A year without Rabbi Sacks

• Author: TANYA WHITE
• Published date: 09 October 2021
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

"My firm belief is that the concept of covenant has the power to transform the world."

And indeed, it was his apperception of the Jewish message as covenant that did transform the world for so many. It was not just his parasha sheets "Covenant and Conversation" that sat at the Shabbat table in tens of thousands of homes expressing the idea of Torah text and interpretation as an ongoing conversation with heaven. It was not even the melioristic overtures of Judaism as conveyed in his book on post-holocaust thought Covenant and Crisis. His concept of society as based on "covenant" rather than "contract," so instructive for politicians, world leaders and dignitaries by offering a template on which to build a fairer, kinder, more moral society still was not the sole expression of covenant.

cnxps.cmd.push(function () { cnxps({ playerId: '36af7c51-0caf-4741-9824-2c941fc6c17b' }).render('4c4d856e0e6f4e3d808bbc1715e132f6'); });

>

No, it was more than all of this.

Rabbi Sacks taught us all, every parent, every teacher, every academic, every lay leader, every philanthropist and every child that we held the key to a better tomorrow. How did he do this? He demonstrated this through his belief that we share a world not just with each other, but with God. He showed us that we share responsibility for perfecting our existence, through respecting the freedom, integrity and difference of each individual. When I connect through covenant with the other – be it a human or God, my experience of the "we" transcends and elevates my experience of the "I."

As a Jew that means that I become part of the covenantal narrative of my people. Rabbi Sacks taught us that the greatest gift we can give our children is the knowledge that they are "heirs to a story that inspired a hundred generations of our ancestors and eventually transformed the Western world." This is a gift that he spent his life cultivating and nurturing for the hundreds of thousands who he touched through his ideas and writings.

When I was asked what impact Rabbi Sacks had on me as an educator, the answer was simple. He taught me that education is not a profession, nor a career choice. Education is the entire edificial framework on which not only Judaism, but the world stands, and it symphonizes harmoniously with covenant.

Covenantal living occasions a morally responsible society for whom faith, family, conversation between generations and education act as building blocks. As he notes on numerous occasions: "To defend a...