An Evening with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

“‘Britain’s most prophetic voice’ (Daily Telegraph) spoke to a packed Great Hall on Monday 22nd June. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks enthralled and inspired his audience to think deeply and profoundly about the issues surrounding human conflict and religion. Firmly, he rebuked, “those who kill in the name of the God of life, wage war in the name of the God of peace, hate in the name of the God of love, and practise cruelty in the name of the God of compassion”. Using arguments drawn from psychology, philosophy and theology, Rabbi Sacks successfully explored how violence infected religious communities and how throughout history, religious communities have responded to this danger.   

Analysing both Judaism in the First Century CE and Christianity in the Seventeenth Century, Rabbi Sacks identified a great mind-shift in attitude, whereby the fighting of ‘wars of the Lord’ came to be prosecuted, not on the battlefield, but in the theological seminary and house of study. Rabbi Sacks addressed the ways in which issues of an interfaith dimension and issues between denominations of faith, are dealt with by communities today. With a mixed history of tolerance and intolerance infecting our views and attitudes about each other, he recognised the need to let go of hate, so as to become free. In his recent book, Not in God’s Name, Rabbi Sacks hones in on Moses’ commands to love thy neighbour as thyself and not to hate the Egyptians. “If the Israelites continued to hate their erstwhile enemies, Moses would have succeeded in taking the Israelites out of Egypt, but he would have failed to take Egypt out of the Israelites. Mentally, they would still be there, slaves to the past, prisoners of their memories.” Rabbi Sacks ends his book with a rallying cry to let go of hate, “honouring God’s name by honouring his image, humankind”

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