Rabbi Sacks urges unity and better Internet use

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD — Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks sounded a call to Jewish unity on Sunday, in a keynote address to the  Jewish Federations of North America General Assembly.

He also urged Jewish communities to make better use of the Internet to facilitate that unity and to further Jewish learning and cultural enrichment.

While globalization is new to most peoples, “it is the oldest of the old” to the Jewish people who were scattered around the world for 20 centuries yet remained as one, said the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth.

“How could it be that before Facebook, Twitter, Google, a global people was even possible,” especially since “Jews had none of the normal accompaniments of a nation — they didn’t live in the same land, they didn’t speak the same language, they weren’t part of the same culture,” he said.

For example, “Rashi lived in Christian Europe, Rambam lived in Muslim Egypt,” Rabbi Sacks explained. “While the Jews of northern Europe were being massacred in the Crusades, the Jews in Spain were celebrating their golden age. In 1492, when Spanish Jewry was expelled, the Jews of Poland were enjoying their rare spring of tolerance.”

The key, he said, is that “all Jews are responsible for one another” and thus “we are hyper connected.”

Even disputes over the state of Israel — a land “which always united us [but] now sometimes divides us” — is not a problem.

“Disagreement is what it is to be a Jew,” he said. “Yesterday [in Parshat Vayera] we read how Avraham Avinu argued with the Almighty. So did Moses, so did Jeremiah, so did Job. On every page of the Talmud you find Rabbi X arguing with Rabbi Y.”

Rabbi Sacks continued: “Elie Wiesel once said, G-d created human beings because he loves stories. I say G-d chose the jewish people because he loves a good argument. What we need is not agreement [but] the feeling that we are all connected to one another, that we are all responsible for one another.”