Jonathan Sacks
The Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid
the Clash of Civilizations.
London and New York: Continuum, 2002

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the (Orthodox) United Hebrew Congregations of Britain and the Commonwealth, has emerged in the decade or so of his service as one of Britain's leading public intellectuals. His latest book, The Dignity of Dif-ference, demonstrates why this is so.

Sacks wrote his book as a response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. His starting point is the visit of a diverse group of world religious leaders to Ground Zero during the January 2002 World Economic Forum. Looking around at his fellow participants in that visit, he found himself "wondering at the contrast between the religious fervor of the hijackers and the no less intense longing for peace among the religious leaders who were there."

While virtually all religions hold peace as a value, Sacks notes that religion is just as often a source of conflict as it is of peace. This is because, Sacks says, most religious leaders speak more or less in these terms: "our faith speaks of peace; our holy texts praise peace; therefore, if only the world shared our faith and our texts there would be peace." But that path does not lead to peace; "peace means living with those who have a different faith and other texts."

Religions, particularly the Abrahamic or monotheistic religions, are often criticized as a source of conflict because they can tend to tribalism. Sacks accepts that this has often been the case, but he says that in today's world there is another danger that is no less potent. Ironically, that danger is uni-versalism, or what Sacks calls "Plato's ghost." According to Sacks, this is the idea that "in the world of ideas, difference is resolved into sameness."

In this view, "particularity ... is the source of conflict, prej-udice, error and war. Universality is the realm of truth, harmony, and peace." But this type of exaggerated univer-salism can have disastrous consequences: "it leads to the belief -- superficially compelling but quite false -- that there is only one truth about the essentials of the human condition, and it holds true for all people at all times. If I am right, you are wrong. If what I believe is the truth, then your belief, which differs from mine, must be an error from which you must be converted, cured, and saved. From this flowed some of the greatest crimes of history." Some of these were under religious auspices, others (such as the French and Russian revolutions) secular, "but both under the enchantment of Plato's ghost."

Sacks argues that the supposed moral superiority of univer-salistic over particularistic attachments is wrong-headed. "The universality of moral concern is not something we learn by being universal but by being particular." We learn to love hu-manity by learning to love individual human beings.

What is needed, according to Sacks, is not for us to give up our particularity but for each of us to see our own specific tradition as telling only part of the story, to understand that "God is greater than religion. He is only partially comprehended by any faith." We need a faith which is "like being secure in one's home, yet moved by the beauty of foreign places, know-ing that they are someone else's home, not mine, but still part of the glory of the world that is ours." In such a vision, each of us remains passionately attached to our own particular religious community, but views other communities as part of God's plan for the world, because "there are other stories, each written by God out of the letters of lives bound together in community, each bearing the unmistakable trace of his handwriting." Thus Sacks calls us to move beyond toleration (the acceptance of someone else's right to be different, even if wrong) to a celebration of diversity, or the "dignity of difference."

Sacks goes further than many other Orthodox rabbis in affir-ming the validity of other faiths: "God has spoken to mankind in many languages, through Judaism to the Jews, through Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims ... no one creed has a monopoly on spiritual truth."

As a poetic sermon and even as a blueprint for the future, Sacks's book succeeds brilliantly. Yet a critical reading reveals that his argumentation is less than convincing. Sacks argues from the diversity of the natural order that religious diversity is in accordance with God's will. "God no more wants all faiths and cultures to be the same than a loving parent wants his or her children to be the same ... we serve God, author of diversity, by respecting diversity." While I am sympathetic to the argument, Sacks here makes the mistake of arguing from what is to what ought to be. But the mere fact that some-thing exists (in this case, diversity) is not therefore proof that God desires its existence, unless one wishes to argue that a whole host of social evils also represents the will of God. While I in fact agree with Sacks that religious diversity is a positive good, something to be celebrated and not merely tolerated, I don't think he has succeeded in arguing the case in an airtight manner.

Sacks has come under intense criticism for his book, partic-ularly from more traditionalist elements within Anglo-Jewry. An invitation to address a major Orthodox conference was with-drawn, and Sacks had to fly to Manchester to meet with a group of rabbis critical of his book. What raised their ire, ac-cording to reports in both secular and Jewish newspapers in Britain, were Sacks's statements that all religions (even Judaism) contain only partial truth and that non-Jewish reli-gions are ways in which God speaks to those who are not Jews. Subsequent to these incidents, Sacks issued a state-ment conceding that "one or two sentences might be misunderstood" and had the book withdrawn from circulation until it could be revised. He added that the book was written for Gentile audiences and was not intended for Jews.

Despite my criticism that Sacks's argumentation is not airtight, and despite Sacks's unfortunate capitulation to his right-wing opponents, The Dignity of Difference is worth reading. It is positively refreshing to see an Orthodox rabbi argue from with-in Orthodoxy for a stance that views non-Jewish religions in a positive light. More importantly, Sacks makes the case that interreligious conversations and appreciation of "the dignity of difference" are crucial to our ability to continue to live as a civil society. For this, Sacks deserves our thanks and support.