To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility (review)

Sir Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, is the leading spokesperson today of what can be called Orthodox universalism. Judaic monotheism begins with the affirmation that one God created the cosmos and that all humans are in some significant sense created in the divine image. This monotheistic imperative has historically led to one of two mutually opposed conclusions, one universalist, the other particularist. The universalist concludes that since all humans are created in God’s image, God’s concern extends equally to all human beings. The particularist concludes that since there is only one God, there can be only one legitimate way of worshipping that God. Those who worship God incorrectly (or do not worship God at all) earn God’s wrath. Historically, Jewish particularists (R. Simeon bar Yohai, R. Judah Halevi, the authors of the Zohar, the Maharal of Prague, R. Shneor Zalman of Liadi, and many others) have also interpreted the doctrine of election to mean that Jews are in some intrinsic fashion distinct from and (at least spiritually) superior to non-Jews. Maimonides in the 12^th century, Leon Roth in the 20^th, and Jonathan Sacks in the 21^st are leading exponents of Judaic universalism.

To Heal a Fractured World is Rabbi Sack’s latest attempt to elucidate a universalist vision of Judaic orthodoxy. This is made clear in the way in which the book’s subtitle finds expression in the book itself: “The Ethics of Responsibility” refers to the ethical demand which the Torah makes of Jews to be responsible for all humans. Rabbi Sacks’s previous book, The Dignity of Difference, made an even bolder claim for a version of religious pluralism. That book so angered particularists among Rabbi Sacks’s rabbinic colleagues in Britain that he was forced to issue a revised and somewhat less audacious second edition.

The twenty chapters of To Heal a Fractured World show us a contemporary Orthodox rabbi applying the insights of the Jewish tradition to a variety of pressing moral questions. The central ethical insight of the book may be expressed (with apologies to John Donne) as follows: “no person is an island unto her or himself.” Individual Jews are obligated to help each other, and Jews as individuals and as communities are obligated to help non-Jewish individuals and non-Jewish communities. In The Dignity of Difference Jonathan Sacks agonized over the role of religion in fomenting intercommunal strife. In this book he seeks to use religion to overcome such strife. In one of his more striking discussions (chapter 18) Sacks contrasts the sage and the saint. The saint seeks his or her own perfection, while the sage seeks the perfection of society. In making this argument, Rabbi Sacks echoes Maimonides, arguably the greatest of all Jewish sages, who concludes his Guide of the Perplexed with the argument that having achieved a high level of perfection, the truly sainted person will turn back to the world, and, imitating God, seek to govern it with lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness.

Rabbi Sacks is one of the Jewish world’s greatest living orators. In this book, as in his many others, he eschews rhetorical flourishes and writes simply and engagingly. The friendly, accessible style hides a wealth of original midrashic and theological insights. Not a work of scholarship per se, To Heal a Fractured World is based upon a large body of scholarship which Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks elegantly presents to the reader.