Two paths, one destination

Jeremy Phillips writes:

I have had the rare good fortune to work both with Rabbi Berel Wein ztz’l and Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ztz’l—two rabbis whose Jewish roots—and the routes they took—could scarcely have been more different.

Rabbi Wein was raised and schooled within a long and distinguished tradition of Lithuanian Torah scholarship; Rabbi Sacks came from an unlearned family of merchants. Rabbi Wein was par excellence a Torah scholar whose natural habitat was the yeshiva and the beit midrash; Rabbi Sacks’ preferred milieu was the synagogue pulpit and the university lecture hall. Rabbi Wein was a rabbi first and only secondly a historian; Rabbi Sacks was a first a philosopher, but a philosopher with semicha.

Within the vast field of Jewish learning, Rabbi Wein was for the Talmud and poskim; Rabbi Sacks’ comfort zone was that of Tanach and midrash. Rabbi Wein cautioned powerfully against the embrace of popular and secular culture and warned of its corrosive effect on living a life of Torah; Rabbi Sacks admired and absorbed much secular culture and sought to use it to understand and strengthen his Torah. Rabbi Wein’s messages were often blunt, sometimes brutal in their force—though delivered with a note of paternal kindness. Rabbi Sacks’ words were carefully crafted orations, aesthetic and elegant—but shocking when delivered with unexpected passion. Rabbi Wein was a man of mitzvot; he gave halachic rulings with the wisdom and confidence of a man backed by deep knowledge and siata dishmaya; Rabbi Sacks was a man of impeccable middot, shrinking from giving halachic rulings and always deferring on matters of halacha to the dayanim of the Beit Din of which he was the titular head,

These two giants of the contemporary Torah scene, who have both been taken from us in the very recent past, were so different in every respect that it seems astonishing that they held each other in such high regard, indeed affection. Those of us who were there will recall Rabbi Sacks’ warm words in his congratulatory message to Rabbi Wein when the latter celebrated 20 years at the helm of Beit Knesset Hanassi, as well as Rabbi Wein’s moving words on his shul’s event to mark the first yahrzeit of Rabbi Sacks. Can anyone doubt that these two men held each other in the highest regard? Why might this be?

If we distil the messages of the two rabbis, we find that they are so similar as to be virtually identical. Both cared passionately about Jewish demographics, writing and speaking on this subject with power and passion. Both were desperately unhappy about the rising tide of ignorance, indifference and assimilation, and both cried out for their audiences to seize the moment to address the problem full-on.  Rabbi Sacks shocked his English constituents when he published ‘Will We Have Jewish Grandchildren?’ and the final plea of Rabbi Wein in his last book launch at Hanassi, shortly before his death, was for the audience to place a copy of his book on antisemitism before every one of their grandchildren.

It was not just the messages but also the means of disseminating them that marked these two luminaries out. Both recognized the power of the media and the emerging technologies to bring their words before audiences who might never otherwise encounter them. To this end Rabbi Wein established the Destiny Foundation, harnessing sound and video recordings and embracing YouTube and Zoom. Similarly, Rabbi Sacks' works, thoughts and ideas are promulgated through The Rabbi Sacks Legacy. Thus the life's work of Rabbis Wein and Sacks lives on.

That these two men, so different in so many respects, should have identified the same issues as crucial and fought for them with every fibre of their being, is something in which I take great comfort. I am sure that, should their paths cross in a better world than this, they will celebrate not their differences but the convergence of their love for the People of Israel and their prayer for its growth and continued success.