An Unconventional Path to Leadership

Eda:

He was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen, he was called, “a light unto the nations” by his Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, and he currently holds a seat in the House of Lords.

Rivkah:

He is one of the most sought-after lecturers at some of the most prestigious academic institutions and venues around the world. His TED Talk was one of the top ten talks of the year and has almost two million views. He has received too many awards to count.

Eda:

Rabbi Sacks is a voice that comes around once in a generation. In this interview, we discuss everything from self-doubt, to social media, to some of the greatest lessons he learned from his most challenging life experiences.

Rivkah:

We have no doubt that this conversation will leave you inspired with a lot to think about.

Rivkah:

Hi, I’m Rivkah.

Eda:

And I’m Eda.

Rivkah:

Welcome to From the Inside Out.

Eda:

We’re momtrepreneurs and friends, and we come to you with a shared mission.

Rivkah:

To inspire you through meaningful conversations with each other.

Eda:

And interviews with some of our everyday heroes and some of the most inspiring thinkers and leaders of our time.

Rivkah:

Here, you’ll find tips, tools, and inspiration that we hope will ignite positive change from the inside out.

Eda:

But before we introduce you to the incredible Rabbi Sacks, we want to share a review that we just received. The reviews and the feedback that we’ve been getting have been so empowering.

Rivkah:

Continue to share your feedback with us so that we can continue to share with you.

Eda:

And don’t forget to subscribe if you haven’t subscribed yet so you don’t miss any future episodes and leave-

Rivkah:

Write a review.

Eda:

… us feedback. Yeah, we appreciate it so much.

Rivkah:

Thank you.

Eda:

So let’s go ahead and read this review. Rivkah, you want to do the honours?

Rivkah:

Sure.

Rivkah:

“Dear Rivkah and Eda, I came across your podcast and the timing of me listening to your talk, Don’t Believe Everything you Think, couldn’t be more on point. My husband and I run the Chabad Coronado. This year due to COVID, we couldn’t hold our annual summer gala in person. We decided instead to host a matching campaign. As my husband and I were discussing how to go about making it most productive, he expressed his concern that due to several factors, the matcher we needed in order to make it work wouldn’t be able to do it.

I had just listened to that episode, so I tried it on him, and indeed it was very helpful. I went over the steps and asked if he was absolutely sure that there weren’t any potential matchers. What would he do in that case? We realised you couldn’t be sure about anything unless you gave it a shot. He was motivated. We found our matchers and, Baruch Hashem, the campaign went even better than expected. He owes it to the conversation we had, and I owe it to you for that great guidance. Much continued success, Zeldi Fradkin.”

Eda:

Wow.

Rivkah:

In this episode, Don’t Believe Everything You Think, there are some great tools. You’ll have more of an understanding of what Zeldi is talking about in this email when you listen to that episode.

Eda:

So that is episode number nine, Don’t Believe Everything You Think.

Rivkah:

This story and this review is appropriate for our conversation today with Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. It’s all about bringing light into the world and giving this message that Zeldi who is a shluchah and is doing so much beautiful work and bringing light into the world, it’s really meaningful to share over here on this episode.

Eda:

Yeah. So without further ado, we introduce you to Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks. Enjoy.

Rabbi Sacks:

Hello?

Eda:

Hello.

Rivkah:

Hello, Rabbi Sacks.

Rabbi Sacks:

Hello there. Whoa-

Rivkah:

Rabbi, Lord Sacks.

Rabbi Sacks:

… this is fun, isn’t it? Oh my goodness me. What’s the weather like in Bal Harbour, Florida?

Eda:

It’s humid as usual, but very nice. We’re enjoying it.

Rabbi Sacks:

Wonderful to be with you both.

Eda:

How is the weather in London?

Rabbi Sacks:

Believe it or not, it’s quite nice!

Rivkah:

For a change.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. I mean, the weather in Britain is a major, major element in British political history because it’s usually so miserable that nobody can have the energy to revolt. So it’s kept us a very peaceful country. It’s damp and cold and wet, but today it’s actually looking quite nice.

Eda:

A silver lining.

Rivkah:

Good. Hopefully, the weather today will still keep things peaceful. How are you?

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah, waiting for this thing to go. I think we’re all a little bit impatient now, but we have to be very careful because we’ve seen this second spike, especially in Israel, where it’s been very serious. So, it’s uncertain times.

Eda:

It is.

Rabbi Sacks:

I think it’s going to be a Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur like no other. So we’re just going to have to try and create an atmosphere under very difficult conditions. How with you?

Rivkah:

Thank God, doing well. We are very honoured that you have taken the time to speak with us. We are grateful that you are here on our podcast and are very excited to bring the conversation to our listeners around the globe. Many of them live in the UK.

Eda:

I don’t know if-

Rabbi Sacks:

Great to be with you. Great to be with you.

Rivkah:

Yes. It really is an honour and a pleasure. I don’t know if you know. I just wanted to tell you that my parents had the pleasure of hosting you-

Rabbi Sacks:

Of course, of course.

Rivkah:

Oh, okay. I don’t have to say anything.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yosel and Stera, of course. We did some stuff together. We laid the foundations for something or other, and we did all sorts of stuff together.

Rivkah:

I was living in New York, but I heard all about it. You made such an impact at the ground-breaking of 770 in Australia and at my grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Gutnick’s yahrzeit when you spoke there. It really had a great impact on my family and the whole community.

Rabbi Sacks:

Well, please give your parents my very, very best.

Rivkah:

I will.

Rabbi Sacks:

They are both-

Eda:

Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

… remarkable in quite different ways.

Rivkah:

Yes. Thank you. They’ll be listening.

Eda:

Well, speaking of remarkable, your story is a remarkable one. Can you take us back to your early days and tell us a little bit about how a young Cambridge University student, who has no plans of becoming a Rabbi or leader, becomes an internationally recognised icon, Chief Rabbi of the UK, world leader?

Rabbi Sacks:

That’s a good question. Give me the answer. I haven’t got a clue. I don’t know.

Rivkah:

We know the answer.

Rabbi Sacks:

I’ll tell you what happened. I’ll tell you what happened. 1967, my first year as a university student, Six-Day War had an enormous impact on all of us. It changed the Jewish world. It changed Natan Sharansky. It changed Russian Jewry. We were all changed, but I couldn’t do very much with it at the time. So I had to wait for a year. That next summer when I’d finished my second year at university, I decided I am going to explore what it is to be Jewish. My first stop was, believe it or not, the United States, because I knew that there were many, many brilliant Rabbis in the United States, I had a long list of them.

For $100, I was able to buy a Greyhound bus ticket, unlimited travel across the States. So for that summer, that’s what I did. I travelled around the States meeting Rabbis. Almost every Rabbi I met said to me, (and not only Orthodox Rabbis said to me) “There is one Rabbi you must meet, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe.” So after about 10 people had said this to me, I thought, “Okay, where is he?” They said, “Well, he’s 770 Eastern Parkway.”

So I took the subway to Eastern Parkway. I walked into 770. Being full of chutzpah, I said, “I am a student from Cambridge University who has come 3,000 miles to meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Please could I have an appointment?” And they all fell about laughing. They said, “Do you realise how many thousands of people are waiting to see the Rebbe? Come back next year! 10 years! Come back later!” So I said, “Well, look. I can’t tell you where I’m going to be because I’m going to take a bus around America. I don’t know where I’ll be. But I do know that I have an aunt in Los Angeles, and if the Rebbe is able to see me, please ring this number.” So I travelled around America, reached Los Angeles. One Sunday night, the phone went, and it was somebody in 770 saying, “The Rebbe will see you on Thursday night.”

Now, I had absolutely no money, and the only way of getting from Los Angeles to New York is to take a non-stop Greyhound bus, which took 72 hours in those days. Probably takes a bit longer these days. I do not necessarily recommend a non-stop 72 hours on a Greyhound bus, but I arrived at 770 Thursday evening. Eventually, I got to see the Rebbe.

We had a yechidus [private audience] lasting 20, 25 minutes, and that was a life-changing experience. Not the only life changing one, but a very significant one where the Rebbe really challenged me to become a leader in Jewish life in Cambridge University.

The interesting thing, have you ever seen a film of a farbrengen [Chassidic gathering]?

Rivkah:

Yes.

Eda:

Absolutely have.

Rabbi Sacks:

You know what it looks like?

Rivkah:

Of course, yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

He would speak for four or five hours, usually in sections of about 20 minutes. Then they would all sing a niggun. The guys told me since I was going back the next day, I was going back the next Sunday, that when you leave you have to go up to the Rebbe with a bottle of vodka and pour him a little bit of vodka. He says, a l’chaim and then you take that bottle with you and that’s the Rebbe’s vodka. So this is what happened on my last day or what was supposed to be my last day in New York. I went up to the Rebbe while they were singing a niggun, and he looked at me. “What’s this?” I said, “I’m going.” He said, “Why?” I said, “Because I’ve got to get back to Cambridge University.” He looked at me and he said, in these words, “But the Cambridge University term does not begin until the second week in October.”

Rivkah:

Wow.

Rabbi Sacks:

“I think you should stay.” Well, everyone was watching this because the Rebbe did not normally engage in conversations in the middle of a farbrengen. So by the time I got back to my place, everyone wanted to know, “What did the Rebbe say? What did the Rebbe say?” I’m afraid I didn’t realise what I was doing because I was new to Chabad, I’m afraid I told them. I said, “The Rebbe says I should stay, but I can’t, I’ve got to go.” Well, I should have realised that when the Chassidim heard that the Rebbe had said you should stay, you stay. So one way or another, when it came to the next day, they managed to make sure I couldn’t get out of 770.

Rivkah:

I’m sure. Locked you in.

Rabbi Sacks:

I’m going to the airport. I said, “No, no, seriously, I’ve got to go. I can’t get back. This is not a regular ticket. It’s a charter flight.” They said, “Don’t worry. We phoned already, and we’ve told them you’re ill.” I said, “But I’m not ill!” They said to me, “You are, and tomorrow morning we’re going to the Rebbe’s doctor to find out what illness you have,” which they did. They did. They took me to the Rebbe’s doctor, and he went through a list of about 100 illnesses, none of which I’d had, until finally-

Rivkah:

Oh, my.

Rabbi Sacks:

… he got to jaundice. I said, “Yeah, I had jaundice 10 years ago.” He wrote down, “Recurrence of jaundice.”

Rivkah:

Oh, my.

Rabbi Sacks:

So that is how in 1968, I met the Rebbe and I was with the Rebbe on Rosh Hashanah and I heard the Rebbe blow shofar. Now, these are life-changing experiences, and that is how it all happened. That is how it all began. It took many years to work its way through, but that’s how it began.

Rivkah:

Rabbi Sacks visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe with the intention of asking him all his prepared intellectual, philosophical questions. The Rebbe gave him intellectual, philosophical answers. Then the Rebbe did what no one else had done. He did a role reversal. He started asking Rabbi Sacks questions about what he is doing for Jewish life on campus. Rabbi Sacks responded with these words, “In the situation which I find myself in…”

Eda:

At this point, the Rebbe did something which was quite unusual. He actually stopped the young student mid-sentence, and he said, “Nobody finds themselves in a situation. You put yourself in a situation. And if you put yourself in that situation, you could put yourself in another situation.”

Rivkah:

That moment changed his life. In his words:

“Here I was, a nobody from nowhere, and here was one of the greatest leaders in the Jewish world, challenging me not to accept the situation, but to change it.

“And that was when I realised that I have said many times since that the world was wrong, when they thought that the most important fact about the Rebbe was that; here was a man with thousands of followers, they missed the most important fact that a good leader creates followers, but a great leader creates leaders”.

Rivkah:

As Chabad women, we were inspired by a beautiful statement you made about the Rebbe. You said, “This was not a man who was interested in creating followers, this was a man who was passionate about creating leaders.” How can we apply these principles of leadership today in the age of technology and social media?

Rabbi Sacks:

You ask a difficult question, because if you want to change someone’s life, don’t do it by social media. This is a real “I-thou” face-to-face experience. And yes, you’ll keep your two metres distance or whatever. There are certain things you really can’t do other than face-to-face. You can’t fulfil the mitzvah of listening to Shofar by listening on Zoom. It can’t be done. You know, you’ve got to be there in that famous phrase from Hamilton, “In the room where it happens.”

Rivkah:

In the room where it happens. Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

It’s really, really difficult, but, there’s a big plus to social media. I mean, many pluses. Number one, you can reach people across the world, which is really and truly incredible. And Chabad were the first people who used modern communications technology, cable, television, satellite television, that kind of thing. They used it way, way before anyone else. And the other thing, which I’m not an expert on, but here it is. I have two brothers living in Jerusalem, so when I was in Jerusalem, I would always go with my brother to the local shul it’s called the Shtiblach. It’s a little cluster of shuls in Katamon. And for 22 years, I was Chief Rabbi of Britain and the Commonwealth, and yet when I was in shul, almost nobody came up and said, “Shabbat Shalom”.

Rivkah:

Wow.

Rabbi Sacks:

I was in the shul on Chol Hamoed Succot last year and almost everyone came up and said, “Chag Sameach!” And I was trying to work out how come for 22 years they didn’t and suddenly they did, and I realised the answer: WhatsApp.

Rivkah:

WhatsApp.

Rabbi Sacks:

You know, I’d been doing a daily WhatsApp.

Rivkah:

Yeah.

Rabbi Sacks:

From the beginning of Ellul all the way through. And for some reason, people found WhatsApp very direct and very intimate. They told me they felt as if I was speaking to them. So it’s clear that each of these technologies has a particular strength.

Rivkah:

Right.

Rabbi Sacks:

And I was amazed that WhatsApp turned out to be more powerful than being Chief Rabbi.

Rivkah:

Interesting.

Eda:

Yeah, it’s amazing how you channelled social media and technology. And I think that we all have the opportunity to channel it in a positive way and use it for the benefit of all of us.

Rivkah:

Yes. You have said that social media is one of the wonders of our age, but you also remind us of the importance of human connection and that social media shouldn’t become a replacement for face-to-face relationships. So, thank you for that reminder in today’s world, which we tend to forget. I was just wondering, do you have a message or a theme you keep in mind in order to spread your light and influence others in both settings, in both human interaction and modern technology?

Rabbi Sacks:

This is what I discovered in my life that I had the great privilege of coming to know well and work with people who believed in me more than I believed in myself. And that’s what you have to do. You have to really and truly believe in people more than they believe in themselves. A lot of people have internal doubts, even when they achieve considerable success. They suffer from something called the imposter syndrome. You know, people think I’m really good, but actually I’m really bad, that kind of thing. And I think it’s the strength of your belief in them.

I have long said that religion is less about our faith in God than about God’s faith in us.

Rivkah:

Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

I continue to be moved almost beyond words, by the way Hashem does believe in us, does empower us, put his image on each of us, made each of us his emissary. And that’s really the thing to get hold of, believe in people more than they believe in themselves.

Rivkah:

That’s beautiful.

Eda:

Yeah. You were destined to be a leader and it’s not something that you had initially planned. Were there any times, or any moments where you felt a reluctance or doubt or difficulties, challenges, and if so, how did you get through them?

Rabbi Sacks:

Elaine, my wife.

Rivkah:

I love that.

Rabbi Sacks:

Full stop. It’s the beginning, middle, and end. Elaine believed in me all the way through. She has such a radiant disposition that she never got depressed, even when things were very, very depressing, and I couldn’t have done it without her, full stop. I mean, ridiculous to even think of it. And I’m very touched by that because when Elaine and I met, when we got engaged, when we got married. There wasn’t the slightest hint that I might become a Rabbi. I mean, it just wasn’t on the agenda. And so this was completely unexpected for Elaine. And in the end, it was the chein, it was the resilience and the grace of her personality, that took me through it.

Rivkah:

You’re lucky. You’re a lucky man.

Rabbi Sacks:

Well, I should say, it didn’t take me long. As soon as I noticed Elaine. And of course, I met Elaine pretty much as soon as I came back from the Rebbe. This was all happening at the same time. And so, it was one of those years, 1968.

Eda:

Rabbi Sacks met his wife Elaine in 1968, when he was studying philosophy at Cambridge University and experiencing what he referred to as deep existential angst. When he saw Elaine across the lawn, his first thought was, this is the person most unlike me I’ve ever encountered.

Rivkah:

She radiated joy. It took him all of three weeks to propose. And he says he profoundly regrets that it even took him that long. He never once had the slightest doubt that she was the one for him. They’re married when he was 22 and she was 21. And as you will soon discover, it’s the people most different from us who have so much to teach us.

Eda:

Well, they see a man’s success has much to do with the woman in his life, and I guess this holds very true for you. And you recently celebrated a wedding anniversary I hear, a big one of 50 years.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. Yeah.

Eda:

Golden, Mazal Tov!

Rabbi Sacks:

I mean, we would’ve got married much earlier, much earlier, but I just wanted to go to Yeshiva to Kfar Chabad before we got married, and so we put it off by a year or two. We met in November ’68, and we got married in July ’70, but we really would’ve got married much, much sooner otherwise.

But the role Elaine helped me with was really secondary. The role that was primary was the strength she gave our children. When you are a public figure, that is very challenging because your children become kind of public figures, and that can be very difficult for them. And it was Elaine who kept them stable and positive, and who helped them become strong people in their own right. And that was really important. That was the most important.

Rivkah:

Beside, not behind, beside every great man is a greater woman or great woman.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Nobody can doubt that that’s how we do things.

Rivkah:

I’m very honoured to have your PDF newly released book Morality, and it is brilliant.

Rabbi Sacks:

Thanks.

Rivkah:

I stayed up nights.

Rabbi Sacks:

You got the PDF? Very good.

Rivkah:

Yes, I’m very honoured.

Rabbi Sacks:

The real thing is better.

Rivkah:

Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times. It’s a bestseller in the UK, and it is very relevant during these trying times. One thing that stood out to us throughout your book is how we have become an “I” generation, as opposed to a “We” generation. Can you expand on this and share how we can practically shift from “I” to “We”?

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. When I tried to understand what the Lubavitcher Rebbe was doing, it was something extraordinary because nobody had ever done this before. Nobody in the whole history of Judaism had ever done an outreach campaign before, with the possible exception of Rabbi Moses of Coucy in France, in the 13th century, in relation to mezuzah and tefillin. That was the only precedent we could find.

And I was thinking to myself, Jews for twenty, thirty centuries held back from this and why did the Rebbe not? And I suddenly realised at a certain point that there was a kind of arithmetic here.

Imagine you have a certain amount of wealth or power. You have, let’s say, a thousand dollars. And you decide to share that with nine other people. How much do you have left? Answer: a tenth of what you began with. You have total power. You decide to share that with nine other people, how much do you have left? One tenth of the power with which you began.

But if you are dealing with something else like love or friendship or trust, or even knowledge, and you share that with nine other people, how much do you have? You don’t have less. You may have more. You may even have ten times as much.

And I suddenly realised that is the difference between material goods and spiritual goods. Material goods, the more you share, the less you have; but spiritual goods, the more you share, the more you have. And that is why material goods, wealth, and power lead to competition. I don’t want to have less, I want to have more, and therefore you have these two arenas in society for competition. One is the market economy, the competition for wealth; the other is the political system, the competition for power. And when it’s competition, it’s all about I, I, I. It’s all about self-interest, and that’s fine, I don’t have a problem with that.

But society needs something else as well. It needs an arena of cooperation. It needs an arena in which we are concerned with other people’s interests, not just ours, where we really think as a we, and the truth is all the spiritual goods are like that. Friendship, love, influence, knowledge, et cetera, et cetera. And that is what I call morality. Morality is whenever I say somebody else’s interest count as much as mine, that’s called altruism. And what’s happened is we always had such a thing, it’s just in the last half century, we’ve lost it, we’ve really lost it. So, that all it really matters today is economics and politics, and forget the rest, we’re in a competition of a wealth and power and don’t bother me with other people who need something because let them go to the government for it.

Rivkah:

Right.

Rabbi Sacks:

And that is a total and absolute disaster.

So, I suddenly realised the Rebbe understood this as far as Judaism was concerned, Chabad is all about we, I embrace you. Even though you’re not like me. You may keep less than me. You may know less than me. It doesn’t matter, you’re part of this collective us. I’m going to share my Judaism, and the more I share, the more I have.

And likewise, in general with society, I am going to share my concern with the common good and the end result will be the more I share, the more we will have. And you won’t get something like Black Lives Matter, where a whole group of people feel we are left out, and ditto Hispanics, and ditto who knows what. You will get a situation in which people will realise we are part of something that’s bigger than us, but which cares for us.

Eda:

Yeah. I think the Rebbe also went even further in that he helped us take the physical elements and elevate them into spiritual realms.

Rabbi Sacks:

Oh, 100%.

Eda:

And giving tzedakah and the tangible. If we give, then we elevate them in the spiritual realm, and that brings more blessings.

Rabbi Sacks:

A lot of medical research on this. That giving is a fundamental way of getting healthier. It strengthens the immune system, it combats depression. An enormous amount of medical research in the last ten years, that when you give you gain more than you give.

Rivkah:

Yes. And that was one of the really beautiful and powerful messages in your book. That giving is a way for our generation to shift to the we. And that each action we take, even if it’s a small gesture in giving, helps us shift to the we, rather than the I. And you had also shared that by us sharing our stories, like sharing the story of our Exodus from Egypt and sharing even a Broadway show like Hamilton is a practically good way to shift towards the we. Can you expand on that for us?

Rabbi Sacks:

I’ll tell you something, this is one of the more unusual things I ever did. It took place in 1974 or 1975. I can’t remember when. But either one of those years. The semichah class of Jews’ College Rabbinical Seminary of Britain and the top class of Montreux Yeshiva, I don’t think it exists anymore, but it did then, engaged in Switzerland, halfway up a mountain with a group of African bishops to fight antisemitism in Africa.

And so we’re halfway up a mountain and we have these three days of interfaith dialogue. It was very rare for me to take part in them, but this one, my own teacher thought I ought to do it. And it was very cognitive. The word cognitive, it’s the English word for boring.

And so I thought to myself, this is great. You know, we’re all giving each other lectures, but nothing’s really changing. On the last night, I arranged with the bishops and the bochurim that we were going to have a farbrengen, and the African bishops didn’t know what a farbrengen is. And I explained we brought in vodkas and whiskies and cake. And I said, “We are going to tell you our stories, and then you are going to tell us your stories, and you are going to teach us your songs, and we are going to teach you our songs.”

We sat there from 10:00 in the evening, until 3:00 in the morning. And then we danced around the room. And I suddenly realised this incredible power of sharing stories and sharing songs that allowed us to bridge what was in every sense, a major cultural abyss. These people, we couldn’t have been less alike, but because we had songs we shared and stories we shared, we really reached this beautiful, beautiful, serene moment. That was probably life changing for most of the people there.

Eda:

Yeah. You mentioned people not like us, are just like us. And that’s very much related to this story of recognising that we’re more alike than we are different. And bridging the divide that we’re experiencing today by sharing our common ground and talking to each other, even if we feel like we don’t have anything in common, it’s likely that we have a lot more in common than we think.

Rivkah:

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. Rabbi Shais Taub had shared a quote: “We are all different in that we are all the same. And we are all the same in that we are all different.”

Eda:

Your chapter (in your new book) on self-help. In that chapter you write:

“I have felt the fear and done it anyway. I have refrained from sweating the small stuff. I’ve experienced the life-changing magic of tidying. I know the power of now.”

And so forth. And you continue stating that you do have some experience in the self-help world, reading self-help books. But what you’ve found time and time again, is that help comes not from the self, but from others. And I’m wondering if you can expand on this concept, the notion that self-help, in many ways, is no help at all.

Rabbi Sacks:

I was very struck by the statement in the Gemara, “Ein chavush matir et atzmoh mibeit ha’asurim”, that a prisoner cannot release himself from prison. You know, somebody else has to turn the key. And that seemed to me very much the case on something like depression, for example. Depression, unless you are just treating it chemically, unless you’re just taking antidepressants, you cannot get yourself out of that state, you need somebody else to help you do so.

And this was always very clear to me, but the example I gave, of course, I’m not going to tell this story in detail, came from our honeymoon when I very nearly drowned. I mean, it’s too … I still find that a bit too scary to tell that story terribly often. You know, I went under for the fifth time and there was no one near. And this was in Italy. And I said, I remember my last two thoughts. Number one, what a way to begin our honeymoon! And number two, what’s the Italian for help? But clearly, somebody saw me and saved me and so on.

Eda:

Thank God.

Rabbi Sacks:

But self-help was absolutely no use at the time. None whatsoever. I was drowning and I needed somebody to hold my hand and pull me out. And I think a lot of our personal problems do tend to be like that. Now, obviously, self-help is real and important. And it’s what Hillel meant when he said, “Im ein ani li mi.” “If I am not for myself, who will be?” (Pirkei Avot 1:14)

So, clearly we have to work on things ourselves. Nobody else can solve our problems for us. But it does really need somebody else to, as it were, metaphorically hold our hand when we manage to get to dry land. And I don’t think these things are stressed often enough in the self-help literature. It’s wonderful literature. No criticism of it. But it does leave out the fact that we need somebody else to take us out of that locked room.

Rivkah:

Yes. This reminds me of the paradox. You have to do it by yourself, and you can’t do it alone.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah, yeah. It’s other people who help shape your life. While all this was going on, for instance, in 1968, I was very struck because… Everything from that period in my life is very heightened. And there was an English pop group called the Beatles, and there’s these four singers, managed to be the finest pop musicians in the history of popular music. But in ’68, they started breaking down, 1970, they split apart.

And these four brilliant people never really managed a single brilliant piece of music afterwards for the rest of their lives. For me, there’s even a simple thing like creativity. You have to have somebody who’s willing to be there with you. Did you ever read the story of those two Israeli economists, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky? You came across them?

Eda:

Sure. Yeah. Judgment under uncertainty. Fascinating, fascinating work.

Rabbi Sacks:

They were the creators of behavioural economics, and Michael Lewis has a book about them called, The Undoing Project. These two people just sparked brilliant ideas off one another, and they would spend hours every single day just talking, and that’s why they were able to do what they did. This kind of myth of the lonely creator is exactly what it is, by and large, it’s a myth. And we need that collaborative creativity. The Gemara in Ketubot tells us that Rabbi Yochanan had it with Reish Lakish and so on.

Eda:

Yeah.

Rabbi Sacks:

These were partnerships that were immensely creative. But sitting on your own doesn’t help.

Rivkah:

Yeah. Partnership and mentorship, as well. And speaking of mentorship, do you have a mentor?

Rabbi Sacks:

I used to have, I used to have two people who were very much senior to me. My own teacher who died this summer, very sadly, Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, and an American Rosh Yeshivah for whom I had a very high regard, I’m not going to name him. And these were people that I would turn to as I would turn to the late Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l. And they were the kind of people I would turn to.

Be aware that we have just lost some major figures from our world. Most obviously, in addition to Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.   

Rivkah:

Right.

Rabbi Sacks:

And we’re just coming up to the shloshim I think. And the American Rabbi, Dr Norman Lamm zt”l who was head of Yeshiva University. So we have lost, in the space of three months, some of the great teachers of our time. I always take advice on things, but I don’t have mentors as such at this point.

Eda:

Well, you are the mentor.

Rivkah:

Yes. You are the mentor. What’s special about the Rebbe is that we can learn through his teachings. He’s still a mentor to us, because we have his sichos, we have his teachings that we follow. So I guess we can still have mentors, even though they have passed on.

Rabbi Sacks:

The first book I ever wrote is a book that you may have seen, called Torah Studies.

Rivkah:

Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

It was translations into English, or adaptations into English, of the Rebbe’s sichos. So it meant that in 1973, when I wrote it, I was working very much on the inside. If you know what I mean. Working out the Rebbe’s thought patterns, and I found that extremely helpful. So very early on, as it were, I didn’t just read the Rebbe from the outside, I tried to read him from the inside, as well.

Rivkah:

That’s very meaningful, special.

Eda:

So as a leader, you were a mentor for thousands of people around the world. Does that come with any sense of self-doubt or second thoughts about taking on such a significant role that carries such heavy responsibility?

Rabbi Sacks:

I should say I have feelings of self-doubt every single day, possibly every single hour. You kind of recognise them by now.

Rivkah:

Well, that is very, that is very comforting to hear that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks has self-doubts every hour. I would never have thought.

Eda:

I think it’s important for people to know that. We’re untapped resources, many of whom are afraid to tap into the strengths and the talent that we have and use them. And I think hearing from someone who has achieved so much, that it is possible, and that self-doubt is a part of the process, I think is very important. It’s very important.

Rabbi Sacks:

Self-doubt is actually terribly important. Because it helps you as far as possible.

Eda:

Yeah.

Rabbi Sacks:

Just to stay sane, don’t think too much of yourself. Second thing it does is that it encourages you to reach out to people. People who represent very different vantage points from you. And we kind of do that with almost everything we do. We take somebody there, somebody there, somebody there, somebody there, you know somebody on the right, somebody on the left, somebody on the – et cetera, et cetera. We use that technique because I realise, and virtually everything I write, even a script for a radio broadcast, will be seen by other people. And virtually everything that I do, somebody will raise a question – Is that right? Are you sure that’s right? Is that the best way of expressing it? I’d rather get it right first than get it wrong and then have to apologise.

Eda:

Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

And then, I’ve just got a wonderful, amazing team, a tiny team of three people that consist of people that I really, really respect and admire. Always work with people with the very highest moral standards and then you can feel pretty sure that you won’t go wrong.

Eda:

Yeah. Win the respect of people you respect.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah.

Eda:

There’s somewhat of a dichotomy there, where there’s that uncertainty looking to others for guidance, but at the same time, being so strong in Judaism and your faith, no matter where you go. And so how do you do that? How does one stay strong in their faith today?

Rabbi Sacks:

It’s very simple, but you’ll have to have a leap of faith here because it’s not the way things are in America and it’s not the way things are anywhere nowadays. But way, way, way, way back in Anglo Jewry, nobody wore a yarmulke in the street. It just wasn’t done, and I mean, nobody but nobody and Jews kept a low profile. And I remember in our summer holidays, we were just walking back to our apartment from the shul. There was a shul in the seaside resort and I was walking back and I was wearing my yarmulke and a member of the congregation saw me and came to the conclusion obviously, that I had not realised, I’d just forgotten to remove it. And he came up to my father, alav hashalom, and said to him, “Mr Sacks, your son is wearing a yarmulke.” My father looked at the man and said, “No son of mine will ever be ashamed to be a Jew in public.” You hear that when you’re five, six years old, it changes your world, I just knew from him, never be ashamed at who you are. Never be ashamed at what you believe. So that’s how it happened, very easy.

Eda:

Yeah. Very important for our younger generation, especially-

Rivkah:

Yes.

Eda:

… to hear this.

Rivkah:

And a reminder for us, as parents, like your father gave you to give our children this strong feeling of Jewish pride, no matter what the surroundings are. Rosh Hashanah is always a time to re-evaluate and reassess. Does it have particular meaning this year during the pandemic and the challenges we face in the world today?

Rabbi Sacks:

Well, I think it does really. We tend to take things for granted. I once did a little experiment called the black dot. I used to put a black dot on a piece of white paper and ask an audience, what do they see? And everyone in the audience said a black dot. I said, now look at this piece of paper, that black dot represents less than 1% percent of the paper, the 99% is the white paper.

Eda:

Right.

Rabbi Sacks:

But you didn’t notice it. So that is how we are conditioned, we are conditioned to notice the discrepant, and take the rest for granted. So we notice all the bad things that happen in the world, but we ignore all the good things that happen in the world. And I think halachah, the Siddur, is a place for doing the opposite. I call it “foregrounding the background“, so when we do Birkat HaShachar we thank Hashem for making the car go for putting a ground under our feet, for giving us clothes to wear, for having eyes to see, et cetera, all the things we normally take for granted, come Birkat HaShachar and they foreground those things instead of leaving them in the background.

So I think the most important spiritual thing is to look at the beauty and the miracle of all the stuff we normally take for granted. Now what has happened for the last six months? Every single one of us has been in a situation of sakanot nefashot. We’ve been in mortal danger, every individual on the face of the earth, more or less. We have had a situation in which almost a million people have died, are terrified, by a terrifying situation in which we never know where’s it going to come from next and so on and so forth. This pandemic should make us stop taking life for granted. And that’s what Rosh Hashanah is about. ”Zachreinu lechaim, melech chafeitz bachaim, vekatveinu besefer hachaim lema’ancha elokim chaim.” “Remember us for life, God who delights in life and write us in the Book of Life.” Judaism is about not taking life for granted. You know, when we get a new suit, what bracha do we make? Thank you God for making a new suit. No, we make a bracha of “shehechiyanu vekiyemanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh.”

Thank you for keeping me alive. The whole of Judaism is: don’t take life for granted. Life is a miracle and that’s what we should be feeling right now from the pandemic. Nature has been telling us – look at the miracle of life and the vulnerability of life. Number one, the miracle of life. There is a prize I won four years ago called the Templeton Prize. This year’s winner is a scientist, this is the man who ran the programme to map the human genome. When he began – he’s not Jewish – when he began mapping the human genome, he was an atheist. By the time he finished, he was a religious believer. Yeah.

Rivkah:

Wow.

Rabbi Sacks:

He wrote about this, he called his book, The Language of God. Francis Collins, through pure science was turned from an atheist to a believer. And that’s the physical basis of life. The spiritual basis of life, as you, as you know, the Rambam says, “God gives us one thing, but it’s everything. God gives us life.” And to my mind, the key text this year from Tefillah LeMoshe, Psalm 90, “Limnot yameinu kein hodah venavi levav chochmah.” Teach us to number our days, that we may get a heart of wisdom. Let us realise how precious every single day of life is and how we must give thanks for it. I would say, do that one thing and you will be spiritually, really uplifted, really uplifted.

Rivkah:

We will most definitely do our best. Thank you for this inspirational perspective. On this topic of gratitude and seeing the good,  just comes to mind, I remember my father said to us that the last time he saw you, he remembered my mother had asked you a question. Why do bad things happen to good people? And you said to my father, “Tell your wife, I still don’t have an answer for her.” I was wondering if you had any more insight.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yes, I do actually. God does not want us to understand why bad things happen to good people. Because if we ever understood, we would be forced to accept that bad things happen to good people, and God does not want us to accept those bad things. He wants us not to understand, so that we will fight against the bad and the injustices of this world. And that is why there is no answer to that question because God has arranged that we shall never have an answer to it.

Eda:

I wanted to ask if you have a favourite book that you can recommend, I know you probably read thousands of books, but is there one that stood out to you that you enjoyed?

Rabbi Sacks:

Well, you know, the one that certainly changed my life, but it also changed about 15 million other lives as well, was the book written by the late Viktor Frankl.

Rivkah:

Yes.

Rabbi Sacks:

Which he published actually just a year after leaving Auschwitz, surviving Auschwitz. It’s called Man’s Search for Meaning.

Rivkah:

It’s our favourite too.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. It’s almost everyone’s favourite book, and it’s a life-changing book, and basically it contains one message above all others, which is, there is one freedom that they can never take away from you. And that is the freedom to choose how to respond.

Rivkah:

The freedom to choose one’s own way.

Rabbi Sacks:

Yeah. And I find that, of course that’s a profoundly Jewish message, profoundly, profoundly Jewish message. Even the phrase man’s search for meaning is profoundly Jewish. Judaism is the search for meaning. It’s not the search for salvation, it’s not the search for submission, it’s not the search for domination, it’s the search for meaning. So I think Viktor Frankl is the giant, and his book is my most important book.

Rivkah:

Well, we were going to ask you, if you can share a favourite quote, you did just share a beautiful quote.

Eda:

Well, may you continue to be a “light unto the nations” and continue shining your light. We want to thank you for everything you’ve done and continue to do today. On behalf of humanity, we are so inspired by everything you’ve done. Huge blessings for a happy and sweet and peaceful New Year with only good tidings and blessings, and health to your family and everybody around you.

Rabbi Sacks:

Ketivah Vechatimah Tovah

Rivkah:

Yes, Kesivah Vechasimah Tovah to you.

Rabbi Sacks:

May Hashem give you both a year of health and blessing and safety, and may do likewise to everyone who’s tuning into this conversation. And may He give us some light after a quite dark period in time, and we emerge from the darkness full of joy.

Rivkah:

Your book has come out in a very dark time, and that’s why particularly this book on morality, I think, is so relevant for it has brought a lot of light to me. I know it’s going to be a lot of light for thousands and thousands of people.

Eda:

Yes. It’s called Morality: Restoring The Common Good In Divided Times by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks.

Rabbi Sacks:

Great.

Eda:

Thank you.

Rivkah:

Thank you so much. Shanah Tovah.

Rabbi Sacks:

Shanah Tovah