Strong Medicine for
an Ailing World

 “To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility,” by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, is a beautiful book. Although it bears one significant flaw, noted below, first it must be said that this is a lucid, lovely, rich, and bracing work. It presents the essence of Judaism as a call to human responsibility, and does so in a way that should make Jews proud of the subtlety and power of our legacy.

Rabbi Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth, is trained as a philosopher and has a particular interest in political institutions. This leads him to take a wider view of the Jewish role in the world than the purely individual.

The theme of Rabbi Sacks’ book is responsibility, or as he puts it, cleverly, “response-ability”--the ability to respond. When the nothingness shows through, when the cracks widen, what is our role? Sacks begins by outlining responsibility as a call: it is something that makes urgent demands on us in our modern age. Judaism insists that we see the world as a constant demand upon our attention and action: Rather than an opiate, religion is characterized by "sacred discontent, dissatisfaction with the status quo.

Much modern preaching is infected with the strange assumption that we must tend to our own moral growth but not with the ills of society. As Rabbi Sacks makes clear, there is no absolute separation between the ethical individual and the just society. Just as there is strife in the individual life, so there is in the world. While most people are attuned to the difficulties of their own lives, however, it takes unusual ethical penetration to understand the “brokenness” of the world around us.

When Rabbi Isaac Luria, the great kabbalist and mystical master known as the ARI, talked about a “broken world,” he was speaking of more than the shattered soul; he was pointing to cracks in the foundation of things. Paul Valery, the French poet, offered a kindred metaphorical spin when he said "God made the world from nothing. Sometimes, the nothingness shows through." In other words, both the poet and the mystic understand that just as there are gaps and pains in our souls, so there are in the world, and this imperfection seems somehow built into the nature of creation. 

Religion should cultivate an uneasiness with the injustice of the world, Rabbi Sacks argues. And Judaism is a tradition of dissatisfaction with the broken state of things. The theme of his book is responsibility, or as he puts it, cleverly, response-ability—the ability to respond. When the nothingness shows through, when the cracks widen, what is our role?