Rabbi Sacks on Future Tense Take Aways: Part 1

JInsider (March 2010)

I hope reading the book will show you number one, there really is a way of defeating antisemitism, but to do that, we have to broaden our understanding and definition of antisemitism, and we have to win allies in the fight. Number two, there is a compelling argument for Israel to be made way beyond the Jewish constituency, but we have to think of Israel in different terms and we have to make its case differently. My argument is that we also have effective solutions against dissimilation and out-marriage. And I tell the story in the book of how in British Jewry, we turned an entire community around, and the result of that turnaround is a community that year on year for 60 years had suffered demographic decline, turned the corner and has begun again to grow.

So I hope whether it is divisions in the Jewish world, whether it’s antisemitism or Israel, whether it’s the future of the Jewish people, whether it’s the nature of the Jewish conversation, whether it is Judaism and its engagement with or disengagement from the world, you will find in the book, a new approach. And one that I think we’ve tested in the field, have seen actually works, and really is a new way of approaching all the great problems facing Jews and Judaism in the 21st century.