‘Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight’, declares the Lord. (Jer. 9:23–4)
“Goodness and virtue are widely distributed throughout humanity. Many times, I have been inspired by the community-building, life-transforming, hope-creating work of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Zoroastrians, Bahai; indeed of every faith with whom it has been my privilege to come into contact. Equally, I value the moral force of many forms of secular humanism, from John Stuart Mill to Bertrand Russell and beyond. Experience has taught me the truth of the wise words of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935):
“The narrow-mindedness that leads one to see whatever is outside the bounds of one’s own people…as ugly and defiled is a terrible darkness that causes general destruction to the entire edifice of spiritual good, the light of which every refined soul hopes for.”
I believe that all of us are made in the image of God and that each culture has a contribution to make to the human heritage. Nor do you have to be religious to be good. That became manifestly clear among those quiet heroes and heroines who saved lives during the Holocaust. What was common to them, as studies have shown, was not religious belief or any particular kind of upbringing. Most of them saw nothing special in what they did, even though many of them must have known that they were taking a risk that might cost them their lives. They were simply human, doing what human beings are expected to do…
One of the great Jewish folk-traditions speaks of the… ‘thirty-six’ hidden righteous people in whose merit the world exists. The most important thing about this group is that those who belong to it do not know they do. They are usually the people no one suspects of being special: the local woodcutter or horse-driver, the illiterate, the poor, the people who sit at the back of the synagogue unable to read the prayers. That is a tradition in need of reinstatement. It is easy to tell stories about figures of superhuman piety, but the essence of our humanity is that we are human – fallible, frail, prone to doubts, susceptible to despair, as were the great heroes and heroines of the Bible…
I have written this… as a Jewish voice in the conversation of humankind, for we all wrestle with questions about the meaning of our lives and the kind of world we will leave to those who come after us. At such times we need not only the passions of the present but the wisdom of our several traditions, lovingly handed on from generation to generation: the gift of the past to the future, and the offering each heritage can make to the moral imagination of humankind.”
~ Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility Jonathan Henry Sacks, (born 1948) is a British rabbi, philosopher, theologian and politician. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. Rabbi Sacks is an advocate of interfaith dialogue and sits on the Board of World Religious Leaders for the Elijah Interfaith Institute.
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