world but in most of the cases of the speakers you're going to hear from tonight that personally impacted and set an example to all of us and i want to speak a little bit about rabbi jonathan sex as rabbi and his chief rabbi as rabbi of synagogues as chief rabbi of the united synagogue and to no small extent a chief rabbi to the to the worlds if you like and i want to say that in this context of what it is that we lost with the passing of rabbi jonathan sachs rabbi filled sax room and it didn't make any difference whether it was an intimate gathering around a shabbos table or it was a synagogue pack to the rafters or a lecture hall packed with thousands of people he made every meeting and occasion and packed every venue small or large with a thrill with a lean on your front of your seat kind of energy he was at the same time that rarest of things a dazzling intellectual a brilliant brilliant human being who made the most profound ideas seemed graspable and he made everybody feel more intelligent and more capable having been having had the opportunity of hearing him and being in the room with him for all of the energy that he brought to every occasion he was at the same time the most caring even i would say humble incredible individual who had a compassion and an interest in human beings i noticed this so often that in fact i didn't even it didn't even occur to me how special it was until i saw today the israeli journalists ivan rav said in her tribute to rabbi sex that he used to remark and as i say i saw this countless times in the uk and here in america rabbi saggs pointed out that the question he most frequently received was not a theological question not a difficult conundrum of philosophy of judaism of the authenticity of the torah it was the following question rabbi sacks do you remember me and he told and i saw that happen to him countless times and he felt on reflection that that was the most important question a rabbi can be asked because every jew is looking for connection he memorably defined community and when we think about building back after covens he memorably defined community as a place where they know your name and notice when you are absent as a chief rabbi as a rabbi would say to have a chief rabbi sounds authoritarian sounds like a rabbi is answerable to a higher authority not necessarily in a good way in the person of rabbi sex to have rabbi jonathan sex as chief rabbi meant to have a mentor and a teacher in ways we could all easily imagine what rabbi sacks would give to a rabbi but a protector as a young rabbi and even as a seasoned rabbi rabbi sags was somebody who cared deeply about the rabbis for whom he felt responsible he would bang heads together of difficult lay leaders he would put his fists on the table in upset if a community wasn't treating its rabbi correctly i remember the first aipac convention at which rabbi sax was emerging as a thrilling figure as if one can say without being disrespectful and forgive me as a rock star of the american jewish scene where he was being fated and lauded and dragged from one vip event to another and at that aipac convention he took me a sight must have been 20 2011 2012 our synagogue had been in some difficult times and i had a difficult period as a rabbi he took me a sight and he saw me and he took me aside and he said she put his arm around him and said shall how is it going are they treating you well are you getting through he didn't have to do that i was no longer an employee of the united synagogue that was rabbi sax to the core an individual who felt that he could use his skills and his authority to empower individuals and in particular to impal rabbis but i want to say that his influence as chief rabbi and more than chief rabbi as rabbi was more than just the way he interacted with rabbis and leaders a less well-known story almost entirely lost obscurity is the early rabbi jonathan sacks the pulpit rabbi in the early eighties when he became rabbi of the golden green synagogue and dunstan rhoden gold is green when he reinvented 2k what we would call a cathedral synagogue invested it with energy breathed life into it created programs adult education retreats conversations book clubs the kind of thing that nowadays seems standard for synagogue fair but in its day was utterly utterly revolutionary by sags was an individual who saw limitless limitless potential and here's to my mind and i want to conclude two minutes with what to me rabbi sax stood for beyond and we're gonna hear more about the books that he wrote and the ideas that he transmitted and there are people far better qualified than i am to talk about his intellectual mark and his mark of the jewish community in the world of ideas i want to speak about his influence in the world of the spirit rabbi sullivan of course coined the phrase they used the phrase the lonely man of faith about jonathan sachs although as well as being a deeply private individual was a person of infectious faith he wanted shules to be full of song and life and the vibrancy if you ever heard rabbi sax daven from the almonds if you ever had the privilege as i did on a handful of occasions of sitting next to him and sure and davening was a searingly spiritual experience perhaps rabbi sex his greatest impact on anglo jewry for all of his books and the house of lords was the invention and the development of the shabbaton choir and his adoption of shabbat nim full of vibrant beautiful energy-filled singing i've told this story before and i've showed a number of occasions but on one occasion when rabbi sachs came to lincoln square we were walking down broadway together a few blogs we go to the corner of 72nd street this was in the uh in may 2010. he stubbed me at the corner and he said shovel who's dabbing today and i said hasn't gothen is nothing we just named our main minion in synagogue the hazard gotham memorial minion so he said to me beautiful and then he said sha'al how do we make the congregation sing and i thought this was remarkable he was going as he knew because people were passing us in the streets to get to school in time he knew he was going to be speaking to audiences of six seven 800 people over the course of shabbat he wanted to know how we could get those 700 people not to listen to him but to sing and dive and if you had the privilege of knowing rabbi sanchez that is rabbi sax through and through and the last thing i will say is the trust that he placed not just in rabbis but in every individual to me one of his most profound teachings and he said this famously at the uh a few years ago when he spoke in praise of the lord shared and he wrote about his own encounter with the rebbe who charged him took interest and turned him from a questioning intellectual student into a jewish leader and he wrote as follows he was speaking about the rebbe powerfully and passionately arguing me to get involved years later looking back on that encounter i summed it up by saying that good leaders create followers great leaders create leaders that was the rebbi's greatness not only did he lead he was a source of leadership in others and as we contemplate the mark rabbi jonathan sex secrets left not just on rabbis from whom i speak tonight but on jewish communities and on involved jews on every continent and in every language rabbi sachs was an individual who did more than woe and impress he leaned in he listened he cared inspired and he created leaders i'm going to hand back to nathan to move the program forward thank you very much rabbi robinson our next speaker is dr erica brown she is the director of the mayberg center at george washington university she's also a prolific author and community educator and perhaps in the spirit of what rabbi robinson just spoke about uh was no doubt inspired uh uh to to go down this path of being a real educator in the community because she was a student of rabbi jonathan sax's in the united kingdom please turn the microphone over to dr erica brown thank you nathan um the death of rabbi sachs was a shattering loss for me of a remarkable and influential teacher and i feel grateful that i'm able to share some thoughts with friends and be in the company of treasured colleagues do you know what it was like to have rabbi sax as a teacher so to understand we're going to travel back in time to learn what he thought was an ideal student in november of 1988 rabbi sachs was not yet the chief rabbi a position he held from 1991 until 2013 then he became informally the chief rabbi of english-speaking jewry in the years running up to his appointment he was busy running he was busy laying the groundwork for what he would call a decade of jewish renewal for the jews of great britain a chief concern of his was education and that november he wrote a paper still unpublished entitled profile of an educated jew there he outlined what he called in his subtitle an educational philosophy for new jewish secondary school while he doesn't say so explicitly he was no doubt influenced by a philosopher cited throughout rabbi snax's works aleister mcintyre who in 1985 wrote an essay entitled the idea of an educated public the important essay in its ideas which would punctuate much of mcintyre's writings on morality was that the only way to emerge out of what he called the moral crisis of modern life was to create an educated public a notion developed during the scottish enlightenment one cannot assume that people will feel responsible to society simply by virtue of being born this requires counter-cultural commitments and a strategy while mcintyre did not quote yeshua isaiah in support of his program i will learn to do good devote yourself to justice aid the wrong uphold the rights of the orphan defend the cause of the widow lim duhey tave goodness and justice can be taught and they must those were the years when a new school named after chief rabbi jacobits of blessed memory emmanuel college was an abstract formation imagine for a moment the opportunity to create a brand new jewish day school and imagine having rabbi sax as its spiritual and moral architect and so rabbi sacks ever the strategist started with the end product if you will the ideal graduate he writes in this paper and i quote fix firmly in mind some models of the kind of children you'd like to produce explore the educational system that produced them and try to replicate its key elements in a jewish context he identified four key elements which i believe described not only as school but the kind of jew rabbi sachs believed would harness elevate and transform the future of judaism these four abstract principles demonstrate from his early writings the durability of his educational aspirations number one and these are his words a commitment to hard work intellectual achievement honesty and integrity two a mature jewish identity together with an understanding of the depth of knowledge and intelligent jewish identity requires number three a sense of jewish responsibility number four a mature sense of the necessary interaction between jew and non-jew and between religious jew and non-religious jew as you can see rabbi sax was deeply concerned about a secular culture that saw history as just a series of random events and human responses and an orthodoxy that was sectarian and close-minded he wanted to prepare the next generation to have a sophisticated education like his own as he wrote the best jewish thinkers have consistently been those who were well grounded in secular disciplines and when it came to jewish studies he wanted students to enjoy and i quote intensive bible study medieval jewish poetry hasidic tales contemporary jewish writing agno wiesel bashevis singer jewish thought in jewish history that taught the enlightenment emancipation zionism and the holocaust he wanted to attract the best and brightest and prepare them to be leaders as he describes the school in his conclusion it will unashamedly aim at creating leaders in all spheres of contemporary life individuals whose sense of jewish responsibility is deep and broad encompassing an identification with the jewish people in its totality jewish history in its diversity and with the state of israel in its centrality is this not a description of rabbi sax himself i had the great good fortune of living in london from 1988 to 1990 when i had a front row seat to watch this brilliant scholar become an even more brilliant jewish public servant i watched a master strategist at work only five minutes in his presence and it was clear he could have done anything with his intelligence and his eloquence and he decided to give it all to us the jewish people i've always been an anglophile i started drinking tea with milk when i was 10 years old i love british novelists and artists i love british movies and not surprisingly fell in love with a brit who brought me to london i gave up the stern cafeteria for the jewish college for factory i now lived in a flat not an apartment i had a fringe instead of bangs check the bonnet of the car and then put things in the boot but i did not know how to drive and frankly i was actually afraid to cross the road so i spent most days at juice college part of the vast network of university of london schools where jonathan sachs was its principal we lived on victoria road the college was on albert road and only a few minutes round the bend i taught there and was privileged to have lady elaine in my class she was not yet a lady but always always a lady i ran the sixth form center at the college for students from city of london haberdashers and henrietta barnett and the like who supplemented their jewish education on sunday mornings occasionally i taught for holidays and shabbato at marble art synagogue rabbi sax's shul at the time in 1989 i began a masters at the college and rabbi sachs was my thesis advisor it was he who advised me to continue for my doctorate it would be no exaggeration to say that i can credit my career to his encouragement most people know rabbi snacks today from his majestic lectures or his books but i knew him chiefly as a teacher and mentor he lit up whatever space he was in bringing the spires of cambridge into the classroom i learned that to be a jewish educator was not about collating many sources on a handout that's just the beginning bashir to him was a work of art that demands craftsmanship and compositional attention rabbi sachs taught me that a life devoted to jewish education begins with intense and constant reading to see him in his garden shed and gold to scream surrounded by piles of books the latest in philosophy and history sociology and demography was to see his brain at work he taught me that a life of torah influence involves constant writing and also constant engagement with the public he taught me that to be a jewish leader is to be a dealer in hope because there are so many critics out there we don't need another one we need optimists and rabbi sax really was our optimist in chief later i followed his career from afar always attend trying to attend his public talks when he was on this side of the pond after he retired i once asked him when he was going to slow down and it seemed that he stopped one post only to adopt a larger one he said with his eyes facing heavenward as was his way god is not finished with me yet and god is still not finished with you rabbi sacks because your torah is here with us is here with me in the address you gave at your installation as chief rabbi on september 1st 1991 you concluded with a promise in st john's wood synagogue you said i will make mistakes but i will learn from them i will have failures but i will try again another way another time but i will never give up or relax or despair you never mentioned your successes and they were so many and you kept your word you never gave up you never relaxed and most importantly you never despaired and to honor you and your legacy we must all do the same thank you very much dr erica brown her next presenter is a professor of jewish history and jewish thought at yeshiva university also a longtime rabbi of our host upper west side community at the jewish center rabbi jacob j schachter i want to thank i want to thank you nathan diamond and the orthodox union for putting together tonight's program and thank lincoln square synagogue and all of the uh participating schools and the uh hundreds and hundreds into the thousand uh people who are gathered here tonight it's a great privilege for me to join my fellow presenters in reflecting on the life and legacy and impact on rabbi jonathan sacks for me this is a very difficult assignment because um my relationship with rabbi sachs goes back over four decades and our paths intersected many times whether in england or in the united states i was in his home in saint john's wood he was in our home together with lady lane whether we were living in new york or in brookline massachusetts or in teaneck new jersey it's incomprehensible for me to really understand and recognize that he is no longer with us and it is monumentally difficult for me to try to encapsulate what he meant to me in a very few minutes what i would like to do is to reflect on some takeaways from the life of rabbi sachs and try to draw our attention so how is this relevant to me here's a larger than life figure who had such an impact national international impact it's it's it's hard to believe uh someone else who had such an impact in so many different areas so i'm a pasha the guy you know and i push it to eat i'm a regular person i'm trying to do my best what do i take away from his life that i could internalize and i'd like to draw our attention to a few a few concepts number one what i learned from jonathan sacks is the difference that one person can make you see we always wonder i'm only one person so can i really make a difference yeah i can make a little bit of a difference hopefully in my family maybe with myself maybe a little bit with my community but what difference can one person make and he taught us that one person can make a tremendous difference you know the gemara tells us that rebbe was making the ashirim and hillary was rabbi sax obligates us to contemplate what difference can we make and uh we're not going to have a writ large impact but you see one person can make a difference and i think it's worthwhile for us to think about the differences that we could make in our ways and i think we will conclude if we're honest and if we focus that uh we there are many ways that we could we could have an impact second point i want to make is and this i saw firsthand is that uh rabbi sax was it was a mavakesh mavakis means he was a seeker he was born into a traditional home not very much interested in traditional jewish studies wanted to be a philosopher went to cambridge and felt something was missing and he began a life-long journey to seek and find it came to the united states the la babachareba revere robinson mentioned came to speak with dr norman lamb came to speak with rabbi joseph b salvajic and that changed his life and he thought and he sought always plus it tells us about yisro that uh now i know says says the torah now i know that israel says that god is the greatest so rashi says now i know that god is great how do i know because i did a market uh research i i did every single of a dessert i went i looked everywhere i worshiped every single idol so i know of what i speak now i know god is god is the god i have a comparative study and from my whole life i used to think that was a kitten that that was uh inappropriate is this appropriate to say that his whole life he's an inveterate idolater but then i began to realize that that's really all he knew he only knew i'd worship and he wasn't satisfied with what he knew he kept on looking he kept on looking and now i know that god is the greatest he went from idle to idol searching a meaningful experience and we're not going to go to idols that's not our world hashem but our world is to seek when he would come into our home he'd go straight to the bookcase i couldn't talk to him for the first hour or two hours he went to the bookcase and he's scouring the bookcase maybe there's a book i haven't seen yet because i'm so busy here in america things come out before i get them over there on the other side and he sat and he read and he read and he read and he was very curious and so i say to myself you know maybe i read something but maybe there's more to read maybe there's more to learn maybe there's more to know and i think all of us we could beam of action we should beam of action we should search and try to make ourselves stronger and better we could learn that from him not the way he did it but the way we could do it we can try to make a difference one person can make a difference we could be in the vacation the last point i want to make is that he taught me something really important and that is that the outside world really matters you know hashem in a large measure due to the uh tremendous impact that the orthodox union has made over the years thank god our orthodox jewish world in america you know we're doing okay with strong confidence and with institutional strength and with political influence thanks to nathan and all of the work that you do with extraordinary unself-consciousness orthodoxy has achieved a presence in america that we never imagined even just a half century ago and so therefore we could potentially conclude this gate may run by yenem i don't care skate mcgornish dome what's going on in the world but he taught us that the world matters he was not only a chief rabbi for the jews he was the chief rabbi for the guy and he spoke the values of judaism out in the marketplace he once said and i quote to be a jew is to be true to our faith while being a blessing to others regardless of their faith and he was a spokesman for jewish values in the marketplace of the world yes i understand we're not going to write in the daily mail or the telegraph or the times or the evening standard we're not going to go to the european parliament in brussels or the vatican in rome or the house of lords or 10 downing street in london but uh the outside world matters and uh we need to have an impact on it do we are we appropriate when we talk to neighbors non-jewish neighbors do we model human decency for our neighbors do we visit our local policemen and firemen on thanksgiving day what are we doing for the world we can't ever just be insular he spent a lot of time presenting jewish values to the world and maybe more than ever because we are internally hashem as successful as we've become that's all the more reason why we need to take that and to bring it outside number of years ago rabbi sax was asked why by that time he already had two bouts with cancer and never wrote about it i must tell you i was close with him i did not know that he had two bouts with cancer i didn't know you look at him he's just a dynamo jumping up and down you have to be with him for a minute and a half even one-on-one he is excited he is engaged he is with a big smile and and with looking up and in front of crowds he was energized i never knew twice he battled cancer in the early years and he never wrote about it and he answered the following and this is my final comment and i'm quoting in response he said it's very simple and maybe this is the biggest lesson i saw my late father in his eighties go through four or five major operations now my late father over shalom didn't have much jewish education but he had an enormous amount i used to watch him saying till him in the hospital and i could see him getting stronger it seemed to me that his my father's mental attitude was i'm leaving this to hashem if he sees it it's time for me to go then it's time for me to go and if he still needs me to do things here he'll take care of me he'll look after me and i said rabbi sacks and i invite all of us to seriously think about this i adopted exactly that same attitude so on both occasions when he grappled with cancer i felt that if this is the time hashem needs me up there thank you very much indeed for my time down here i've enjoyed every day and i feel very blessed and if he hashem wants me to stay and there's still work for me to do then he hashem is going to be part of the reform and i put my trust in him so there was no test of faith at any point just these simple moments of which to say that was my thought and since we say that every day and i don't know love i didn't feel the need to write a book about it it wasn't a theological dilemma we know the massive rabbi sacks what do we take away that's relevant to me concluded rabbi sacks i had faith full stop there are many lessons that we could learn from my beloved friend our beloved teacher and mentor and guide it was may ear a nano in so many different ways but maybe that's the most significant one i had faith full stop lilly nishmas muscle thank you very much rabbi shachter our final presenter is rabbi mosha hauer a longtime rabbi of renee jacob shari zion in baltimore and uh now for um now for more than a year the i'll still say relatively new executive vice president of the orthodox union rabbi howard thank you very much nathan and thank you for your vision and planning of tonight's event we're grateful for that it's best gratitude to our co-host rabbi robinson and the lincoln square synagogue and the special gratitude as well to dr brown and rabbi schafter for all the beautiful presentations my speaking here tonight is to represent the many of us who never had a chance to really get to know the personal rabbi sex i my colleagues and co-presenters here all spoke of their deep and lengthy personal relationships which they had with rabbi sax the person i also feel i had a long relationship with him although if i recall correctly i was only with him in a room once but i've had a long and very very enriching relationship with his writings from before he was the chief rabbi when i first discovered arguments for the sake of heaven a book he published before he ascended to the chief ravenous and started to see the the range and the dazzling brilliance of rabbi sax the impact of rabbi sachs was far beyond those who knew him personally all of us claus israel the world as has been said over and over again learned and were enriched continue to learn and continue to be enriched by the thought by the ideas and by the torah of rabbi sex rabbi shafter spell spoke meaningfully personally about how hard it is for it for him to believe that he is no longer with us in the way that he was it's hard for me as well it's hard for me because i think to to to all of us who studied and who learned from him rabbi sax represented such a force of life such a torate you know rabbi sax for many years was very particular about wearing bright ties yellow ties he said famously that his job was not just to speak or to write but to cheer people up he was an optimist as was discussed earlier and peddled in optimism but it wasn't just ties and it wasn't just hopeful thoughts the life that rabbi sax represented was a life of constant discovery and constant freshness you know torah is something which we study it's something which we share all too often our study of torah is dry and sterile we draw from the torah ideas that we knew already reinforcement for thoughts for values for ways of life that we know to be true that are established that are there but torah is meant to be much more than that torah is meant to be transformative and life-changing constantly you know there's a mishna at the end of the missionaic portion of pirkeia vote the last towards the end of the fifth chapter of pyrkhavot turn it over and turn it over because it is all there everything is within it it's an instruction about the constant engagement in the study of torah turn it this way and that there are always new facets of the torah to discover and all of us who have learned and gained and continue to learn and gain from the teachings of rabbi sachs know and see that the weekly parsha is not a routine to be repeated here we go again another cycle but there's always freshness there's always something new turn it over turn it over there's a different facet a different angle a different way to view and something which is transformative one might suggest that is not just referring to turning over the torah turn it over and turn it over but transform yourself revolutionize yourself turn yourself over through the torah revolutionize your own life after all you know that we are taught the commentaries all note ben bagbang an unusual name not found often in mishno or talmud who was he were taught that ben bagbag was a person who joined the jewish people who converted to judaism when he looked at the torah didn't he not see revolutionize yourself transform yourself he was not the same person as he was before toru wasn't just confirming existing ideas and ideals torah opens one one's eyes to entirely new perspectives constantly transforming oneself the kind of vitality that we saw in rabbi sacks that we learned from rabbi sachs was not just simply the vitality of an optimist it wasn't the vitality of a person who simply just drew from the crowds that he inspired it wasn't the person who just felt i have a job in life to cheer people up it was the vitality of a person who was constantly rediscovering and remaking every pus every verse that he touched every mishnah that he approached every world of thought from inside and outside the classic texts of torah to him opened eyes revolutioned revolutionized transformed himself he was ever young because he was always learning himself anew you know that there's a a prayer at fila that's cited in the mishnah in brahmot that before one enters the house of study there's it's our brief prayer to say and the talmud explains the talmud describes how he would pray how he prayed shiloh omar al-tome tohar of he said i'm going to study the torah i want to be clear i want to be correct i don't want to make mistakes i don't want to misinterpret it was a prayer of caution the ariza the great kabbalist the ariza who added to the prayer river of he added two verses one that said hashem for god grants us from his mouth so to speak wisdom knowledge and understanding and then he added the verse from the 119th psalm from kofio tess nifla's open my eyes so that i may see wonders through your torah that's a prayer to say before we study and that prayer has been said over and over again in the hundreds of years since the arizal appended it to the prayer before learning open my eyes so that makes me see the wonders of your torah for all of us in a great sense rabbi sax was part a critical part of god's answer to those prayers he opened our eyes he opened our eyes to the wonders of torah he allowed us as well to somehow draw in that force of being forever young after constantly changing ourselves with the insights that the torah grants us the torah that he taught us has given us the greatest of gifts thank you very much rabbi hauer um we're going to now have a try to have some discussion uh between or amongst the panelists uh the presenters um i'd like to kick it off if i may by uh by taking uh a piece of rabbi schachter's theme and turning it into a question for rabbi robinson and dr brown i was privileged to encounter and learn from rabbi sachs when he would come to washington periodically both in helping him set up meetings with national american leaders in congress and and elsewhere and escorting him in those meetings and at the same time he was very happy to spend shabbos in our shull in silver spring um and within a matter of literally less than 24 hours i would get to see rabbi sachs engage with senators or members other members of congress and policy makers on global issues and engage and engage the world on the big ideas and on more than one occasion be the guest rabbi or scotland residents at our show at kms and there happened to be a bar about mitzvah on that shabbat and uh of course rabbi sachs spoke to the standing room owned standing room only main shull with people in wrapped attention but i got to also watch him spend time pulling the bar about mitzvah young person aside and having a conversation with them one-on-one and making them feel like they were the center of the world um and and what that makes me uh think about and and i want to turn to again to rabbi robinson first and then dr brown uh as a question in terms of they recounted their early experiences with him um being mentored by him in educational and that seems like to have that breadth and to have that scope and to and to the the the agility if you will um to go from one sphere of activity uh as you said chief rabbi to the world to the english-speaking world and to go and swing again within a day to being a very caring and direct engaged person with a young uh with a young jewish teen um it's just it's just a tremendous challenge for anybody um and and i wonder if you could um recall or recount perhaps something more that you saw in your in your early days with him um that that could be instructive for us as as rabbi schachter put it a takeaway for us and how we can try to to to think about juggling um or moving from one sphere to another whether it's in those interpersonal relationships or or for different realms of intellectual endeavors rabbi robinson why don't i turn to you first for that and then and then to dr brown well i'm very much looking forward to hear what dr brown has said i want to thank all my co-panelists i guess co-presenters um honored guests for for their moving moving talks and i want to get right into it although i actually must have teared up and everybody absolutely everybody's response and i'll say later while i clear that when rabbi i was speaking but i will say to answer your question you're correct i think rabbi sax was in a very maimonidean way in the sense that there was a a a um no gap or the smallest gap between acquired knowledge and character traits of behavior what i mean by that is that you know there's no doubt about what you said nathan is 100 correct and i recounted my own experiences that as well and aipac grounding taking aside despite everything else going on but it was learned it was learned behavior and it was important to him because he had come to understand how important it was and why do i say that because a year ago during the shiva we had lincoln square our own online presentation and a dear friend a dear friend of the sexes and dear friend of mine paul chevy spoke and he spoke about the very early jonathan sex cambridge student the rabbi the very early years of his career who was shy and when erica dr brown spoke before when he quoted if i make mistakes if i have failures i will try again we have no idea how true that was rather sex was in his earliest years before i knew him tongue-tied self-aware self-conscious intellectual who didn't really know how to speak to people and relate to people and here's the genius and this if anything is this is he learned he learned how to do it he learned that how important it was and he did it brilliantly and that really does inspire if we can all leave here saying sax was his genius of insight of gifting born with these incredible charismatic interpersonal skills but the amazing thing was that he wasn't and as much as he developed intellectually he developed humanly as well and and and that to me is one of the most important and in fact crushing facts about his his life and his passing and over to dr brown yeah i think many of us uh know him from his later years where you know uh you know prince charles gave such a moving testimony to their friendship rabbi uh tony blair called him his rabbi um and and i think uh we tend to associate him with people like that because he was very aristocratic in his is his bearing but in actual fact it was such a pleasure to watch him with students that was for me that's what i got to see because i ran the sixth form center and when a student occasionally he would pop in when a student had an issue and was speaking to me about it very often i would say would you talk to rabbi sax about it and and i could talk to rabbi sax and i said it would be his pleasure and i remember setting up meetings and and you could see the impact that this had on someone's life and i can mention one person in specific and that's rabbi alex israel who is one of those students who who really built a career in the rabbit and jewish education i think in large part because like me he saw he saw as rabbi howard said so beautifully his vitality and what i mean by vitality is he was attracted to um to the freshness of people coming to the torah as children right as and and and watching him with children was actually quite joyful watching him with his grandchildren um very joyful you know we saw we saw a different side of him he would very often go to jewish societies what we would call hillel's onion in american campuses and he saw that as the bread and butter of his work i remember several shabbatonim where he and i taught in in bournemouth which english people think is a resort town we can discuss that later um it's raining all day there it's not a resort but uh but i remember you know how how much pleasure he would take working with students in fact we we actually got stuck in a traffic jam on the way home so it took us five hours it was elliott's sex jonathan sacks myself and another colleague and let me just say there was nothing i could contribute to the conversation in that car um i just had to open the window so i could breathe a little bit it you know there was something about his esotericism as as you pointed out nathan but his capacity to understand that there's going to be a jewish future it's because we inspire young people so don't spend all of your time with the quote-unquote important people the important people are always the children thank you dr brown um rabbi howard you you focused very much on on his uh what i'll call his his [Music] attitude i would call it towards towards torah and constantly being uh you know finding new vistas um even even in the weekly parsha so to speak which you know teaching us that it's not something to be to be uh taken for granted um i i was wondering if you could expand on your perspective from your um uh from where as you as you said you were you were not directly engaged with him but uh if you could expand from your perspective on what especially in your career of decades as a shul rabbi uh of what you took from his uh teachings and writings and were brought to your uh kahila and baltimore with regard to again what i'm borrowing from rabbi schachter what rabbi schachter talked about as engagement with the world and how the broader world beyond um the precincts of orthodoxy matters uh thank you for the question nathan um i uh i think that all of us saw i think the point that rabbi shafter made about how the world matters how rabbi sachs taught us that and showed us that and demonstrated in such an outstanding way um it is certainly what was certainly a piece of his legacy which became the context of rabbi sachs for the world in a certain sense i think that all of us just watched as rabbi sax made his way through the upper echelons of the intellectual world of the worlds of government of the worlds of of of thought leadership in the world as a whole we watched with pride and we saw there how torah can have within it the most relevant lessons to confront the challenges with faith which face us in the world you know there's always this balance and you know if if i may you you asked about uh you know how this applies to the way we teach i i would l i would like to often point out to people that there is a almost a contradiction on the first page of the shulkhana the first page of the first glass of rama he tells us that don't be embarrassed by those who will taunt tease you ridicule for the torah that you fulfill as if torah is something that's so strange and unusual and to be an object of ridicule and on the other hand as we know in parashat the torah says observe the torah because it is your wisdom your understanding before the eyes of the nations they'll hear this these laws and they'll say what are wise and understanding these people are and so the question we have to ask ourselves is so is torah something which puzzles which is an object of ridicule or is taurus something which inspires which is an object of of admiration and we understand that the simplest answer to that is that perhaps when you're learning the laws of native adam in the beginning of when you're learning the specific rituals for someone who's outside of the richness of jewish life they can look at it and they can be puzzled but there's a totality of torah that all of that is supposed to contribute to that helps us learn how to live life and that is something which will be watched which will be admired which will be learned from by everyone rabbi sax was a very proud jew or jew of the torah jew of the torah which was morocco the internal world of observance and practice to the fullest but he taught us and i think that i personally and so many of us who are involved in the study of torah the dissemination of torah taught us that we must make sure that we are also there engaged and amplifying the lessons which are admirable from afar the lessons beyond those of ritual but the lessons that teach the the lessons for society the lessons for internal understanding and these his his his writings open that up and his example opened that up and inspired us to move forward in those ways thank you um rabbi schachter uh you know rabbis part of rabbi sachs's uh intellectual legacy is uh is is very much a i think a paradigm of um not only practical engagement you know with the general world uh because the world matters as you said but but intellectual engagement and and and an engagement with both uh at why you they would call it toru mata rabbi sachs preferred calling it torah and krakma but we also know that there are that there are tensions between engaging in in a lot of ways in these two realms uh perhaps especially in the academic world where where he started out you you've written so many essays and edited books on the engagement of torah with general culture i was wondering if you could um share some perspective on particularly this if you want intellectual dimension and what what we our take away uh for those who try to intellectually engage in torah and can learn from how rabbi sacks engaged in that realm um i i very much appreciate the question uh although i must say i'm i'll be happy to give a brief answer but i'm i'm interested in rabbi sax the person that rabbi sacks the brain um that that's what i'm i'm overwhelmed with uh tonight uh the just the human being and the human loss um to give a very short answer i would say that he demonstrated for us that there are great realms in the world of mother or that are not contradictory to the worlds of tauren that can be used to help us appreciate understand and be able to transmit those values to the outside world it's not it's not mukhrak it's that's not automatic that there is tension uh there are times when there's tension but there are a lot of times when there are intention i was very moved nathan by the question that you posed earlier uh to uh to rabbi robinson and to dr brown about the the the balance between the rabbi sachs who talks to the senator and the rabbis sex who talks to the bar mitzvah kid so i i want to share a really brief story and take the opportunity to do so with your permission and i i know i'm not feasting you with intellectual insights but i'm just not in the mood to do that now you'll forgive me i hope you'll invite me to kms and we can talk about it um about a month before rabbi sacks died i had no idea that he was ill i had a close friend who was sick who was dying and he was a hasid sheba khasi dim of rabbi sex and he knew that i had a relationship with him and he reached out to me and he said i want to talk to rabbi sax before i die i mean this is like it doesn't get more primal than that before i die i never spoke to him i followed him my whole life i'm gonna die soon i want to talk to you so i sort of shrugged my shoulders and what am i gonna do i picked up the phone i called joanna benaroche the wonderful woman who ran his office i said joanna it's jj schachter i have a request maybe uh rabbi sax can here's the number maybe he could call this person that's all he wants and he called the next day he called and the phone dropped because the connection was broken and he called three times and he spoke to this guy this this sweet guy who we never heard of not a famous man a wonderful jew and he did a machete and he told me my friend okay now i'm ready and a month later rabbi sax died and i'm thinking to myself oh my god he had what to do he had to write seven more pages in the translation of the torah that he's preparing for cohen that wasn't finished he's got a ton of things up there in his office that he's surrounded by he picks up the phone because he wants to do an active pressing we ask about ourselves what's our takeaway we're not as busy as he we're not as busy and we're not grappling with a life-threatening illness pick up the phone and call and do an active present that to me is important as important as torahma and torah trust me i believe that's very important i devoted a lot of my life to that but you know i'm getting older and maybe i'm even old i don't know i don't know my kids you know i have a debate all the time already and at the end of the day you know what do you want to leave you want to leave a legacy of kindness that's something we could take away from rabbi jonathan sacks thank you rabbi schachter um i want to share with the presenters and with all of you who are tuned in that uh i am reliably informed that there are more than a thousand people who are uh with us this evening uh viewing this program uh thank you all very much for joining us um and quite a few people have sent in questions through the web form uh some of which i think have been answered but i'm going to try to uh touch on some are some are lighter and some are and some are uh more heavy topics i'll try to i'll try to take some representatives maybe maybe to pick up in a different way on on a on a note that was just uh hit by rabbi schachter um one of the questioners points out that we know that many many national or community leaders uh unfortunately do not uh do not they devote so much of their time and their energy to the community that often their their family uh gets short shrift um and uh this person wanted to know um you know what uh uh what we can learn from rabbi sax in that regard i happen to know from a distance that he had a very good relationship with his family so i feel comfortable asking that question um and maybe maybe dr brown uh because she lived in london with the family can can can respond to that uh and i'm right by robinson can as well you know i i don't want to you know i i i don't want to make out as if i had uh you know front row access in his in his living room and you know he obviously had a close relationship with his family i think actually you can see that because he brought up the issue of marriage and family so often in his talks very very often in his talks he uh i think that for him was part of the covenantal relationship the basis the foundation of the covenantal relationship which he spoke about and one of the ways that um they figure out what what rabbi sax thinks about a lot is you take uh you know one of his books and then you look at the index and you know you'll find maimonides next to mick jagger i mean it's it's it's always an interesting combination but there's certain things that come up again and again and the theme of covenant comes up again and again because it's tied to marriage and family i think he saw that not as distinct from the responsibilities of a rabbi but that is the base that is when you you start there you start as the model father the husband and then you work your way uh you know outward in your commitments and to think that you can do it in the reverse i think would have been an error i mean i i think you can see um i mean i think one of the saddest uh moments one of my saddest moments of cobit was watching how few people were able to attend his funeral um and you could see just the loss of what this meant to his family and i think in some way we understood that whatever we knew of rabbi sacks from his writing or personal interactions we could never know what his family experienced in this loss and watching the starkness of that really communicated it um so i i'm not sure that i i don't know if he had any discreet messages to give to people about how to manage something giving sort of life hacks wasn't really i think his style uh but i i think that uh that you can see all over his writings the emphasis on on marriage and family and how how critical it was for him emma robinson did you want to add anything there look it's a great question and something you know famously he he wrote a lot about marriage and you know and because he would travel so often with uh lady lane sacks you know what the world could see and he wrote some beautiful books and addressed them to elaine and in that um celebrating life book which was columns of the time she would often often speak about her and it was very very beautiful i am i just recalled an incident actually and it's maybe appropriate that we had to cancel our event tonight so because of the rain uh one time rabbi spoke at our shoulder because a blizzard had made them cancel an event elsewhere but he actually spoke in our shul once and there was an icelandic volcanic ash which meant that he was basically stranded in the upper west side of manhattan for about a week and and and i actually learned that he had a grandchild before he did because josh his son in london called him mutsy shabbos had no idea where his father was and they needed to tell the news that he had a baby so you know i felt just happy to be part of that very private moment in their life but i will say and i think and ramahara mentioned a book argument for the sake of heaven and i know that some of the books were changed the titles were changed just like harry potter and the philosopher stone became the sorceress stone in america because as eric has said two people divided by you know the same language a different language so if it's the same book the book in england called traditional alternatives which opens with the vignette of people around a family table all different kind of jews all one family that's it and and in many ways that was rabbi sanchez's life he was the chief rabbi i was put in the position and what he privately thought about it and one can i think easily speculate about not going to the mood conference whose daughter and son-in-law were leading lights in the moods another daughter-in-law i could say a landsman from glasgow scotland the place where joe biden needs to be careful when he goes it's not an easy place it's a firebrand uh feminist uh campaigner and yet rabbi sex had around him another wife who was very close but children were choosing within orthodoxy all sorts of different directions that could potentially as any of us who are rabbis or rabbinic families could have the potential to be seriously embarrassing if not undermining and one never ever ever got that that impression at all at all exuded pride and made it effortless clear that he was not his children and his children were not him so i think that's an important lesson for every family and certainly every leadership family in the community and i jump in and nathan to respond as well i think the question is an extremely powerful question and i think those of us who are in the public eye grapple with this all the time because we're so busy worried about everybody else's children and we're least worried about our own children um i wonder often what are my children gonna say about me when i'm gone it's a stickle morbid but i think it's a stickle incredibly important because it's now how to behave towards them and what lessons do we want them to know and how do they want us uh how do we want them to remember us i must tell you he wrote about family he spoke about family but i am in absolute awe how his daughter gila repeatedly spoke and speaks about him that's to me the greatest proof it's not what he wrote it's what do his kids say about him and i urge thousand plus of you who are listening you must go to listen to gila what she said when her father won the templeton prize you must hear what she said at the funeral just today i heard three minutes from her she's trying to promote together with the president of israel herzog this whole national international effort conversations to study rabbi sex halavi our children should speak about us with that level of passion caring affection and love this to me is the most powerful example you could be a rabbi sax you could be on cnn every monday and thursday you could be all over the world but at the end of the day if you have children who speak that way about you that's an incredible legacy and that to me proves what an incredible person that he was thank you rabbi uh another another question relates to um you know rabbi spat rabbi sachs spent a lot of time um advocating uh for israel and for zionism both in england and europe europe in particular more broadly um and uh perhaps perhaps uh i can turn to rabbi hauer on this question just in the short year since rabbi sachs is passing the questioner asked there have been more anti-israel activities in the world the questioner is asking how do we think how do we speculate rabbi sachs would respond to to defending israel in current times i think one of the one of the uh last major uh someone can correct me please if i'm in if i'm wrong but uh jeremy corbyn's campaign for the leadership of the labour party in england he had the leadership of the labour party in england for the prime ministership in england was a very unsettling experience not only for the jewish community of of england of great britain but for the for the jewish community of the world for all of us here in america we saw the acceptability in public discourse of a level of open anti-semitism that um i think many of us did not imagine would be able to emerge rabbi sax came spoke very very strongly very sharply and very clearly at that time he published in i don't remember which paper but in one of the major papers of papers of england a a strong strong expression of disdain for for jeremy corbyn for what he stood for and uh he did not uh squander the significance of his voice which could sometimes you know it's it's it's nice to use one's voice to speak about elegant subjects to speak about matters that of of family and of values which are hard to argue with to take a position of that kind and to stand up at a time like that at a time which is not just a time like that but a time like this was truly a voice of leadership i can't surmise i don't know if any of us can surmise exactly what rabbi sex would have said but all of us understand that he used his voice to stand up for kali'srill at a time when that voice was needed and that voice continues continues to be needed i think it's one of the stellar examples of rabbi sax's public diplomat diplomacy or his public action as public voice um nathan i just want to jump in i think i think one of the only times i ever saw him really sort of angry and disjointed was uh was when he spoke about and the rise of european anti-semitism in fact i i know that it was an event that you organized here in washington dc and you could see how how troubled he was uh you talked about um what does it mean to live alone and into ravish actor's point earlier i think part of his investment in the non-jewish community was to say we can't be alone in this fight against anti-semitism and if i have friends if i invest in you then you will invest in us and you will understand that we can't anti-semitism is not ours to fight you don't ask the victim to engage in the fight you ask your friends to engage in the fight who have who have voice and who have power perhaps a power that you don't have and i think um i think that enabled him rabbi howard to be able to to write what he did because he had the kind right the archbishop of canterbury and you know he had tony blair as a friend these were people he invested in and he understood the the way in which they may um they may form protective bonds but i would say i think that was the only time i saw him truly distressed was when he wrote about anti-semitism and and and and and he began to experience um a rise of anti-semitism in europe that i think he couldn't have foreseen none of us could have foreseen thank you [Music] this could this concludes this portion of the program and we're very grateful for the insightful and heartfelt presentations each of our distinguished presenters shared with us i'm going to turn it back to rabbi robinson to close out the program together with the hazaan from the lincoln square synagogue rabbi robinson thank you all very much and thank you again to nathan diamond thank you to all my steam co-presenters who are we're here i know khasanam are somewhere on the zoo hopefully he can be revealed to us because he's going to do the kamali rahamim um should be here um and um but i want to say that just uh to thank everybody for their participation and um we're just there is even virtually a a sense of the most profound loss he had so much left to give his death his passing was a tragedy we mourn and we lost during covert so many people who had made impacts and and we can't even begin to list them one can certainly say about the passing of rabbi sax is was that it was a tragedy in the sense that every time his rabbi howard said we tiny open the parsha every crisis that the world faith will face will be deprived impoverished by not having rabbi sex to explain to reassure to educate to inspire and to show us what the torah has to say and how it challenges us so the loss is is unfathomable and and profound and we all know tragically that rabbi sex is not born every year and he was a world-changing and a world-class scholar intellectual rabbi jew and whose loss is so incredibly profound and we will do our best to remember to emulate to continue studying and to continue telling the story of rabbi jonathan sex world transforming in every in every sense now i'm going to pass over to our dear dear fans who will recite the kamali rashford [Music] [Applause] [Music] me foreign [Music] me [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] in [Applause] [Music] ah [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] me m [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] thank you very much this concludes our program you