Jonathan Sacks

Jonathan Sacks and I had known each other from Cambridge in the 1960s. We maintained a unique working relationship throughout our careers, despite the enflamed intra-communal divide. That enables me to move beyond obituary hyperbole to respectful assessment. This article is framed by a cartoon of two-headed Sacks. He succeeded as none before him in establishing Judaism as a wise and cogent voice in the public square. He was a towering intellectual who contributed as no rabbi before him in the UK to public policy. Sacks was less successful in his equally cherished aim of holding together the mainstream United Synagogue and authoritarian ultra-Orthodoxy. He never gave up, but any softening of the line between Orthodoxy and Reform he may have once wished for was sacrificed to this overriding objective. Sacks only once ventured, unconvincingly, into theology. But his personal relationship with me took precedence over past behaviour when attending my wife’s funeral.