Morality

There’s an Old Testament story that ought to be better known (who does God’s PR these days?). King David is in his palace, and a servant announces that he has a caller. It’s Nathan the prophet. Good old Nathan — committed to maximizing the life-chances of the poor, a real old-school man of the people, and often a bit spiky with it — a man to keep onside. Yes, yes, send him in. Nathan launches into a story about a humble farmer who has been conned by some smooth-talking landlord and has now lost his land and his last remaining lamb to this greedy sod. The king’s a bit disappointed that Nathan has brought such a tiny issue to his attention — he was hoping for a big juicy cause he could champion, so as to remind the people of his compassionate-conservative credentials.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who died on Saturday at the age of 72, was a modern Maimonides, a guide to the perplexed in an age of spiritual confusion and moral dissolution. A philosophy student before he entered the rabbinate, Sacks combined the legacies of Athens and Jerusalem and became the leading public intellectual and ethicist of our time. A source of pride to Britain’s small and sometimes beleaguered Jewish community, Sacks did not just work to improve the moral state of the Jewish people and defend the state of Israel. Adeptly linking the particular to the universal, he defended the religious conscience, and identified the common ground through which interfaith negotiations have transformed Jewish-Christian relations.