Foreword Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerner

Jewish tradition is a revolutionary force in the history of humankind – one on which the modern West depends for its very survival. This premise sits at the centre of Rabbi Sacks’ worldview. From his first work to his last, he made the case that we were the first civilisation on Earth to enshrine the idea that every life has sanctity; we were the first civilisation on Earth to promote a vision of providence that embraces human agency; we were the first civilisation on Earth to insist that every person deserves dignity. And – as Rabbi Sacks sees it – the spirit of our creed, starting at Sinai, sowed the seeds that would develop over time into a series of vital political beliefs, including the ideals of peace, a free society, minority rights, a balance of powers, and the rule of law.

Perhaps the major question at the heart of the West right now, however, is how to sustain nation-states made up of distinct communities with highly particularised identities divided along cultural, ethnic, and religious lines. And, for Rabbi Sacks, this is where what he calls “the unique structure of biblical spirituality,” as understood by the rabbinic sages, comes in.

The Hebrew Bible recognises that human beings are naturally tribal – that we are defined by a drive to identify with those most like us. While it summons us to see every human being as a vessel for divinity, it does not insist that we abandon our more intimate attachments to our immediate and extended family. In fact, the Hebrew Bible consecrates the family and sanctifies the community, and it outlines a series of heightened responsibilities toward members of our tribe. While it is true that, historically speaking, tribalism has dehumanised outsiders and fueled horrifying violence, Rabbi Sacks – in his The Great Partnership, Not in God’s Name, Future Tense, The Home We Build Together, and beyond – has shown that every attempt to sidestep tribalism has been disastrous as well.

Universalistic movements, both religious and secular, have led to oppression through the elimination of difference; individualistic movements have severed the bonds of connection that prevent a debilitating sense of isolation. The Hebrew Bible, as understood by the sages, offers what Rabbi Sacks calls “the most compelling way I know of giving religious expression to both our common humanity and our religious differences.”

Unlike the other monotheisms, Judaism – across the board – does not seek or aspire to global conquest or mass conversion; while it advocates a basic standard of universal morality, it leaves space for an almost infinite array of collective expressions of monotheistic faith. And that is because, as Rabbi Sacks explains, the Hebrew Bible recognises that feeling a sense of tribal belonging matters to human beings as much as what we believe. This, says Rabbi Sacks, is what the prophets understood when they invented the revolutionary institution that sits at the heart of this book: the synagogue.

Citing the scholars who see the synagogue as marking a radical break from every other ancient conception of sacred space, Rabbi Sacks depicts it as a civic space to perpetuate our collective identity in the absence of a nation-state – what he would later characterise as a kind of extraterritorial embassy. In his words: “The synagogue was Jerusalem in exile, a country of the mind, the place where the prayers of a scattered people met and temporarily reunited them across time and space.”¹ More than just a place of prayer, the synagogue is a place of friendship and memory and education that has “sustained us as a nation through the longest exile any people has ever suffered and survived.”²

footnotes: ¹ A Letter in the Scroll (New York: Free Press, 2000), 158. ² Ibid., 159.

The central contention of Community of Faith, however, is that with the emancipation of Europe’s Jews toward the end of the eighteenth century – and the subsequent changes that upended what had been the relatively stable patterns of Jewish life – different conceptions of what the synagogue ought to look like started to compete. The idea put into practice by the leaders of Anglo-Jewry – in contrast with those of mainland Europe and the United States – is, for Rabbi Sacks, the model to which Jewish communities all over the world ought to turn.

Under the umbrella of an organisation called the United Synagogue – headed by a Chief Rabbi – individual synagogues were intended to be highly standardised but deeply inclusive collective spaces, where strictly traditional modes of practice were performed but every member of the Jewish community was welcome. They were to be places where Jews of all stripes would come together under a single roof as heirs to common memories with a sense of shared destiny so that – as one people – they could preserve the spirit of our revolutionary faith and sustain it for another generation.

For the United Synagogue, this cooperation and respect between members of varying levels of personal observance was not understood as a product of necessity – a banding together of unnatural allies for the sake of communal viability. There were more than enough Jews in the major communities to split into groups of the like-minded and to gather in rooms with a more insular, if more intimate, feel. The big sanctuaries and broad memberships were an active and deliberate choice.

Though Rabbi Sacks notes toward the end of this volume that he did not regularly attend a “United Synagogue” until he was employed by one later in life, I grew up – under his Chief Rabbinate – attending both a synagogue and a school under its aegis. As a result, I and my family had friends who were personally observant and others who were not; I had classmates in whose homes I could eat and others in whose homes I could not – but we all prayed the same prayers, heard the same words, faced in the same direction, embraced each other, and belonged to a single community of faith.

Now I serve as a rabbi in the United States where, in the wake of Jewish emancipation, a completely different model of the synagogue emerged, defined almost entirely along ideological lines. And while it is true that such a division means that each community tends to possess a more potent energy and exhibit higher levels of religious literacy compared with their counterparts in Anglo-Jewry, it is not without a cost to the sense of collective belonging. And in the three decades since this volume was first published, the need for collective belonging has only become more pronounced.

As Rabbi Sacks’ final work – Morality – shows, the deepening polarisation of contemporary politics, combined with the highly contrived algorithms of online technologies, has sparked an epidemic of loneliness and a looming sense of disintegration and decline. It is precisely at such a time that a study of the revolutionary institution of the synagogue – and its particular manifestation in the United Synagogue – might inspire the kind of ideas that we need, both as Jews and as members of Western societies.

In truth, I not only grew up in the United Synagogue – I grew up as the grandchild of one of its presidents, Sidney Frosh, whom Rabbi Sacks thanks in his preface to this book. From my youngest years I watched in awe as my grandfather, despite a lack of higher Jewish education, devoted his life to investing and strengthening inclusive Jewish communities, driven by a conviction that we, as a people, share more than memories; he was propelled by the belief that we each play a part in fostering Jewish continuity and a model of belonging that can heal the world.

May Rabbi Sacks’ memory be a blessing, and may his ever-resonant wisdom continue to enlighten us all.