Tribute to Rabbi Sacks
Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks died unexpectedly in November of 2020. Rabbi Sacks was the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom from 1991 to 2013, the author of more than 35 books, and a unique moral voice.
I can still see in my mind the copies of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ commentary on the weekly Torah portion that my mother in law, Miriam, used to print from his website each week.
She would leave pairs or threes of them around her house, pulled out from inside a pair of pants and left on top of the washing machine, the corners turned up from her handling them, lines left in them from the folds she made so she could carry them in her pocket. I can see her again, sitting at the head of her table on a Friday night, a finger raised in the air, the printed commentary ready in her other hand as she tried to gain the attention of some or all of her five grown daughters and their husbands and children. ‘Listen to this.’ And she would read a paragraph, a sentence, as much as we would let her get through. Then she would put the paper down and say, ‘So what do you think of that.’ And shake her head in wonder over it. The difficulty in this week’s portion of the teaching settled by Rabbi Sacks’ interpretation. The truth of the correct way to live revealed once again this Shabbat.
Rabbi Sacks was the scholar in residence for Shabbat at her large shul in Englewood, New Jersey seven years ago, which meant that he spoke three times: on Friday night, and for both the morning and afternoon services. I remember that some who came to listen were forced to sit on the steps beneath the lectern from which he spoke, so great was the interest to hear him that even the cavernous space of the main minyan did not have enough seats for all comers.
Miriam, of course, attended each of his talks, her affect exuding a satisfied but not overwhelmed interest, for she was not a woman to be taken over by girlish fandom. For us the members of her large family it had simply been a relief to see her walk. A year before she had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer, but, due to an experimental gene-targeting drug, had seemed with each passing month to grow stronger. That Shabbat in particular she had cooked for the first time since she had begun to feel sick, and the prospect of her death seemed nearly as remote as it had before her diagnosis.
She died a week later. Her disease or her treatment had, by the Monday after that Shabbat, begun to attack her in a way that no doctor could find a solution for, putting her quickly into intensive care and then beyond any care.
It was for me – as for nearly everyone in her family – a crushing blow. Strong and fit in her early seventies, indomitable mentally, Miriam had seemed destined to outlive us all. Certainly a death before even her oldest grandson had become a bar mitzvah seemed beyond possibility. And yet it came to pass.
More pressing, Miriam was the foundation stone of our collective. The organizer, preparer, and host of nearly every meal. The voice of comfort, tranquility, and counsel for us all while she offered another of her fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. The sun of our little solar system, sending us out of orbit when her light went out.
Soon after her death I lost a job that had felt like the culmination of a career. After our third son was born a month later and our difficulties mounted, I decided the cause was our adherence to the Orthodox Judaism Miriam had raised her daughters in. For it had been one of her daughters who had pulled me both into her family and Judaism.
Even after I married her my Jewish commitment remained conditional. While I agreed to certain guidelines (we would observe Shabbat and keep kosher in our house) I nevertheless subjected each rule or custom to which I was introduced to rational investigation, deciding I would only follow those that ‘made sense.’ Any kosher food restrictions outside of the house were out, as was putting on tefillin, wearing tzitzit, or any of the other multitude of obligations that I could ignore or transgress without putting our family outside of the vague boundaries of the liberal Orthodox community in which we lived.
Now I decided that even those commitments were too much. Didn’t they obligate us to find a way to pay the mortgage on a too expensive house in a too expensive town? To pay tuition bills, synagogue dues, and kosher grocery bills? The choice that had seemed obvious when Miriam was alive and I knew I could lean into her support now felt – now that things had gotten hard – like more than I could bear.
So I found a way to move myself, my wife, and my children to Charleston, South Carolina. A business I would start with an old friend. A small and growing Jewish community I told my wife we could be a part of. All with the hope that a few years would be enough time to put even the idea of minimal Jewish commitment for our family in doubt, allowing me to dream again of freedom from everything Jewish while eating shrimp and grits and fresh oysters in a large and inexpensive house in the lightly taxed and easy living city of Charleston.
Instead I found there more of the loneliness I thought I had left behind. Worse, after a year or more had passed it became clear that it was a loneliness I had now also introduced my wife and my sons to, as I witnessed them draw into themselves, becoming sad and quiet where they had been loud and happy.
Then, I had taken to listening to podcasts when I drove around Charleston on my way to a spot to admire the sun set over sea grass leading out to the Ashley River as it widened toward the Atlantic Ocean. How I Built This and Philosophize This and the daily word from Webster. Often, when I sat in the car Miriam’s memory materialized and I’d sit and feel sad and sorry for myself for a while.
Then, one day, a flash of insight as I was queuing up the latest Joe Rogan. I searched instead for Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, and there of course was his own podcast reading his weekly commentary on the Torah portion. I stared at the purple play button next to the latest episode while rolling again in my head the times I had tried and failed to commit to Jewish learning, back when I believed I might turn myself into a kind of serious Jew. Each commitment I made had proven short-lived, as a few weeks or a few days were eclipsed by other pursuits both worthwhile and not until I did not remember the commitment again until enough time had passed to make the commitment itself seem foolish.
I looked at that purple play button and I thought about Miriam.
That day in that car in Charleston must now have been four years ago. In that time I don’t think I missed a week listening to Rabbi Sacks. Not that the listening should be counted as a great accomplishment, as each recording is only about ten minutes long and comes delivered by an expert speaker in a British accent that carries, to American ears, an immediate gravitas. To say nothing of the quality of the content itself, which could range in any week from an argument for why the sages who outlined the structure of a living society were greater than the prophets who exulted its highest ideals, or (a recurring theme) why the critical change in any life was the move from ‘I’ to ‘we.’ I keep a collection of personal favorites in a Spotify playlist, perhaps the most meaningful of which to me is his commentary on Nitzavim last year, when three times he repeated the line from Deuteronomy 30:14 ‘The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it’ as part of an admonition to Jews who were distant from their faith to take up its study and to rabbis to not ‘retreat behind a high wall’ out of fear of an ‘aggressively secular culture.’
Listening to those lessons gave me the strength I needed to reset my life in a way that put the needs of my wife and children before my own.
That is, until last November, when (aside from a few commentaries read by a substitute) for the first time since I began listening there was no new recording from Rabbi Sacks, who had died the week before. Like Miriam, in his early seventies, though he had seemed (from the outside at least) to be filled with strength and destined to live to one hundred and twenty.
I never met Rabbi Sacks so it would be too much to claim I felt true grief over his death, or anything approaching the sadness I imagine that his family and close friends must feel. But through the Thursday morning after his death a memory was rekindled in me of that feeling that followed me for years following Miriam’s death, as that light of connection I felt to her through his commentaries was now also extinguished. I felt it as I woke up that morning, put on my tefillin and worked through the morning prayers, and was reminded that there would be no new commentary to listen to from Rabbi Sacks this week, or ever again.
Then, a ding on my phone: a message from the WhatsApp group ‘Celebrating Life’ that is dedicated to distributing Rabbi Sacks’ teaching. The unexpected message: Rabbi Sacks had prepared a full year of commentaries on the weekly portion, which would continue to be released in writing each week. I clicked the link, printed the pages out, folded them together, and put them in my pocket, thinking I would hold them to read over Shabbat. Maybe I might even try to read a line or two to my own Shabbat table, set with food made by my wife, Miriam’s daughter.
It made me think of and listen again to Rabbi Sacks’ commentary on Chayei Sarah from a year ago when he puzzled over Rashi’s explanation of the years of Sarah’s life as ‘equally good.’ Hadn’t they been filled with ‘uncertainty and decades of unmet hope?’ How then could they be good? Working through a web of complex thought and thinkers he concluded by saying that ‘what makes a life satisfying is not external but internal, a sense of purpose, mission, being called, summoned.’
So I was reminded, again, that we are each links in a chain of being that stretches backwards and forwards without end. That to be Jewish is to be a part of a chain of unparalleled depth, with endless sources of inspiration to meet any challenge. And so I was strengthened again with resolve to do what I can and what I must to live up to my responsibilities within the particular challenges of the time in which I live, with faith in the possibility of a better future and trust in the examples of those who have gone before.