Gidi Grinstein
Otherness: The Cornerstone of Jewish Leadership in Humanity
Gidi Grinstein - Otherness: The Cornerstone of Jewish Leadership in Humanity
- Good evening everybody. So it’s a great pleasure for me to introduce two close friends of mine, which does seem to have been the theme of the week. I didn’t just pick my friends to talk about Rabbi Sacks. So we are very, very pleased to be able to be joined tonight by Dan Sacker, who you have all heard mentioned a few times this week. But Dan worked with Rabbi Sacks for over a decade in the final two years that he was Chief Rabbi and then in establishing his private office once he stepped down in 2013. Since Rabbi Sacks passing, Dan has worked to establish the Rabbi Sacks Legacy Trust. During this time, Dan helped shape much of Rabbi Sack’s activities and writings, working on various engagements, including his Ted Talk, the Templeton Prize, and his anti-Semitism speech in the European Parliament, as well as developing the various avenues of Rabbi Sack’s digital communications. Dan also undertook much of the research for Rabbi Sacks last secular book, “Morality: Restoring the Common Good in Divided Times.” I will also tell you, although it doesn’t say a Dan’s bio, that he is the secret weapon of the Jewish community in the UK and really has spent the last 18 years, I think probably, if I’m right, not to quite age him being behind the scenes in many of the most important strategic moments of the community. And I know that without his advice and judgement , many of us would’ve been much worse off.
And now turning to Gidi. So Gidi is back again at Lockdown University and we’re very pleased to welcome you back. He is an Israeli serial social entrepreneur, leader and author. He founded the Royal Institute, one of Israel’s most cutting edge, not-for-profit strategy, development and leadership groups. It specialises in societal disruptions. Within Reut, Gidi initiated TOM, which is a bold global social project with the goal of helping 250 million people within a decade through global innovation using 3D printing. Gidi’s seminal book, “Flexigidity: The Secret of Jewish Adaptability” offers a unique systematic view of the Jewish people. In 2000, Gidi served as the secretary of the Israeli delegation for the Camp David Summit. And prior hereto, he led the Israeli team that designed Birthright Israel, which is the largest generational project of the Jewish people. Gidi is a graduate of Harvard Kennedy School of Government, and of Tel Aviv University School of Law and Economics. He’s a long distance runner having run eight marathons. He’s married to his wife Betty, and together they have five children. What I also love about Gidi and Israeli is every time he invents a new phenomenon, he names it in something Israelis can’t say, be it flexigidity, be it divestment. He’s really famous for it. So the Israelis can thank him for creating words that they can’t say. So Gidi and Dan, thank you very much. Dan, I’m going to hand over to you.
Thank you, Carly. And thanks also to Wendy in absentia and the Kashf Foundation and everyone at the Lockdown University, not just for this week’s partnership, which has been phenomenal. And I haven’t quite caught up on all the sessions this week, but the calibre of speakers has been quite amazing. So it’s a privilege for me to be involved in this. But also just to you Carly and Wendy and everyone else, for your ongoing support of the trust. It really does mean a great deal. Rabbi Sacks, you know, he spoke on the Lockdown Universities. I’m sure many of you on here would’ve known, or were on in June, 2020. So just a few months before he passed away. But he loved the concept because it did two things. It bought the idea of community, and it bought the idea of education, and it merged the two. And anything that would bring those two ideas together was something that he loved. And before anyone thinks I’m trying to win a bookshelf in a background competition, I’m doing this from the office, which is why, as you’ll see behind me, there are literally hundreds of Rabbi Sacks books. Most of these are also on my shelf at home. But I’m in the office, so I win.
I thought you were giving away as prizes to the best questions from the-
I will very happily give away a copy of “The Power of Ideas,” which is the latest anthology to be published just this week to the best question.
There we go.
Unless it comes from you, Carly, in which case-
In which case, I didn’t earn a book.
You can buy one. Anyway, Gidi, it’s a real pleasure to be with you. It’s great because this, I said before, this should feel just like we’re having one of our regular catch ups, and there aren’t like hundreds of people watching us. But really Gidi is someone who is one of those big thinkers in the Jewish world. He’s not just a thinker, he’s a doer. And I think that’s why he’s a great person for us to dip into his wisdom this evening. But I think before we kind of get onto the topic and kind of discuss that a little bit more, let’s start. This is obviously a week dedicated to the memory and the legacy and the ongoing impact of Rabbi Sacks and his ideas. But where for you was that first connection? Where did you first meet? And obviously in that context, that’s how we met as well.
Right. First of all, Carly, thank you for inviting me and thank you to the entire Lockdown University team, and obviously to Wendy Fisher for allowing this to happen beginning during the COVID days. And second, Dan, thank you to you and to Joanna who’s watching us who you’ve been partners and friends for a long time. And I have to say that I’ve never experienced the loss of someone outside of my family in such a deep way as I’ve experienced the loss of Rabbi Sacks. I don’t even feel in a position to be calling him a friend because Rabbi Sacks was really a larger than life person. And we’ll speak about that in a moment. But I was privileged to have had a number of very special private moments with him, including hosting him in our home in New York in December, 2019, which I believe was his last visit to New York. But the first time we met, of course, I’ll never forget, it was in 2010 when my team and I, the Reut Institute team and I started digging into creating a strategy to respond to the Delegitimization of Israel. That is the assault on the political and economic model of Israel that was carried out by global movement of organisations and individuals that has been forming and gaining momentum effectively since the Durban Conference in South Africa in the early 2000s.
And this whole phenomena came to the fore primarily in 2006. And after that, following the second Lebanon war, as I mentioned, our team started researching it. And we focused on London as we saw London as the hub of the global campaign of delegitimization. It was unfolding against Israel. So we came to London and we met a lot of people, including Ambassador Ron Prosor. That was also the opportunity when I met a very young, I would say, member of the Israeli, of the team of the Israeli embassy in London, that is Carly. I think it was on her second day on the job. And basically she was entrusted by Ambassador Prosor to fight and win over the campaign against the delegitimization of Israel. But that’s how I met Carly at the time. And during that visit, I also met Rabbi Sacks, and I remember this meeting very well. Rabbi Sacks received us, we’ve all obviously heard a lot about him before. What was so special is the very kind way in which he received us in his home. Dan, I don’t know if you remember, we sat down, it was either in a kitchen or in a side table, no formality. There was no big desk, he on one side and we on the other side. It was a very, very personal conversation in which he helped us understand the intellectual phenomena, the intellectual aspect of that phenomena of the delegitimization of Israel. And basically Rabbi Sacks was the, I believe, the most prominent voice early on in being able to frame that phenomena as a new mutation, as a mutation of the age old plague of antisemitism, basically comparing it to a virus. And that virus was originally directed against individuals Jews, against the Jewish religion, against the Jewish people is now directed against the Jewish nation. And in that respect, his contribution was formative. A few years later, I wrote my book, as you mentioned, “Flexigidity.” And once I was done writing the book, I sent it to about 20 people for comments and a request for endorsement.
So some people never responded, some actually responded with a very kind paragraph. There was one person that asked his assistant, then assistant Dan Sacker, to call me and say that he would like to meet with me to discuss the book. And that was Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs. We met in Jerusalem. I walk into the meeting, the meeting was scheduled for 30 minutes. And I see Rabbi Sacks coming in with a printout of my book full of red marks all over the page. You remember this, small and big with circles around key ideas. And Rabbi Sacks says to me, I liked what I read, but I’d like to discuss with you the concepts of leadership that you’re introducing in your book. And then we go on to have a really deep conversation about the challenges of leadership in our time. Obviously the meeting was scheduled 30 minutes, went on for much longer. But this is when we discovered that we are both in different ways, students of Ron Heifetz. There was also a speaker in Lockdown University this week in memory of Rabbi Sacks. And that had such a profound impact on me, that the person at the statue of Rabbi Sacks would take the time to read the entire manuscript to comment on it in detail, not just send me a paragraph of endorsement in case he liked the book, actually take the time to sit down with me and discuss the ideas of the book. And that was the beginning of the deeper relationship that I’ve had with him that continued basically effectively until very close, until his passing, which, you know, saddens me, when I said it saddens me deeply.
It’s funny that you say about how he bought a manuscript and it was scribbled all over. One of the great blessings of working for him was, well, he was the most prolific reader. He read a book a day, like there was no stopping him. But often he’d read the book and then I’d asked to borrow the book knowing that he would’ve read the book with a pencil and underlined all the important bits and put stars in the margins of all the meaningful bit. Which meant I could read the book in a day without actually reading the book. But I must say yours is a book Flexigidity, which I’ve got here, which I’m probably responsible for quite a large percentage of your commission ‘cause I recommend this book to lots and lots of different people. And you talk there about Rabbi Sacks putting a framework around antisemitism. Well, I think this book puts a framework around the narratives of the Jewish people and of Jewish history. And you talk in this book about four sort of key foundational narratives of the Jewish people that no matter what period of Jewish history you look at, you can see these narratives traced throughout generation to generation. And I wonder if you could just explain a bit more about those four stories. Cause obviously one of them is particularly relevant to our discussion.
So yeah, so first of all, I wrote this book as an attempt to try to make sense of things 'cause I come from the non-religious side of Israel and I’m married to a religious family and even an ultra-orthodox family. And I’ve had the privilege of travelling around the Jewish world meeting reform communities, orthodox communities, everything in between, in different countries. And it was always fascinating for me how this whole system, this whole people, people small p, come together into the Jewish People, in capital P. And through that journey… So I started putting pen to a paper trying to understand this phenomenon of the Jewish people eventually writing that book. But part of what I saw was that we have four founding stories that are helping to frame, helping every Jew and every Jewish community, but also every Jewish institution to frame and understand who we are and what is our mission. One story is the story of nationhood. That we are a nation, we are connected to a specific place on the face of this earth, which is the land of Israel. This is a story about ownership, sovereignty, and control. It is also a story about exile and return. The modern day manifestation of the story is Zionism. And that’s story number one, Jewish nationhood. The second story is, I’m sorry that we are a religious community, that we are individually and collectively we have a special relationship with God.
The third story is that we are a people. This is a story about a family and a tribe about a shared legacy and a shared destiny. And the fourth story is a story about the mission, the commandment to be a light onto the nations, to make a distinct and unique and significant contribution to humanity. And the beauty of these stories that they’re ever present in the history of the Jewish people. In any given moment, you can find them scattered around the Jewish world, scattered in the mindset of many individuals. And the beauty of it, since I know we’ll finish with our conversation today with Abraham at end, I’ll say that the beginning of it, of all these four narratives is when Abraham gets the mission to form a people, to serve a god, the notion of one God, to own and inherent a land and to be a blessing for the families of the earth. So in the very moment of the origination of our people, these four stories are there. And those of you that would be interested, you can find them in the Declaration of Independence of the state of Israel. You can find all four stories in the writings of Herzl. And until today, they’re shaping the mindset of many Israelis and Jews around the world. So these stories create an endless menu of opportunities for significant and meaningful association between the individual Jews and the Jewish people. And I find that to be fascinating. And the beauty of Rabbi Sacks when I saw this, especially in the book Future Tents, is that he embraces all these narratives and he brings them to life in his writing and therefore allowing so many Jews around the world to find meaning in their Jewish identity. And that is, I think why Rabbi Snacks was such a, basically the Rabbi of global jury in our generation is Rabbi Sacks. And that is because he was able to speak to everybody and bring meaning to everybody in their own lives.
I also think, you know, you’re absolutely right, those four stories are present throughout pretty much every single one of his books. But especially in “Radical Then, Radical Now,” which publishes a letter in the scroll in America and outside of Britain. It’s funny, it wasn’t published. I think his brother once told him, he never really understood, like, what does it mean, radical then, radical now. No one knows what that means, which is why they changed the title for America. But you know, the subtitle of this book, of Flexigidity is the secret of Jewish adaptability, right? And the book sort of very much talks about the mechanisms of Jewish survival, of security, of prosperity, of leadership. You know, just give us a sense beyond the four narratives. What’s the argument of Jewish flexigidity? What are you trying to say in the book?
So basically, you know, when I roamed around the Jewish world, you hear very progressive people, small p, that are very upset by the Orthodox way of living and the Orthodox way of thinking. And then you meet a lot of Orthodox people that are bitterly critical of the reform of the reforming factions of the Jewish people because they say that, you know, the Jewish people is lose. We are seeing a lot of levels of assimilation into marriage and a lot of introduction of ideas “that are not Jewish.” And I happen to be in a place where I hear one voice, I hear the other message. And I’m saying, wait a minute, this is all part of one ecosystem. And that ecosystem, what survived over time is not the reforming, again small r, factions of the Jewish people. And it’s not the orthodox, small o, of factions of the Jewish people, it’s the interaction between the Orthodox and the reforming factions that actually optimises the pace of adaptation of the Jewish people. And what I mean by that is, and obviously inspired by the thinking of Darwin, is that it’s not the strongest of people that survive, of species that survives nor the most intelligent. It’s the most adaptable. And the question is, how does a group of people optimise the pace of adaptation? Because if you change too fast, it’s dangerous.
And if you change too slow, it’s dangerous. And we also know in our history as a people that a lot of the groups that were too quick to reform basically disappeared and they’re no longer part of our people. But also groups that were too orthodox aren’t changing, like the Sadducees, the , the Essenes, all these groups that really clunk to the old ways, they too are no longer with us as a people. So really, my observation was that our people survives the secret sauce of Jewish resilience, recurring prosperity and permanent leadership in humanity, which we’ll speak about in the moment, is the way in which the Jewish people balances old and new, innovation and tradition, flexibilities and rigidities, hence the name of the book, Flexigidity. And that happens through the interaction between orthodox groups that are resistant to change where they reject the new, they reject the innovation and reforming against smaller groups that are quick to embrace change. But not every change is, not every new idea is a good idea, but over time some of the changes that are being introduced prove themselves. They prove to serve the security and the continued wellbeing of the community and therefore they become custom and eventually law. And that’s the beauty of our people. Many, many groups around the world are trying to survive and thrive over time. We are the only one who’s been able to do that, basically to optimise the pace of adaptation for three millennia, 2,600 years outside of the land of Israel, continuous existence in the diaspora. And I found that to be remarkable and I’m honestly very, very proud to be part of that story.
It’s interesting 'cause I remember I was with Rabbi Sacks, I think I might get this wrong, I think it was in 2016 at the JFNA, the Jewish Federation’s General Assembly. And it obviously 2016 was a fairly fractious time within American politics and there was quite a lot of tensions within the Jewish community as well. And you kind of had the, a microcosm of everything you are talking about happening within American jury at that time. And he went to the, he was invited to speak and the brief I remember was, we need to bring the room together. Like you need to go up there and in 15 minutes bring the room together. And he basically boiled it down to one sentence, which was, you know, division and disagreement are natural things that are going to happen. But he said this, he said, I don’t need you to agree with me, I just need you to care about me.
That’s actually the-
The secret of Jewish survival is not that we always agree, but if you disagree with respect, you’ll survive.
So I just want to mention two things about Rabbi Sacks and what’s so special about him. Rabbi Sacks felt totally comfortable, absolutely comfortable with the most orthodox factions of the Jewish world. But after I had the privilege of getting to know him a little bit better, after writing that book, Dan, you remember, one day we got the call from Rabbi Sacks and he said, Gidi, or you said in his name Gidi, will you organise for us a sit down and a deep conversation with secular Israeli Jews? I want to know how they think, I want to know what they’re talking about, I want to engage with them in a conversation. And if you remember we did that with the whole of the Tel Aviv municipality-
It was amazing.
Gorgeous event, right? So that’s so special about Rabbi Sacks because what Rabbi Sacks embodied in his thinking, in his work, in his writing is the understanding that it’s not about us, different voices in the Jewish people tolerating each other. The word tolerance is superficial. You live your life, I live my life. I will tolerate you, you’ll tolerate me. No, that’s not enough. Rabbi Sacks understood that the real relationship among committed Jews, whether they’re on the more progressive, small p, side or orthodox side, is mutual respect. Because we survive as an ecosystem. We survive in a society. It’s not that one side of our society has the secret sauce for Jewish resilience, prosperity, and leadership. It’s the interaction among us that ensures our long-term wellbeing. And Rabbi Sacks as an Orthodox Rabbi profoundly understood that. And I think he communicated and generated that message all over the Jewish world.
I think a lot of it just boiled down to one word. It was respect.
Yes, absolutely.
He didn’t go, I remember that audience that we had, and it was an amazing event. But he went into rooms with secular audiences, not wanting to try and make them orthodox and that was the thing. He went in there and he would really listen to their concerns. And he would always say, especially in Israel, the only people who believe secular Israelis are secular, are secular Israelis, . They live in Israel.
We’re living the miracle. We are the miracle.
You’ve got to have a certain degree of faith and resilience to live in Israel. So, no, I think-
If you say that, I just want to say that that’s another point of many points where Rabbi Sacks echoed the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Which I heard him multiple times give credit to the Lubavitcher Rebbe for his own Rabbinical journey. And I’m also, what do you may call secular Israeli, Rabbi Sacks would say it doesn’t exist. The Lubavitcher Rebbe says it doesn’t exist. But I’m also a huge fan of the Lubavitcher Rebbe precisely because of that. Because like Rabbi Sacks, Rabbi Sacks, would you say he was a student of the Lubavitcher Rebbe?
For sure. For sure.
Yeah, the key concept-
Not, not not only of the Lubavitcher Rebbe but definitely he was. I mean he writes about it in his book on leadership, how after the six day war, he went to America and he met with the two most influential Rabbis at the time, Rabbi Soloveitchik and the Lubavitcher Rebbe. And he says, Rabbi Soloveitchik taught him to think and the Rebbe challenged him to lead.
Exactly. So just to say a word about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and how is it that so many Jews around the world today connect to the Lubavitcher Rebbe similarly so many Jews were able to connect to Rabbi Sacks. And there is one key word here of the four narratives we mentioned. It’s not about nationhood. You don’t connect to the Lubavitcher Rebbe because of Israel. You don’t connect to the Lubavitcher Rebbe just because you’re religious, because a lot of non-religious people connect with the Lubavitcher Rebbe movement. It’s the idea of peoplehood, that we are family and a tribe and we care about each other. And that vision, tremendous vision of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the vision of Rabbi Sacks is communicated to so many people. My dear friend Avraham Infeld, who actually introduced me and teacher and mentor who actually introduced me to Rabbi Sacks, he used to say that when Rabbi Sacks retired as chief Rabbi of England, he said, the England may have lost a chief Rabbi, but World jury just won a chief Rabbi. And that was, I think that sort of caption by Avraham Infeld that really, you know, hit on the essence of Rabbi Sacks and why he meant so much for so many people around the world.
So I want to kind of move the conversation on a little bit to this topic of otherness. And we’re kind of come back to Ron Heifetz, you mentioned him at the beginning about the kind of leadership and the influence there. But in future tense, Rabbi Sacks talks quite a lot about the concept of chosenness and otherness and what kind of distinguishes the two. So what was your understanding of what he was talking about when he spoke about otherness, particularly through the work that you were doing at the time with Flexigidity?
Oh, so Rabbi Sacks to me, the amazing thing about Rabbi Sacks and people at his calibre is that they introduce, not just one concept or two concepts or 10 concepts or a dozen concepts. They introduce hundreds of concepts and they put them together into this conceptual frameworks or one idea impacts on another idea, which is connected to the third idea and to a fourth idea. And takes you such a long time to actually understand the depth of their thinking and the breadth of their thinking and the sophistication of the ideas. But one of the most… So knowing that the hundreds of ideas that Rabbi Sacks introduced into the Jewish world through his lifetime of work, for me, one of the most influential ideas was the idea of Jewish otherness. And to me, what he meant by that is the Jewish people is structurally unique, okay? There’s nothing unique about us as Jewish individuals. We’re not better athletes than anybody else. We don’t have more IQ than any other people. We’re not in any way, shape or form physically different. What is different about the Jewish people, about Jews is when we come together as communities and when our communities come together as a people, we are able to consistently make a significant and distinct contribution to humanity. And that otherness, as I mentioned earlier, is structural. And the source of the otherness, the cornerstone of this otherness is actually the Torah.
A text that cannot be changed in shape or form, that cannot be changed not only in shape or form, even the sound of the Torah is preserved through the way it is being read. One person reads the Torah, nine other listen at least nine other, and they correct the reader if the reader makes a mistake. So the Torah is actually transformed from one generation to another in perfect shape and also in sound, it’s actually astounding. But the other thing that we have, and obviously we have the oral Torah, the Mishnah, Gemara and this huge body of text. But the other thing that we have as Jews is a unique mechanism of interpretation of these texts. So on the one hand you have a fixed point of the Torah, on the other hand you have these mechanisms of interpretation that can actually provide an answer to every possible human question, past, present, and future.
And that means that in every single situation that humanity will face in the future, there will be a distinctly Jewish answer to that question. So a lot of times when I tried to communicate this, I was just in Budapest, met some, the introduction invitation of Rabbi Paley. I met a group of Jewish leaders there in Budapest and I tried to explain this through the following metaphor. I said, let’s say a hundred years from now, there are a hundred people living on Mars. I said, what’s the probability, what do you people in the room, what do you think? Will there be a Jew living on Mars if there is 100 people living on Mars in a hundred years from now? Everybody in the room said yes. And by the way, that happens everywhere. Which means that we know as a people that if humanity sends 100 people to outer space, at least one of them will be Jewish. It’s far, far beyond our real numbers in humanity. But then I asked the second question, and that is, this person happens to be observant. He’s now sending he or she an as they say today, they are sending a question to earth about life in Mars. Will there be a distinctly Jewish answer to a question that came from Mars? And everybody said yes. And most people always say there’ll probably be more than one question, more than one answer.
There’s always more than one question and more than one answer.
No, there’ll be more than one answer to one question coming from Mars. And that means that we believe everybody here on the call, like we think, we all Jews here on the call think we’ll agree with that, that our society will be able to answer a human question emanating from a condition that was unimaginable just 20, 30 years ago, let alone a hundred years ago. And we will do that using the sources that we have and the system of interpretation. The moral of what I’m saying is the message is that Jewish otherness is systemic, it’s structural, it’s inherent into who we are. And this is why past, present, and future we are in a position of leadership in humanity. We will always be able to offer humanity an alternative way of looking at the questions that we as human beings face. And that’s why Jewish otherness in my view, is the cornerstone of the leadership position of the Jewish people in humanity.
It’s interesting 'cause you know, what you’re saying about how there’s always an answer, but there’s always interpretations, you know, from the text, it’s very similar, you know, that was what Rabbi Sacks was all about. You know, he called, he called his weekly Parsha Torah commentary, Covenant and Conversation. And when you ask him why, why did you choose that? He said, because the covenant is set and the conversation continues. There is a timeless ideas of what’s written down in the text. There’s the written law and there’s the oral law, there’s the stuff that remains and the stuff that we discuss. And that’s one-
It’s so interesting that you mentioned that because yesterday a good friend of mine who was also a huge fan of Rabbi Sacks just lost her mother recently. So she heard about this conversation that we’re having, then she called me and we talked about this. And we actually spoke about Rabbi Sacks ideas about covenant. And I found it so interesting what you just said, because until now I had a different understanding of what he meant by covenant. So if I may share with you what I had understood literally until now, perhaps it would be of interest to you and to the audience.
You just said there’s more than two answers for everything, so we’re both right?
Yes, years and years. And I thought about something totally different, not totally different than what you said. So in my view, Rabbi Sacks not in my view, what I understood Rabbi Sacks to say was he was making a distinction between contractual relation and governmental relations. So a contractual relationship explicates what you need to do, then you do one thing, then I’ll do another thing. You give me a hundred dollars, I’ll give you my car. You open the door, I’ll do something else. That’s a contractual relationship. It’s transactional. Covenantal relationship is something different because it actually does not specify what you and I need to do. It gives you the guidelines, it gives you the direction, but it’s up to us in every specific situation to interpret the intellectual and emotional and religious legacy that we have had, moresheth.
And to interpret it to the unique situation that we are facing. There is nothing in our sources about how we should use this machine called the smartphone. And many people say, and I agree. Yes, Facebook leadership needs lawyers to think about what they can and cannot do, but they need a lot of Rabbis and philosophers around them as well, because they are venturing into new ground that is unprecedented with a lot of moral and ethical questions. And there will always be a unique Jewish answer to these questions.
You talk a lot about the rise and decline of the Jewish people over time and how this kind of sense of these stories and this adaptability and this whole concept as you write in the book of Jewish, of flexigidity leadership, of this leadership that kind of moulds over time. How has that kind of been influenced, you mentioned Ron Heifetz earlier, you know, and as you rightly said, you and Rabbi Sacks were both students of Ron Heifetz and indeed Ron Heifetz wrote the foreword to Rabbi Sack’s Covenant and Conversation book on leadership. So how is his thinking who, you know, very much operates in a political business, non-Jewish world, how did that influence your thinking when you were thinking about this idea of Jewish adaptability and Jewish and flexigidity and everything else? What did you take from his theories and what did you take from sort of Rabbi Sacks scholarship and how did you blend those two together?
It’s a fascinating question because really Ron Heifetz, I have bookshelves about leadership. In my view, nobody comes close to the work of Ron Heifetz in his lifetime of work. But specifically the book called “Leadership without Easy Answers.”
It was Rabbi Sack’s favourite book on leadership.
Yes. So basically one of the insights there is that Ron Heifetz distinguishes between authority and leadership. And he basically argues that people in a position of authority are actually constrained to be leaders because they need to feed their community, they need to protect their community, they need to assign roles, they need to resolve conflicts, they need to serve those who gave them power. So it’s very hard for these people to lead. And leading from a position of authority is an extremely challenging thing to do. But to be a leader according to Ron Heifetz and according to Rabbi Sacks, is actually to do work. And that work is the work of helping the community make change, adaptive change, moving in the direction that is essential for long-term security and wellbeing. And the Jewish People, capital P, is unique in the sense that we were powerless for such a long time. And that’s why all of our influence on the, all of our effect on humanity comes from influence, comes from a position of leadership, from our ability to make a statement of what, how a community should operate, how individuals should operate and over time affect humanity. Now, a lot of times it takes generations and even centuries to appreciate the pathbreaking ideas of the Jewish people. But let me just mention a few, progressive taxation, division of powers, legislative, executive and judicial branch. The fact that the king is subject to the law and the king has to read the law. The king is not the author of the law. And then we were first to introduce universal mandatory education and many other things that we introduced as a people that are now commonplace in humanity or at least among many nations in humanity.
So what I want to say is that because Ron Heifetz focused on adaptive leadership, he basically focused on the fundamental change in society. So what is fundamental change in society? It’s the ability to introduce new language and new discourse to build institutions and structures and patterns of conduct and so on. And this is the kind of leadership that is really essential for our people to move forward and to have wellbeing and security and even dealing with radical crisis. So I’ll just say one more, share one more insight from the ocean of creation of Rabbi Sacks, which is his work about the turning point of the Jewish people throughout our history, where he is able to point out that repeatedly, out of the deepest crisis of the Jewish people came a pivot, what we now call a pivot, came a change that led to tremendous new levels of intellectual prosperity and then also economic prosperity. And obviously the most recent one is the Holocaust, the Shoah that entered in 1945. And in 1948 we already had the state of Israel. And today, 70 years later, we are probably living through the most prosperous and secure time in Jewish history where there’s barely a single Jewish community, perhaps only in Iran that is oppressed. Most Jewish communities are prosperous and the power and the influence, sorry, and the prosperity of Israel is just unimaginable to people who, even 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, people could not have imagined the kind of prosperity that we have today in Israel. So between what’s going on in the diaspora in Israel, we are at a peak of prosperity and security for our people. And that comes only 70 years after the Holocaust. And this is just an example, then Rabbi Sacks keeps giving these examples over and over again in history on how our people is able to pivot from a moment of crisis into a summit of prosperity.
He used to talk about, I’m sure people on this call would’ve heard him say, 'cause he said it fairly regularly, was the Chinese idiogram for crisis also means opportunity. But he said that there was one language that went one step better, which was Ivrit, Hebrew the word for crisis in Ivrit is mash'ber, which also means a birthing stool. So it’s not just an opportunity, it’s actually the birth of something new. And I think that
Oh, go ahead. Sorry.
No, and I think that that goes to exactly the heart of what you’re saying is that, throughout you look at the Jewish flexigidity and the adaptability, and it’s always been, whenever there’s a moment, we can turn it around. We can turn it around.
So I just want to say that you mentioned Hebrew, Rabbi Sacks was a huge fan of Hebrew, and I think also in “Future Tense” he writes about it. But also in other books. So Judaism was able to thrive in many different languages, in English, in Arabic, in Arabic, in German, and many other languages. And Jews even created I think 23 hybrid languages. Obviously the most famous is Yiddish and there was also Latino, but there’s also the unique language of Moroccan Jews and Persian Jews and so on. But if you really want to understand the Torah, you can only do it in Hebrew. And Rabbi Sacks had, I think a unique mastery of the ability to convey the nuances of Hebrew, like you just did the word which is like a breakdown, but it’s also an opportunity, the nuances of Hebrew to English speakers. And that’s what was so special about him.
It would be remiss of me if I didn’t take this opportunity to say that one of the final projects that he was working on before he passed away was he completed a translation of Chumash, which just last month has been published by Koren, The Magerman Edition of Koren. the includes for the first time in its completed form, the Rabbi Sacks’s translation of Chumash into English. And you know, I’ve obviously read a lot of it already and seen the various draughts, but the final product is beautiful. If you’re looking for a way to try and understand the Hebrew into English, you could do a lot worse then read that.
So I just want to ask you, since you mentioned that you’ve had, you and I spoke about it, you had the tremendous privilege of working alongside one of the greatest people of our generation, not just in terms of his intellectual capabilities and knowledge, but also in terms of his productivity. I believe I heard somewhere that from the age of 42 until he passed at 72, he published a book a year. Is that true?
From the age of 40. The story with that is, he once, when he was 39 I think, or in his late thirties, he read the preface to a George Bernard Shore play that in it said something like, if you don’t publish your first book by the time you are 40, forget it. And so he had his kids sort of say to him the whole time around the house book, book, book, book. And at the age of 40, he published his first manuscript and every year after that he published a book until, you know, 72.
Right. So he had the books, he had covenant conversation, he had tremendous speaking, you know, he was asked to travel and he was uniquely accessible. And I know multiple people, I even have a friend, you know, who’s father was passing away, was his final day as her father. And he wanted to speak with Rabbi Sacks and Rabbi Sacks find the time to be available and focused for this person to address his last request. And I know many, many stories of how Rabbi Sacks was available to them. So my question to you is, what was the secret of this mind boggling productivity? I’m not just talking about the Rabbinical side, I’m talking about the ability to manufacture, to produce so much in a given day, given week, month, year.
Look, it’s a great question and it would astound me week after week, whenever. I always felt bad when I was sort of piling a bit more on to the schedule. I think a lot of it came down to just a relentless focus. He had this ability to, if he was doing that one thing, 120% of his energy was invested in doing that thing. And it could be writing his sermon for that this morning or planning for an overseas trip or taking, you know, every year he would close his diary unless there were moments like you said, that really required the immediate involvement. He would close his diary in order to write. For him, books were incredibly important and I think now collectively we’re seeing just how important those are when he’s no longer here. But he had this unbelievable ability to focus. Yes, I mean he worked incredibly hard, but he also had humility about him. So he never thought he knew everything that there was to know about a subject. I mean, we used to joke in the office that he would single-handedly keep Amazon in business because every day there was a package and a package and a package.
And I remember when he moved from Hamilton Terrace to his new house, Hamilton Terrace was the official residence of the chief Rabbi in St. John’s Wood, there were more boxes of books that were being packed onto the moving truck than there were of clothes. And the amazing thing about it was when we got to the other end and I was helping him unpack the books, I’d pick a book up and he’d be like, oh yeah, no, Dan, that that one talks about this. And it’s got a really good quote in it. And I used to say to him like, you must have a photographic memory. And he swore to me, time and time again, he promised me that he didn’t have a photographic memory, but I think a lot of his productivity was down to the fact that he had the most phenomenal power of recall. But what you and I, or certainly I would spend half a day looking for that quote in a particular day, he would be able to go, oh no, it’s chapter seven in that thing. And I even know in chapter seven where it is. So he saved himself a lot of time simply because his brain power was so huge.
But I think it was just that relentless desire to make the next thing he did better than the last. And that continuous process of self-improvement and the humility to never let his achievements get the better of him. I think it was Shimon Peres who, once someone asked him, you know, there was something that he said about, you know, how do you tell if you’re old or you are young? And he said, if your achievements outnumber your dreams, you are old, but if your dreams outnumber your achievements, you are young. And I think that was the thing with Peres and with Rabbi Sacks, their dreams never outnumbered their achievements and therefore they remained young. I also think he has a beautiful teaching towards the end of Dvar where there’s a phrase that it describes him and he says his eyes were undimmed and his energy was unabated. And Rabbi Sacks sort of writes in the leadership essay that, you know, he used to think that those two, yeah, exactly this one. And he said, you know, he used to think those were two separate sort of descriptions until he realised that the first was a description of the second night. Why was Moses energy unabated? Because his eyes were undimmed, because he never lost the ideals of his youth. Because he never lost the values, he knew the direction of travel that he was going in.
And you know, before Rabbi Sacks became chief Rabbi, he wrote on a page in a filofax. You remember those things where you could, you know, actually use paper and a pen? Not that I ever did 'cause I’m too young for that. But he wrote in a filofax, a page of these are my life objectives, this is my framework. And he kept it in his desk until the day he died and he would refer back to it and he saw it. And to read some of those, you know, I want to be a leader who inspires other people to have a joy in their Judaism. I want Judaism to go out and speak and show wider society what it has to give. 35 years ago he wrote those, but the week before he became chief Rabbi 'cause he knew if you were a chief Rabbi, you could get blown off course in any which way. So I think the secret to his productivity was hard work, humility and a long-term vision and knowledge of the direction that he was travelling in.
Right. That’s phenomenal. Dan, we do have eight more minutes. We have two questions.
So I wanted to maybe sort of turn to the current, you know, coming back to the flexigidity leadership, you know, you look around the world today, the Jewish world and the non-Jewish world, and it’s sort of in a little bit of turmoil. What do you think are the things that, the story of the Jewish people through the narratives that you spoke about, can speak to wider society? We’ve spoken a lot about how it’s helped the Jewish people to survive and adapt and develop and in their relationship with the other, the people not like them. But can you take that and use that in wider society as well?
Yeah, so basically I think that first of all, we have to understand the Jewish model. That the Jewish model of leadership and evolution of a community is now becoming global in the sense that the way the Jewish people evolves is through competition of multiple centres of leadership, not among people of authority, people of leadership. So the Rabbi or the leader, the local Jewish leader, who’s the most influential, whose ideas are most relevant, that community and that personality and that organisation will arise and others will decline. There’s no Jewish Pope, there’s no Jewish Prime Minister, we’re a flat global society. And since the world is moving in this direction, then that model of leadership is becoming more and more prevalent. So basically the world evolves through the ability, humanity evolves through the ability, the Jewish world evolves through the ability of multiple centres of leadership to compete and collaborate at the same time. That being said, there is a tremendous need and growing, expanding need for moral and ethical leadership. And the reason is because we are looking at an accelerating pace of change and the pace of change creates disruption.
And the more there is disruption, there is no regulation. In an area where there’s disruption, usually there are no laws and there are no specific, and there’s no regulation as I mentioned earlier. So these are the areas where morality is extremely important and that’s where I believe the Jewish people has a tremendous opportunity collectively through multiple Jewish thought leaders and philosophers and Rabbis to offer society the tools and ideas and concepts and directions to deal with the changes that we face. For example, everything having to do with technology, whether it’s smartphone, big data, 3D printing of organs, all these new technologies are creating tremendous moral and ethical questions. And we are in a position to give a unique contribution to humanity. The other thing is, and in this respect I believe we live in a totally new era in Jewish history. And that is that over the last I would say 10, 15, maybe 20 years, for the first time in our history, Jews are able to make a contribution to humanity that is also quantitative. Meaning we’re able to help hundreds of millions of people. Until very recently our contribution to humanity was qualitative through our ideas and concept, the structures of our societies, the model of our institutions. But now we can actually help millions of people. And that is coming together because of miraculous I would say combination of Israel as a playground of innovation, leading in the world, the power of technology, the worldwide web of Jewish communities that are the most remarkable distribution system for these new ideas, and the energy and the commitment of being alighted to donations that percolates to young people and older people across all Jewish communities, across Israel, a lot of people are willing to do the effort in order to make a difference, a positive difference for humanity. So that combination between Israel, technology, the worldwide web of Jewish communities and the energy of Tikkun olam really puts us as a people, as as a global community in an unprecedented place. And I think it’s a tremendously exciting place for us as a people.
And you are sort of too humble to mention, but you are right at the epicentre of that, Gidi. You are, through the work that you’re doing with Tom, which TOM, stands for Tikkun Olam Makers. If you haven’t taken a look at the work that TOM is doing, that Gidi is spearheading you really, really should. 'Cause it is incredible. He’s taking Jewish ideas and Jewish technology and he’s taking it to the world. And you’re going to Dubai or something next week?
Dubai next week. Another dramatic opportunity that we have created last year with the Abraham Accords to see a relationship between the Jewish Jews and Muslims, Israel and Arab countries emerge in the way that it does. We’re looking at a new Jewish community in a Muslim country that I believe is exploding. It’s going to be actually a new centre of gravity for the Jewish world in the UAE, in Dubai and Abu Dhabi and all these places. And it’s very, very exciting to be there to collaborate with local people in eventually in making the world a better place. Yeah, it’s very, very exciting. And thank you for the plug.
So I just wanted to finish, I want to give you a chance just to tell one final story about Rabbi Sacks, and with this we’ll end. But you mentioned at the beginning, Abram and this week in Jewish communities around the world, we’re going to be reading in the Torah, the Parsha, the portion of Lech Lecha which is where, you know, Abram is told by Hashem, leave your house, leave your land, leave your birthplace and travel to an unknown destination. And for this was very, very central to who Rabbi Sacks was. He always saw Judaism as a journey, a travelling to. He called his book “Future Tense” because that’s where, for him Judaism lived. And there’s Lech Lecha is a very important moment for you as well. And you’ll tell us the story behind this picture. And with this we’re finished.
But this is a very special picture. I know we only have a couple of minutes remaining, but my daughters bat mitzvah and the Parsha was Lech Lecha was three years ago, I believe October, 2018. My daughter wrote her Derashah and it had an idea there that built on Rabbi Sacks work on Lech Lecha. And I wanted to share with him because together we sort of arrived at another question that Rabbi Sacks didn’t really fully address. And I came to see him in London. I sent him the Derashah, obviously, like he always did, he said, yes, of course I can give you an answer, but I’d love to meet with you and discuss the Derashah. This is the picture from the meeting. He gave us a for her. Her name is Noah with an inscription. And that’s the photo that we had. But I want to share the brilliance of Rabbi Sacks in his ability to bring together the Jewish world of Torah, the modern secular fields of study into tremendous insights that are so inspiring and relevant to all of us. So, as you all know, the story is that Abram with Sarai his wife, these are the previous names they live, they’re commanded to go to the land of Israel and there, Abram’s name is changed to Abraham, the word ha is added. And then God says to Abraham to change Sarai’s name to Sara. My daughter’s name is Noah Sara Grinstein. And Derashah is on this Lech Lecha. I’m just going to read you couple of paragraphs on Derashah building on Rabbi Sacks.
So basically skipping all the introduction, the name Sara, Rashi says that Sarai means, this is in Rabbi Sacks. Rashi says that Sarai means my princess, but Sara means that she will be princess of all. In Hebrew Sara comes from Sarah, which means power, influence, and authority. Look at how all these ideas are coming together that we discussed this hour. Rabbi Mana said, now she will be for all the people of the world. In other words, the name Sara reflects the changing of the world to embrace one God and recognise Hashem is also now her mission, not just Abraham mission, not just because she’s Abraham’s wife, but because of who she is. It is no longer that he’s leading and she’s following. They share the mission together. And then but why did Hashem need both Abraham and Sara to go on the same mission? Couldn’t Abraham have his mission without Sara joining him? After all, at that ancient time, wives were supposed to follow their husbands. And this is where Rabbi Sacks comes in again. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks indicates to a surprising answer. I’m just reading you the Derashah He suggests that both Abraham and Sara are equally important for the mission that Hashem gave them. Today people call it husband, wife team. They’re actually the first power couple of the world. In the book “Lessons in Leadership,” Rabbi Sacks tells of a famous experiment by Solomon Asch, and this is Rabbi Sacks bringing together Jewish sources with modern sources and academic fields. This experiment showed that people will agree to something that is not true if they find themselves alone in their opinion against everybody else.
All of us when in a minority of one, will tend to go along with the majority opinion, even if we feel that they are wrong. But this experiment showed that it is enough to have just one other person that supports you in order to stand up to everybody else. In other words, in leadership, one plus one is much more than two, and Sara was absolutely essential for the success in changing the world. Lech Lecha gives Rabbis the opportunity to make a very important point about Jewish leadership. He writes, Abraham is without doubt the most influential person that ever lived. Why? Because he was prepared to be different. As the sages say, he was called Haivri, the Hebrew because all the world was on one side , and he was on the other side. This kind of leadership standing on one side, which is otherness, when everybody else is on the other, that was the leadership of Abraham, and that is the leadership of the Jewish people. So Dan, thank you very much for the opportunity to be here with you.
Gidi, thank you so much and thank you to everyone who’s joined us for this very special hour and indeed throughout this entire week. Thank you to Wendy, to Carly, to the Kashf Foundation, the whole Lockdown University team. This has been a very, very special week for us as the legacy trust to partner with you in order to perpetuate and continue to teach the remarkable legacy of Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sachs. So thank you once again. Have a great evening, afternoon, morning, wherever you are in the world. And there’s plenty more to come. I know this week and I’m going from Lockdown University. Thanks so much everyone.
Thanks you, Gidi. Thank you, Dan. That was really, really an amazing, very special hour and we look forward to turning to the musical love of Rabbi Sacks on Sunday to kind of end on a slightly, slightly different note. And thank you to you and Joanna for all your partnership during the last week. Bye for now.