Ten years ago, when the National Library of Israel’s new facility was in its initial planning stages, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks put forward a controversial proposal. Sacks suggested that important visitors to Israel be taken first to the National Library, and not to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Remembrance Center as is customary.
“Let us show the world not only how Jews died but how Jews live,” he wrote, adding that the new library should be subtitled, “The Home of the Book for the People of the Book.”
The fourth anniversary of his death was marked at the National Library in Jerusalem’s Givat Ram neighbourhood recently with the Rabbi Sacks Global Day of Learning, as well as the dedication of the Rabbi Sacks Archive that includes 30 boxes of notes, speeches and handwritten correspondence from the rabbi who became a global religious leader, philosopher, award-winning author and respected moral voice.
The National Library event included The Sacks Conversation between US Ambassador to Israel Jacob J. Lew and Jerusalem-born writer and educator Rachel Sharansky Danziger.
While the dedication event took place in Jerusalem, 150 communities in five continents participated in this year’s Sacks Global Day of Learning. Gatherings were held in schools, universities, synagogues and community centers, including in Australia, Cameroon, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
After serving for 22 years as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Sacks became a sought-after contributor to radio, television and the press, both in the UK and around the world, and was a visiting professor at Yeshiva University and New York University.
The rabbi never made his permanent home in Israel but one of his brothers, Alan Sacks, a trustee of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, called him “the greatest spokesman of his time as roving ambassador for the State of Israel.”
Although he made frequent visits to Israel, Jonathan Sacks spoke mostly in English to standing room-only crowds, and his 43 books were originally all published in English.
Today, a major goal of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy is to perpetuate his teachings to an Israeli audience.
National Library archivist Rachel Misrati told visitors at the dedication that more than 50,000 copies of Sacks’s series of Torah commentary, “Sig V’Siach” (originally published in English as “Covenant and Conversation”) have been sold.
Misrati told JNS that it would take several more months for the Sacks archive to be completed.
Part of the archives on display include a letter Sacks wrote to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, in 1990, asking advice about whether to take the position of chief rabbi. In the typed letter, Sacks asks, “Should I take the position?”
Schneerson sent back the letter with the proofreading mark for inversion, changing the question to a statement: “I should…”
Other items in the archive include an exchange of correspondence with then-Prince Charles, and a letter from Sacks to the rabbis of his United Synagogue movement during the Second Intifada. Sacks urged the rabbis to step up to defend Israel and urge their congregants to visit.
Alan Sacks told participants at the Sacks Conversation that his brother “knew that democracy begins and ends with conversation. When conversation ends, democracy dies.” One of the goals of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy, he added, is that “there should be more conversation and less confrontation.”