 NOVEMBER 12 • 2020 | 39

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former U.K. chief rabbi, dies at 72.
‘An Intellectual Giant’

R

abbi Jonathan Sacks, the 
former chief rabbi of the 
United Kingdom whose 
extensive writings and frequent 
media appearances commanded 
a global following among Jews 
and non-Jews alike, has died.
Sacks died Nov. 7, 2020, at 
age 72, his Twitter account 
announced. He was in the midst 
of a third bout of cancer, which 
he had announced in October.
Sacks was among the world’
s 
leading exponents of Orthodox 
Judaism for a global audience. 
In his 22 years as chief rabbi, 
he emerged as the most visible 
Jewish leader in the United 
Kingdom and one of Europe’
s 
leading Jewish voices, offering 
Jewish wisdom to the masses 
through a regular segment he 
produced for the BBC. 
He had a close relationship 
with former British Prime 
Minister Tony Blair, who called 
him “an intellectual giant” and 
presented him with a lifetime 
achievement award in 2018.
Sacks was also a prolific 
author, addressing pressing 
social and political issues in 
a succession of well-received 
books. His popular com-
mentary on the prayer book, 
published by Koren, helped to 
dethrone the more traditionalist 
Artscroll Siddur as the preemi-
nent prayer book in American 
Modern Orthodox synagogues.
Sacks was normally averse 
to mixing religion and politics, 
something he discussed, along 
with his latest book Morality: 
Restoring the Common Good in 
Divided Times, with the JTA in 
August.
“When anger erupts in a 
body politic, there is quite often 
a justified cause. But then the 

political domain has got to 
take that anger and deal with it 
very fast,
” he told JTA
’
s opinion 
editor Laura Adkins. “Because 
anger exposes the problem but 
never delivers the solution.
”
But he did take public stances 
on two topics that were often 
ensnared with European poli-
tics: Israel and antisemitism.

FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM
Sacks spoke out publicly as 
Britain’
s Labour Party was 
engulfed in an antisemitism 
scandal under its previous 
leader Jeremy Corbyn, calling 
Corbyn an antisemite.
“We have an antisemite as the 
leader of the Labour Party and 
her majesty’
s opposition. That 
is why Jews feel so threatened 
by Mr. Corbyn and those who 
support him,
” Sacks said in a 
2018 interview with the New 
Statesman.
That judgement paved the 
way for the current British 
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis to 
harshly condemn the Labour 
Party, a precedent-setting event 
in British Jewish life.
Corbyn was replaced in 
April by centrist Keir Starmer, 
who has apologized for how 
antisemitism was allowed to 
flourish in Labour’
s ranks 

under Corbyn. Starmer, who 
is married to a Jewish woman, 
expressed his condolences to 
“the entire Jewish world” in a 
tweet on Saturday.
“He was a towering intellect 
whose eloquence, insights and 
kindness reached well beyond 
the Jewish community,
” Starmer 
wrote. 
Sacks was also vocal in his 
opposition to the forces that 
lead to antisemitism on the far 
left and the far right, as he wrote 
in a JTA op-ed in January: 
“
Antisemitism has little to do 
with Jews — they are its object, 
not its cause — and everything 
to do with dysfunction in the 
communities that harbor it.
” 
 In a 2017 YouTube video, 
Sacks called anti-Zionism a new 
form of antisemitism, arguing 
that it denies Jews the “right to 
exist collectively with the same 
rights as everyone else.
”
The video was based on a 
2016 speech Sacks gave that 
helped pave the way to Britain’
s 
adoption later that year of 
the International Holocaust 
Remembrance Alliance’
s defini-
tion of antisemitism.
The video became symbolic 
of Sacks’
 ability to reach main-
stream audiences. Rachel Riley, 
a British Jewish game show 

host, shared the video, telling 
her over 600,000 Twitter follow-
ers that it is “the best explana-
tion of antisemitism I’
ve seen.
”
Sacks branched out beyond 
religious and Jewish cultural 
thought as well. In 2017, he 
delivered a TED Talk about 
“facing the future without fear” 
and what he called a “fateful 
moment” in Western history 
after the election of Donald 
Trump as president, citing 
Thomas Paine and anthropol-
ogists to make an argument 
about returning a culture of 
togetherness.
Born in London in 1948, 
Sacks studied at Cambridge 
University. While a student 
there in the ’
60s, he visited 
Rabbi Menachem Schneerson 
— the spiritual leader who is 
credited with turning the cha-
sidic Chabad-Lubatvitch move-
ment into a powerful organizing 
force of Jewry around the world 
— in New York City. Sacks 
credits that meeting with inspir-
ing him to get involved with 
Jewish studies.
He became the rabbi of the 
Golders Green synagogue in 
London’
s most Orthodox neigh-
borhood in the late ’
70s and 
then rabbi of the Marble Arch 
Synagogue in central London.
The U.K. Board of Deputies 
of British Jews President Marie 
van der Zyl said in a statement, 
“Rabbi Sacks was a giant of 
both the Jewish community and 
wider society. His astounding 
intellect and courageous moral 
voice were a blessing to all who 
encountered him in person, in 
writing or in broadcast.
”
Rabbi Sacks is survived by his 
wife, Elaine, three children and 
several grandchildren. 

JTA

SOUL

OF BLESSED MEMORY

Rabbi 

Jonathan 

Sacks

JOHN DOWNING/GETTY IMAGES VIA JTA

