To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility - Jonathan Sacks - Hardcover

Chapter 1 The Ethics of Responsibility One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the rabbinic phrase, his 'partners in the work of creation'. The God who created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who gave us the gift of freedom asks us to use it to honour and enhance the freedom of others. God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out to the human other. More than God is a strategic intervener, he is a teacher. More than he does our will, he teaches us how to do his. Life is God's call to responsibility. That is the theme of this book. More than any previous generation in history, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning. The gossamer filaments of connection between us and others, that once held together families, communities and societies, have become attenuated. We have become lonely selves in search of purely personal fulfilment. But that surely must be wrong. Life alone is only half a life. One spent pursuing the satisfaction of desire is less than satisfying and never all we desire. So it is worth reminding ourselves that there is such a thing as ethics, and it belongs to the life we live together and the goods we share - the goods that only exist in virtue of being shared. That is one of Judaism's enduring insights. To give an example: in 1190 Moses Maimonides, the greatest rabbi of the Middle Ages, published The Guide for the Perplexed, the most challenging work of Jewish philosophy ever written. In it he addresses the most exalted themes of religious thought - the existence of God, the limits of human knowledge, the problem of evil and the reasons for the commands. It is a formidably difficult work. Yet in its closing chapter he summarizes his teachings with a quote from Jeremiah: This is what the Lord says: 'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom or the strong man boast of his strength or the rich man boast of his riches, but let him who boasts boast about this: that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight', declares the Lord. (Jer. 9:23-4) I find it moving that at the end of his journey through intellectual space, Maimonides is drawn back to this simple affirmation of kindness, righteousness and justice. We cannot know God, Maimonides implies ('If I could understand him', one Jewish writer said, 'I would be him'), but we can act like him. Within the limits of human intelligence, we can climb at least part of the way to heaven, but the purpose of the climb is the return to earth, knowing that here is where God wants us to be and where he has given us work to do. Judaism contains mysteries, but its ultimate purpose is not mysterious at all. It is to honour the image of God in other people, and thus turn the world into a home for the divine presence. Maimonides lived what he taught. More than most, he valued solitude and meditation. He writes of it eloquently. Only when removed from the stresses and cares of the world, he says, can the soul soar in intellectual union with the Author of being. Yet he lived the latter years of his life as a physician (he was doctor to the Sultan in Cairo and had an extensive practice in his town, Fostat) and as a communal leader, consulted by Jews and non-Jews alike. The acknowledged head of Egyptian Jewry, he answered questions sent to him by communities throughout the world. When the Provencal scholar Samuel ibn Tibbon wanted to visit him to seek guidance on the translation of the Guide from Arabic to Hebrew, Maimonides wrote him back a letter describing his typical week, in which he rarely had tSacks, Jonathan is the author of 'To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility - Jonathan Sacks - Hardcover' with ISBN 9780805242416 and ISBN 0805242414.