To Heal a Fractured World: The Ethics of Responsibility » (Reprint)

Jonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth since 1991 and has received honorary degrees from universities around the world. He is the award-winning author of a dozen previous books, writes frequently for The Times (London) and other periodicals, and is heard regularly on the BBC. Rabbi Sacks was knighted in 2005. He lives in London.

One of the most respected religious thinkers of our time makes an impassioned plea for the return of religion to its true purpose—as a partnership with God in the work of ethical and moral living.

What are our duties to others, to society, and to humanity? How do we live a meaningful life in an age of global uncertainty and instability? In To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers answers to these questions by looking at the ethics of responsibility. In his signature plainspoken, accessible style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith and make it real in the lives of others and the world.”

To Heal a Fractured World—inspirational and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths.

Publishers Weekly

Although written by a rabbi, this powerful, biblically based plea for ethical behavior will appeal to non-Jews as well as to Jews. The erudite author, the chief rabbi of Great Britain, contends that all people have to be both ethically and socially responsible, and supports this through examples of people he's met or read about as well as through biblical and Hasidic tales. His analysis of these stories and their lessons is beautifully informed by philosophy, psychology, theology, poetry and literature. Sacks's wide-ranging scholarship is evident in the authorities he cites, including Plato, Karl Marx, Victor Frankl, Joseph B. Soloveitchik, William Wordsworth, Rashi, Maimonides, Jean-Paul Sartre, John Donne, Erich Fromm, Sigmund Freud and many others including Talmudic and rabbinical sources. Sacks claims that he "tried to make the book as simple and readable" as possible, but it is at times somewhat heavy-footed. Patient readers will be rewarded by exposure to a great intellect who demonstrates how his knowledge and experiences have led him to the conclusion that each individual has responsibility "to heal where others harm, mend where others destroy, [and] to redeem evil by turning its negative energies to good." (Oct. 11) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Acknowledgements

Part 1: The Call to Responsibility

1 The Ethics of Responsibility
2 Faith as Protest
3 Charity as Justice
4 Love as Deed
5 Sanctifying the Name
6 Mending the World
7 Like a Single Soul
8 The Kindness of Strangers
9 Responsibility for Society

Part 2: The Theology of Responsibility

10 The Birth of Responsibility
11 Divine Initiative, Human Initiative
12 The Holy and the Good
13 The Monotheistic Imagination
14 The Faith of God
15 Redeeming Evil

Part 3: The Responsible Life

16 Transforming Suffering
17 The Chaos Theory of Virtue
18 The Kind of Person We Are
19 Who Am I?
20 On Dreams and Responsibilities

Index