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Volunteering Has Been Undervalued In Britain For A Long Time. Often It Has Been Seen As A Kind Of Cut-price, Amateur Version Of Work That Would Be Better Done By The State. When Politicians Speak About It, People Hear In The Background The Sound Of Budgets Being Cut.

-Jonathan Sacks

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Volunteering Has Been Undervalued

Jonathan Sacks

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Volunteering Has Been Undervalued In Britain For A Long Time. Often It Has Been Seen As A Kind Of Cut-price, Amateur Version Of Work That Would Be Better Done By The State. When Politicians Speak About It, People Hear In The Background The Sound Of Budgets Being Cut.

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The First Of The Request Prayers In The Daily Amidah Is A Fractal. It Replicates In Miniature The Structure Of The Amidah As A Whole.

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Hope, Even More Than Necessity, Is The Mother Of Invention.

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I See In The Rising Crescendo Of Ethnic Tensions, Civilization Clashes And The Use Of Religious Justification For Acts Of Terror, A Clear And Present Danger To Humanity.

Jews Survived All The Defeats, Expulsions, Persecutions And Pogroms, The Centuries In Which They Were Regarded As A Pariah People, Even The Holocaust Itself, Because They Never Gave Up The Faith That One Day They Would Be Free To Live As Jews Without Fear.

Volunteering Has Been Undervalued In Britain For A Long Time. Often It Has Been Seen As A Kind Of Cut-price, Amateur Version Of Work That Would Be Better Done By The State. When Politicians Speak About It, People Hear In The Background The Sound Of Budgets Being Cut.

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Food Prices Are Often Kept Artificially High. The Result Is That The Millennium Development Goals Set Out By The United Nations At The Start Of The New Millennium Are Not Being Reached. Fine Words Have Not Yet Been Turned Into Deeds.

The Hebrew Bible Contains Multiple Provisions To Ensure That No One Would Go Hungry. The Corners Of The Field, Forgotten Sheaves Of Grain, Gleanings That Drop From The Hands Of The Gleaner, And Small Clusters Of Grapes Left On The Vine Were To Be Given To The Poor.

Civil Society Rests On Moral Relationships. They Are Covenantal Rather Than Contractual. They Are Brought About Not By Governments But By Us A Husbands And Wives, Parents, Friends And Citizens, And By The Knowledge Of What We Do And What We Are Makes A Difference To Those Around Us. (...) Renewing Society's Resources Of Moral Energy Is The Program, Urgent But Achievable.

Whole Communities Are Growing Up Without Fathers Or Male Role Models. Bringing Up A Family In The Best Of Circumstances Is Not Easy. To Try To Do It By Placing The Entire Burden On Women - 91% Of Single-parent Families In Britain Are Headed By The Mother, According To Census Data - Is Practically Absurd And Morally Indefensible.

If The History Of The Day Of Atonement Has Anything To Say To Us Now It Is: Never Relieve Individuals Of Moral Responsibility. The More We Have, The More We Grow.

After The Destructionofthe Second Temple Jewslived By An Ancient And Fundamental Insight, That God Does Not Live In Buildings But In The Human Heart.

While We Can Remember The Past, We Cannot Write The Future. Only Our Children, The Future Of Our Community, Can Do That.

Religion Creates Community, Community Creates Altruism And Altruism Turns Us Away From Self And Towards The Common Good... There Is Something About The Tenor Of Relationships Within A Religious Community That Makes It The Best Tutorial In Citizenship And Good Neighborliness.

In An Ecology Of Love, People Can Relate In Trust And Face The Future Without Fear. They Do Not Need To Play It Safe. They Can Take Uncertainty In Their Stride.

We Are Biological Creatures. We Are Born, We Live, We Die. There Is No Transcendent Purpose To Existence. At Best We Are Creatures Of Reason, And By Using Reason We Can Cure Ourselves Of Emotional Excess. Purged Of Both Hope And Fear, We Find Courage In The Face Of Helplessness, Insignificance And Uncertainty.

Religious Ritual Is A Way Of Structuring Time So That We, Not Employers, The Market Or The Media, Are In Control. Life Needs Its Pauses, Its Chapter Breaks, If The Soul Is To Have Space To Breathe.

A Perfect Storm Is In The Making: Financial Uncertainty, Economic Downturn, Government Cuts, Rising Unemployment And A Future That Looks Less Clear The More We Try To Fathom It.

Isis Is A Terrorist Entity Whose Barbarities Have Been Condemned By All Those Who Value Our Common Humanity. In The Current Political Climate, When Hate Crimes Are Rising And Political Rhetoric Is Increasingly Divisive, This Is All The More Shocking.

Common Humanity

Dreams Are Where We Visit The Many Lands And Landscapes Of Human Possibility And Discover The One Where We Feel At Home. The Great Religious Leaders Were All Dreamers.

Which European Leader Today Would Not Relish The Wonder-working Powers Of A Moses? Budget Deficit? Unpopular Cuts? How About Just A Little Miracle, An Overnight Increase In Gold Reserves, A New Oil Field, Or The Next World-changing Communications Technology? Surely That's Not Too Much To Ask.

There Are Hard Texts In Each Tradition Which We Must Confront And Ask Ourselves, 'can We Reinterpret Those Texts To Allow Us To Live Peaceably, And Respectfully, With People Of Other Faiths?' That Is A Job Only Jews Can Do For Judaism, Only Christians Can Do For Christianity, And Only Muslims Can Do For Islam. But Sometimes The Sight Of Someone In One Faith Wrestling With That Faith Can Empower You To Wrestle With Another Faith.

A Society In Which There Are High Levels Of Voluntary Activity Will Simply Be A Better, Happier Place Than One Where There Are Not.

The World We Build Tomorrow Is Born In The Stories We Tell Our Children Today. Politics Moves The Pieces. Education Changes The Game.

When Money Rules, We Remember The Price Of Things And Forget The Value Of Things, And That Is Dangerous.

The Royals - All Of Them, Especially Prince Philip And Prince Charles - Have Done Outstanding Work With The Faith Communities.

God Has Given Us Many Faiths But Only One World In Which To Co-exist. May Your Work Help All Of Us To Cherish Our Commonalities And Feel Enlarged By Our Differences.

Parenthood Involves Massive Sacrifice: Money, Attention, Time And Emotional Energy.

The Supreme Religious Challenge Is To See God’s Image In One Who Is Not In Our Image.

Science Takes Things Apart To See How They Work. Religion Puts Things Together To See What They Mean.

Yahoo Has Gone Too Far In Wrongfully Accusing Us Of A Conspiracy That Doesn't Exist. If They Are Having Problems Retaining Engineers, They Should Be Looking At The Internal Sources Of Employee Dissatisfaction Rather Than Trying To Cover That Up With This Legal Action.

A Survey Carried Out Across The U.s. Between 2004 And 2006 Showed That Frequent Church- Or Synagogue-goers Are More Likely To Give Money To Charity.

Focus On The Mind And The Soul. Read. Study. Enrol In A Course Of Lectures. Pray. Become A Member Of A Religious Congregation. Study The Bible Or Other Ancient Works Of Wisdom.

Peace Can Be Agreed Around The Conference Table, But Unless It Grows In Ordinary Hearts And Minds, It Does Not Last. It May Not Even Begin

While Everyone Else Is Thinking About Economics And Politics, Executive Salaries And The Future Of The Euro, Do The Opposite, Even If It's Hard. Invest In The Spirit.

Religious Law Is Like The Grammar Of Language. Any Language Isgoverned By Such Rules; Otherwise It Ceases To Be A Language. But Within Them, You Can Say Many Different Sentences And Write Many Different Books.

If We Are To Negotiate The Coming Years Safely, We May Need A New Kind Of Leadership. To Put It More Precisely, We Need The Rediscovery Of An Ancient Kind Of Leadership That Has Rarely Been Given The Prominence It Deserves. I Mean The Leader As Teacher.

In Her Religious Role, The Queen Is Head Of The Church Of England, But In Her Civic Role She Cares For All Her Subjects, And No One Is Better At Making Everyone She Meets Feel Valued.

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Jews Read The Books Of Moses Not Just As History But As Divine Command. The Question To Which They Are An Answer Is Not, "what Happened?" But Rather, "how Then Shall I Live?" And It's Only With The Exodus That The Life Of The Commands Really Begins.

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As The Political Leaders Of Europe Meet To Save The Euro And European Union, So Should Religious Leaders.

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We Believe That What We Possess We Don't Ultimately Own. God Is Merely Entrusting It To Us. And One Of The Conditions Of That Trust Is That We Share What We Have With Those Who Have Less. So, If You Don't Give To People In Need, You Can Hardly Call Yourself A Jew. Even The Most Unbelieving Jew Knows That.

The Market Economy Is Very Good At Wealth Creation But Not Perfect At All About Wealth Distribution.

Wealth Creation

Europe Today Is The Most Secular Region In The World. Europe Is The Only Region In The World Experiencing Population Decline. Wherever You Turn Today The More Religious The Community, The Larger On Average Are Their Families.

When We Love And Make Loving Commitments, We Create Families And Communities Within Which People Can Grow And Take Risks, Knowing That Hands Will Be There To Catch Them Should They Fall.

Stabilizing The Euro Is One Thing, Healing The Culture That Surrounds It Is Another. A World In Which Material Values Are Everything And Spiritual Values Nothing Is Neither A Stable State Nor A Good Society. The Time Has Come For Us To Recover The Judeo-christian Ethic Of Human Dignity In The Image Of God.

If We Are To Cherish Freedom, And To Guard It, We Must Remember What The Alternative Is: The Bread Of Affliction And The Bitter Herbs Of Slavery.

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We From Every Religion Feel Comfortable In Britain Because There Is A Host. The Church Of England Is A Good Host, It Has Been A Major Force In Shaping England Into Such A Tolerant Society.

The Build-up Of Personal And Collective Debt In America And Europe Should Have Sent Warning Signals To Anyone Familiar With The Biblical Institutions Of The Sabbatical And Jubilee Years, Created Specifically Because Of The Danger Of People Being Trapped By Debt.

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British Politics

Values Are Tapes We Play On The Walkman Of The Mind: Any Tune We Choose So Long As It Does Not Disturb Others.

God Is Back And Europe As A Whole Still Doesn't Get It. It Is Our Biggest Single Collective Cultural And Intellectual Blind Spot.

The Faith Religious Believers Have In God Is Small Compared To The Faith People Put In Politicians, Knowing How Many Times They Have Been Disappointed In The Past But Still Insisting That This Time It Will Be Different.

Find People Not To Envy But To Admire. Do Not The Profitable But The Admirable Deed. Live By Ideals.

Happiness Is Not Made By What We Own. It Is What We Share.

God's Forgiveness Allows Us To Be Honest With Ourselves. We Recognize Our Imperfections, Admit Our Failures, And Plead To God For Clemency.

The People Of Israel Are Entitled, As Is Any Other Nation, To Live In Peace And Safety.

I Believe Faith Is Not Certainty But The Courage To Live With Uncertainty.

Man Was Not Made For The Service Of Economies; Economies Were Made To Serve Mankind; And Men And Women Were Made - So We Believe - To Serve One Another, Not Just Ourselves.

The Idols Of Today Are Unmistakable - Self-esteem Without Achievement, Sex Without Consequences, Wealth Without Responsibility, Pleasure Without Struggle And Experience Without Commitment.

The Message Of Passover Remains As Powerful As Ever. Freedom Is Won Not On The Battlefield But In The Classroom And The Home. Teach Your Children The History Of Freedom If You Want Them Never To Lose It.

Marriage, Sanctified By The Bond Of Fidelity, Is The Nearest Life Gets To A Work Of Art.

Science Will Explain How But Not Why. It Talks About What Is, Not What Ought To Be. Science Is Descriptive, Not Prescriptive; It Can Tell Us About Causes But It Cannot Tell Us About Purposes. Indeed, Science Disavows Purposes.

Anti-semitism Is Best Understood As A Virus. It Has No Logic. Jews Were Hated Because They Were Rich And Because They Were Poor; Because They Were Capitalists And Because They Were Communists; Because They Held Tenaciously To An Ancient Faith And Because They Were Rootless Cosmopolitans, Believing Nothing. Hate Needs No Logic. It Is A Sickness Of The Soul.

Religion Is The Best Antidote To The Individualism Of The Consumer Age. The Idea That Society Can Do Without It Flies In The Face Of History And, Now, Evolutionary Biology.

The Universe Is More Than Mere Matter In Motion. It And We Were Brought Into Being By A Creator Who Seeks Our Good.

True Freedom Requires The Rule Of Law And Justice, And A Judicial System In Which The Rights Of Some Are Not Secured By The Denial Of Rights To Others.

Yom Hashoah Is A Vital Day In The Jewish Calendar, Providing Us With A Focal Point For Our Remembrance. We Cannot Bring The Dead Back To Life, But We Can Bring Their Memory Back To Life And Ensure They Are Not Forgotten. We Can Undertake In Our Lives To Do What They Were So Cruelly Prevented From Doing In Theirs.

Make Space In Your Life For The Things That Matter, For Family And Friends, Love And Generosity, Fun And Joy. Without This, You Will Burn Out In Mid-career And Wonder Where Your Life Went.

Sometimes The Sight Of Someone In One Faith Wrestling With That Faith Can Empower You To Wrestle With Another Faith. For Me, It Was Reading About How The Catholic Church Wrestled With Itself In The 1960s. Pope John Xxiii Set Nostra Aetate - The Declaration On The Relation Of The Church With Non-christian Religions - In Motion. It Changed The Relationship Between Jews And Catholics. Today, Jews And Catholics Meet As Friends. If You Can Do That, After The Longest History Of Hatred The World Has Known, That Empowers You As A Jew Or A Muslim To Wrestle With Your Faith.

Islamophobia Is A Complex Phenomenon.

Follow Your Passion. Nothing - Not Wealth, Success, Accolades Or Fame - Is Worth Spending A Lifetime Doing Things You Don't Enjoy.

Since Hiroshima And The Holocaust, Science No Longer Holds Its Pristine Place As The Highest Moral Authority. Instead, That Role Is Taken By Human Rights. It Follows That Any Assault On Jewish Life - On Jews Or Judaism Or The Jewish State - Must Be Cast In The Language Of Human Rights.

When You've Got Jews And Christians, Muslims, Sikhs And Hindus Removing Graffiti From Buildings, Or Getting Drug Dealers Off The Street, That's Side By Side. When You Do That, You Take It From The Very Elevated Level Of Interfaith Dialogue To The Street Level Of Neighbors. You Get Them Working Side By Side, And They Become Friends. Friendship Sometimes Counts For More Than Interfaith Agreement Or Understanding. Friendship Is Deeply Human.

The Evidence Shows That Religious People - Defined By Regular Attendance At A Place Of Worship - Actually Do Make Better Neighbours.

Jews Know This In Their Bones. Our Community Could Not Exist For A Day Without Its Volunteers. They Are The Lifeblood Of Our Organizations, Whether They Involve Welfare, Youth, Education, Care Of The Sick And Elderly, Or Even Protection Against Violence And Abuse.

The Wisest Rule In Investment Is: When Others Are Selling, Buy. When Others Are Buying, Sell. Usually, Of Course, We Do The Opposite. When Everyone Else Is Buying, We Assume They Know Something We Don't, So We Buy. Then People Start Selling, Panic Sets In, And We Sell Too.

There's Always Hope. You Can Lose Everything Else In The World, But Jews Never Lose Hope.

Never Lose Hope

The Greatest Single Antidote To Violence Is Conversation.

Some Years Ago There Was A Study To Discover The Most Stressful Occupation. It Turned Out Not To Be The Head Of A Large Business, Football Manager Or Prime Minister, But Rather: Bus Driver.

Cyberspace Can't Compensate For Real Space. We Benefit From Chatting To People Face To Face.

We Have No Idea Where The World Is Going, Except That It's Going There Very Fast.

Frequent Worshippers Are Also Significantly More Active Citizens. They Are More Likely To Belong To Community Organizations, Especially Those Concerned With Young People, Health, Arts And Leisure, Neighborhood And Civic Groups And Professional Associations.

A Martian Would Think That The English Worship At Supermarkets, Not In Churches.

In Thinking About Religion And Society In The 21st Century, We Should Broaden The Conversation About Faith From Doctrinal Debates To The Larger Question Of How It Might Inspire Us To Strengthen The Bonds Of Belonging That Redeem Us From Our Solitude, Helping Us To Construct Together A Gracious And Generous Social Order.

The Test Of Faith Is Whether I Can Make Space For Difference. Can I Recognize God's Image In Someone Who Is Not In My Image, Who Language, Faith, Ideal, Are Different From Mine? If I Cannot, Then I Have Made God In My Image Instead Of Allowing Him To Remake Me In His.

The Holocaust Survivors Are Among The Most Inspiring People I Have Had The Privilege To Meet.

Britain, Relative To The U.s., Is A Highly Secular Society. Philanthropy Alone Cannot Fill The Gap Left By Government Cutbacks. And The Sources Of Altruism Go Deep Into Our Evolutionary Past.

Secular Society

No Great Achiever - Even Those Who Made It Seem Easy - Ever Succeeded Without Hard Work.

Motivational Work

Governments Cannot Make Marriages Or Turn Feckless Individuals Into Responsible Citizens. That Needs Another Kind Of Change Agent.

I Think Our People In Britain Have A Normative Expectation Of Ethical Conduct.

Israel Is A Democratic State With An Independent Judiciary, A Free Press And A Diverse Population Of Many Cultures, Religions And Creeds.

Culture Religion

We Need To Rediscover The Idea Of The Common Good And Work Together To Build A Home.

Working Together

If You Want A Free Society, Teach Your Children What Oppression Tastes Like. Tell Them How Many Miracles It Takes To Get From Here To There. Above All, Encourage Them To Ask Questions. Teach Them To Think For Themselves.

In Virtually Every Western Society In The 1960s There Was A Moral Revolution, An Abandonment Of Its Entire Traditional Ethic Of Self-restraint.

Much Can And Must Be Done By Governments, But They Cannot Of Themselves Change Lives.

In The Post-enlightenment Europe Of The 19th Century The Highest Authority Was No Longer The Church. Instead It Was Science. Thus Was Born Racial Anti-semitism, Based On Two Disciplines Regarded As Science In Their Day - The 'scientific Study Of Race' And The Social Darwinism Of Herbert Spencer And Ernst Haeckel.

Freedom... Leads Those Who Have More Than They Need To Share With Those Who Have Less

Technology Gives Us Power, But It Does Not And Cannot Tell Us How To Use That Power. Thanks To Technology, We Can Instantly Communicate Across The World, But It Still Doesn't Help Us Know What To Say.

I Do Not Want To Suggest That You Have To Be Religious To Be Moral.

It Is Through Exchange That Difference Becomes A Blessing, Not A Curse.

We Do Not Always Appreciate The Role The Queen Has Played In One Of The Most Significant Changes In The Past 60 Years: The Transformation Of Britain Into A Multi-ethnic, Multi-faith Society. No One Does Interfaith Better Than The Royal Family, And It Starts With The Queen Herself.

The Market Economy Is Deeply Congruent With The Values Set Out In The Hebrew Bible. Material Prosperity Is A Divine Blessing. Poverty Crushes The Spirit As Well As The Body, And Its Alleviation Is A Sacred Task. Work Is A Noble Calling.

In Our Interconnected World, We Must Learn To Feel Enlarged, Not Threatened, By Difference - That Is What I Have Argued.

People Are Feeling And Sensing A Return Of Anti-semitism - Even In Europe, Which, Seventy Years After The Holocaust, Is A Very Scary Thing. I Think They Are Feeling That Israel Is Very Isolated And Doesn't Always Get What They See As Fair Treatment In The European Media.

When Everything That Matters Can Be Bought And Sold, When Commitments Can Be Broken Because They Are No Longer To Our Advantage, When Shopping Becomes Salvation And Advertising Slogans Become Our Litany, When Our Worth Is Measured By How Much We Earn And Spend, Then The Market Is Destroying The Very Virtues On Which In The Long Run It Depends.

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