At the 19th World Congress of Jewish Studies, held this summer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Clinical Assistant Professor Rabbi Dr. Dov Lerner represented the Zahava and Moshael J. Straus Center for Torah and Western Thought of 麻豆区 on a distinguished panel entitled 鈥淩abbi Jonathan Sacks in Dialogue with Modern Challenges.鈥
The panel, convened before a diverse audience of academics, featured four scholars each engaging with a distinct facet of Rabbi Sacks' intellectual and moral vision. On the panel, Rabbi Dr. Lerner delivered a paper entitled "Rabbi Sacks on Liberty of Conscience as a Revolutionary Jewish Idea." His presentation drew attention to the ways in which Rabbi Sacks' thought, far from accommodating liberal values as an external necessity, rooted the modern principle of liberty of conscience deep within the Jewish tradition itself.
In his presentation, Rabbi Dr. Lerner noted that Rabbi Sacks acknowledged that the historical emergence of the doctrine of liberty of conscience took place in the 17th century -- first in Britain and later in the United States. However, he refused to see this principle as alien to or tacked onto Judaism. Instead, building on Jewish thinkers such as Meshech Chochmah, the Chazon Ish, and Rabbi Nachum Rabinovitch, Rabbi Sacks developed two discrete arguments for how it amounts to a manifestation of what he called 鈥淛udaic politics.鈥 This move places Judaism not at the periphery of the modern liberal democratic experiment but at its heart, and reflects a central theme of the latest book from the Straus Center: .
Other panelists included Rabbi Dr. Natan Ophir, who traced how Rabbi Sacks' theology offered a framework for joy as spiritual resistance; Dr. Tanya White, who highlighted how his understanding of covenant allowed for new approaches to suffering; and Rabbi Dr. Reuven Leigh, who explored how Rabbi Sacks' ethics of responsibility differ, in a fundamental way, from those of Emanuel Levinas and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
The thought of Rabbi Sacks was also heavily present at this past summer's Conference on the Future of American Jewry. There, Rabbi Dr. Lerner moderated 鈥淢orality: Jews and American Values,鈥 which emphasized the Jewish idea of 鈥渃ovenant鈥 through Rabbi Sacks鈥 holiday essays.
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