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How Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Can Light the Way Forward for Today’s Challenges
The late-Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Jonathan Sacks, who passed away in 2020. This photo was taken at a National Poverty Hearing in 2006 at Westminster, London. Photo: cooperniall/Flickr.
Last week, the Safra Center in New York City held an event commemorating the 20th anniversary edition of Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ A Letter in the Scroll, and his upcoming fourth yahrzeit. I sat down in the packed synagogue and looked up at a compilation video of Rabbi Sacks speaking at different events through the years.
I took one look at his face, and my whole body relaxed. For one brief moment, the tsunami of hate, lies, and violence that now fills our lives faded into the background.
His face represented everything that’s been missing: A rabbinical figure who is warm, wise, sacred — who fully represents G-d — and can help us put today’s ugly reality into a larger historical perspective.
The video that followed is perhaps his most cherished: “Why I am a Jew,” based on the final chapter of the book. At this point, there were very few dry eyes in the room.
A brief excerpt is below:
I am a Jew because, being a child of my people, I have heard the call to add my chapter to its unfinished story. I am a stage on its journey, a connecting link between the generations. The dreams and hopes of my ancestors live on in me, and I am the guardian of their trust, now and for the future.
The panelists that were chosen to discuss Rabbi Sacks’ timeless relevance were well up to the task: Natan Sharansky, who has been appointed the Chair of the Global Advisory Board of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy; Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Israel’s Special Envoy for Combating Antisemitism; Dan Senor, columnist, podcaster, and co-author of Start-Up Nation; and Rabbi David A. Ingber, the founding rabbi of Romemu, the largest Renewal synagogue in the United States.
“Rabbi Sacks was a moral lighthouse,” said Sharansky, who wrote the foreword for the new edition of the book. “And his light is needed more than ever in these dark times.”
Michal Cotler-Wunsh said that Rabbi Sacks predicted today’s collapse of morality in his last book, Morality, and told the audience, “the outrage of the world was at us for refusing to be slaughtered.” Before Oct. 7, “we were living through an anomaly in Jewish history.” This, she said “is the normal.”
But she also sees this as an “opportunity to strengthen our identity: we are a people. We have to lean into this next chapter.” She said that after Oct. 7, “140% of the people called up, showed up. As volunteers and reservists. And that is the most important notion of “Hineni, here I am, ready to heed Your call.”
“This is on us: We are deployed,” Cotler-Wunsh said. “We are one people with one past and one future. We have to fight.”
A couple of nights later, I went to a Shabbat event that can only be described as anti-sacred. Desperate to fit into today’s self-idolatry, it promoted an Instagrammed soullessness. I couldn’t imagine many of the people in attendance showing up “when challenge calls,” unless they could get a selfie out of it.
I tried to see the evening through the larger historical cycle that the panelists discussed: We got through idolatry; now we need to get through today’s self-idolatry. But how is that going to happen when so many of our nonprofits, with the promotion of “influencers” and the Instagram self-adulation bubble, have become part of the problem?
A few days before the Safra event my son, now 15, had exchanged unpleasant words with a rioter holding a “F— Israel” sign. It was not the first time he had stuck up for our people, but I think it was the first time he fully understood the role his generation, Gen Z, is meant to play.
“People do not become leaders because they are great. They become great because they are willing to serve as leaders,” Sacks wrote.
“What matters is the willingness, when challenge calls, to say, Hineni, ‘Here I am.’”
In 2016, I had dedicated my Passage to Israel book to him, using the quintessential Sacks quote below. I pray that more parents begin to understand — using Rabbi Sacks’ extraordinary texts — that the fight for our children’s future begins with their souls.
You are a member of an eternal people
A letter in their scroll.
Let their eternity live on in you.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is editor in chief of White Rose Magazine. A version of this article was originally published by The Jewish Journal.
The post How Rabbi Jonathan Sacks Can Light the Way Forward for Today’s Challenges first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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After False Dawns, Gazans Hope Trump Will Force End to Two-Year-Old War
Palestinians walk past a residential building destroyed in previous Israeli strikes, after Hamas agreed to release hostages and accept some other terms in a US plan to end the war, in Nuseirat, central Gaza Strip October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Exhausted Palestinians in Gaza clung to hopes on Saturday that US President Donald Trump would keep up pressure on Israel to end a two-year-old war that has killed tens of thousands and displaced the entire population of more than two million.
Hamas’ declaration that it was ready to hand over hostages and accept some terms of Trump’s plan to end the conflict while calling for more talks on several key issues was greeted with relief in the enclave, where most homes are now in ruins.
“It’s happy news, it saves those who are still alive,” said 32-year-old Saoud Qarneyta, reacting to Hamas’ response and Trump’s intervention. “This is enough. Houses have been damaged, everything has been damaged, what is left? Nothing.”
GAZAN RESIDENT HOPES ‘WE WILL BE DONE WITH WARS’
Ismail Zayda, 40, a father of three, displaced from a suburb in northern Gaza City where Israel launched a full-scale ground operation last month, said: “We want President Trump to keep pushing for an end to the war, if this chance is lost, it means that Gaza City will be destroyed by Israel and we might not survive.
“Enough, two years of bombardment, death and starvation. Enough,” he told Reuters on a social media chat.
“God willing this will be the last war. We will hopefully be done with the wars,” said 59-year-old Ali Ahmad, speaking in one of the tented camps where most Palestinians now live.
“We urge all sides not to backtrack. Every day of delay costs lives in Gaza, it is not just time wasted, lives get wasted too,” said Tamer Al-Burai, a Gaza City businessman displaced with members of his family in central Gaza Strip.
After two previous ceasefires — one near the start of the war and another earlier this year — lasted only a few weeks, he said; “I am very optimistic this time, maybe Trump’s seeking to be remembered as a man of peace, will bring us real peace this time.”
RESIDENT WORRIES THAT NETANYAHU WILL ‘SABOTAGE’ DEAL
Some voiced hopes of returning to their homes, but the Israeli military issued a fresh warning to Gazans on Saturday to stay out of Gaza City, describing it as a “dangerous combat zone.”
Gazans have faced previous false dawns during the past two years, when Trump and others declared at several points during on-off negotiations between Hamas, Israel and Arab and US mediators that a deal was close, only for war to rage on.
“Will it happen? Can we trust Trump? Maybe we trust Trump, but will Netanyahu abide this time? He has always sabotaged everything and continued the war. I hope he ends it now,” said Aya, 31, who was displaced with her family to Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
She added: “Maybe there is a chance the war ends at October 7, two years after it began.”
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Mass Rally in Rome on Fourth Day of Italy’s Pro-Palestinian Protests
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator waves a Palestinian flag during a national protest for Gaza in Rome, Italy, October 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Large crowds assembled in central Rome on Saturday for the fourth straight day of protests in Italy since Israel intercepted an international flotilla trying to deliver aid to Gaza, and detained its activists.
People holding banners and Palestinian flags, chanting “Free Palestine” and other slogans, filed past the Colosseum, taking part in a march that organizers hoped would attract at least 1 million people.
“I’m here with a lot of other friends because I think it is important for us all to mobilize individually,” Francesco Galtieri, a 65-year-old musician from Rome, said. “If we don’t all mobilize, then nothing will change.”
Since Israel started blocking the flotilla late on Wednesday, protests have sprung up across Europe and in other parts of the world, but in Italy they have been a daily occurrence, in multiple cities.
On Friday, unions called a general strike in support of the flotilla, with demonstrations across the country that attracted more than 2 million, according to organizers. The interior ministry estimated attendance at around 400,000.
Italy’s right-wing government has been critical of the protests, with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni suggesting that people would skip work for Gaza just as an excuse for a longer weekend break.
On Saturday, Meloni blamed protesters for insulting graffiti that appeared on a statue of the late Pope John Paul II outside Rome’s main train station, where Pro-Palestinian groups have been holding a protest picket.
“They say they are taking to the streets for peace, but then they insult the memory of a man who was a true defender and builder of peace. A shameful act committed by people blinded by ideology,” she said in a statement.
Israel launched its Gaza offensive after Hamas terrorists staged a cross border attack on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 people hostage.
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Hamas Says It Agrees to Release All Israeli Hostages Under Trump Gaza Plan
Smoke rises during an Israeli military operation in Gaza City, as seen from the central Gaza Strip, October 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas
Hamas said on Friday it had agreed to release all Israeli hostages, alive or dead, under the terms of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza proposal, and signaled readiness to immediately enter mediated negotiations to discuss the details.