Former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky has been appointed to lead a body safeguarding the memory and teachings of Britain’s late Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks.
Speaking at the Moise Safra Center in New York, the former head of the Jewish Agency said he was honoured to take up the chairmanship of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy’s global advisory board.
Sharansky said: “We feel Rabbi Sacks’ loss keenly, but are also grateful that he left us his precious words, words that even when we reread them more than 20 years after they were written, carry his gift of opening the fullness of our own existence to us, of inviting us to be everything that we can be.”
He added: “Rabbi Sacks was a moral lighthouse, and his light is needed more than ever in these dark times. That's why I have chosen to accept the chairmanship of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy’s global advisory board to ensure his timeless teachings on Jewish identity, personal responsibility and the fight against antisemitism reach every corner of the world.”
Sharansky was speaking at an event to mark the posthumous publication of A Letter in the Scroll, a book written by Lord Sacks as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in- law that explores how Judaism has survived and flourished throughout generations of persecution.
The late Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (Getty Images)
Michal Cotler-Wunsch, Israel’s special envoy for combatting antisemitism, said: “A Letter in the Scroll has guided, instructed and inspired me for 20 years.
"When I try to comprehend how it can be that in response to the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust, there isn't just a rise in antisemitism, there's a tsunami, I look to Rabbi Sacks.
"He calls it 'the mutation of antisemitism'. This enables us to see what is happening today. This new strain of antisemitism is anti-Zionism.”
Andrew Klaber, chair of the Rabbi Sacks Legacy’s US board of trustees, said: "As the evening drew to a close, attendees left with a renewed sense of purpose and a deeper connection to their heritage, inspired by Rabbi Sacks’ timeless words and the panelists’ insightful reflections."
Sharansky, 76, grew up in up the Soviet Union where he became perhaps the most high-profile “refusenik” after being rejected for an exit visa to emigrate to Israel in 1973.
After being arrested and accused of treason, he was sentenced to 13 years of forced labour and detained in a Siberian gulag.
In 1986, he was the first political prisoner released by Mikhail Gorbachev. Sharansky moved to Israel and launched a political career that saw him serve as the deputy prime minister before chairing the Jewish Agency.
