By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. ” The Dignity of Difference” “Judaism and Jews represent the voice of hope in the conversation among humankind” A Brilliant lecture ! Worth the time to listen to and to enjoy both for Jews and non-Jews alike.
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On Monday 11 November 2013, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks spoke to a packed room at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly gathering in Jerusalem.
In his session entitled ‘Vision-Driven Leadership in the 21st Century’, Rabbi Sacks spoke at length about his perspective on the recently published report by the Pew Research Center: “A Portrait of Jewish Americans”.
Rabbi Sacks presented a counterintuitive narrative of the Pew Report noting that it ”is not a story of collective failure. It is a story of three very different kinds of success by very different groups of Jews, coming at very different times to America, facing different crises, dreaming different dreams.”
These stories of success are: (1) of Jews as part of American society; (2) of Judaism as a culture and ethnicity; and (3) of the growth of an Orthodoxy presence in America.
For Rabbi Sacks, the major challenge posed by the report – for American Jewish and Jewish communities around the world – is the need to answer one of the major questions being asked by the next generation of the Jewish people: not how should I be Jewish, but why.
Drawing on his experience and the lessons learnt from a similar study undertaken in Britain 20 years ago, Rabbi Sacks offers his perspective on how this can be done.
