Meir Persoff: "Another Way, Another Time: Religious Inclusivism and the Sacks Chief Rabbinate." Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2010.
THE FORWARD (New York):
"Another Way, Another Time" is the first full-scale study of the Sacks chief rabbinate, and the picture presented is devastating. With the aid of copious original sources such as newspapers, correspondence and interviews, British historian and veteran journalist Meir Persoff shows how Sacks's top priority has been staying in the good graces of the Haredi, or strictly Orthodox, faction, whose high birthrate has made it the fastest-growing component of British Jewry. To achieve this, he has repeatedly acted to delegitimize the non-Orthodox movements - Reform, Liberal and Masorti - sometimes in ways personally insulting to their leaders. He has even gone so far as to delegitimize himself, withdrawing the first edition of a book he published in 2002 that aroused Haredi complaints, and rewriting the offending passages before republication. Ironically, it is clear from the documentation that Persoff has gathered that the Orthodox circles Sacks strives to placate will never consider him Orthodox enough no matter what he does.
Persoff makes his case that Sacks, by nature a thinker rather than a politician, made a poor career choice in seeking the chief rabbinate. But the book does not come to grips with the question of whether even someone far more politically adroit could have succeeded, given the structural constraints of the position that Persoff himself describes in detail. Simply put, a man who represents only the most moderate form of Orthodoxy - which used to be, but is no longer, professed by most British Jews - cannot also speak for the entire spectrum of the Jewish community, which today ranges religiously from far left to far right. In that sense Sacks may be an unfortunate victim of history. If so, the book's title is certainly apt: the position of Chief Rabbi was "another way" for "another time," but not for the religiously fractured present.
JEWISH QUARTERLY (United Kingdom):
We don't know exactly when he will announce his departure, but there is no doubt that we are in the twilight of Jonathan Sacks' Chief Rabbinate. With nearly two decades in the job, and a seat in the House of Lords to retire to, there is little keeping him in what has been an unforgiving and thankless task. For the rest of us, it is a good time to evaluate the Sacks Chief Rabbinate and to consider what future - if any - the institution has in twenty-first century Anglo-Jewry. Meir Persoff's "Another Way, Another Time" represents an important attempt to do just that ... His indefatigable journalist's instinct and connections have served him well in what is undoubtedly the best-researched book on contemporary Anglo-Jewry.
JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES (Oxford):
Will prove invaluable for all future studies of the subject.
TIMES HIGHER EDUCATION (United Kingdom):
Chief rabbis have generally been off-limits as far as critical analysis is concerned, certainly while they are living. Persoff's study breaks this mould and uses a wealth of archival material to expose the contradictions embedded within an office well past its use-by date, unable to unite a pluralised and polarised Anglo-Jewry.
MANNA (The Forum for Progressive Judaism, London):
[A]n important book, especially for Anglo-Jewry, because it chronicles and documents its many internal disputes with and around the office of the current chief rabbi ... [It] is also a description of a paradigm shift ... the shift of the Jewish community in Britain away from its once-largely monolithic structure ... The intellectual standing of Lord Sacks gives his office much more prominence than reality would warrant. The fact that the Board of Deputies, following established practice, remains wedded to the Chief Rabbinate is calculated to enhance the standing of both institutions. But the writing is on the wall, and the collapse is likely to come when Rabbi Sacks retires, which some hope will be soon ... Now, when it is an incontrovertible fact - relentlessly argued in the book - that Rabbi Sacks' standing is declining, there are reasons to ignore him as much as possible. Except, perhaps, to join forces with [Lord] Stanley Kalms to bring about his retirement, for example into a chair at Yeshiva University in New York or another academic post.
JERUSALEM POST (Israel):
Meir Persoff, in this well-researched volume, examines the record of Sacks, who took on the post in September 1991, and comes to the conclusion that the British Chief Rabbinate has outlived its usefulness. It has, he writes in the preface, "indeed reached the end of the road." An even more damaging assessment of the office and of its current holder comes in the foreword by Professor Geoffrey Alderman, an academic and an acerbic weekly commentator on Anglo-Jewry in the Jewish Chronicle, who writes that "under Professor Lord Sacks, the office of chief rabbi has become an object of scorn across much of the Jewish world."
The Hugo Gryn controversy, from which Sacks never fully recovered, was far from the only one in which he was embroiled, trying to avoid rebuke from the Right while at the same time avoiding alienating the Left. There were, among others, the issues over the role of women in Orthodox life; whether marriages performed under Progressive auspices should be recognized by the Chief Rabbinate, even when the couple concerned were halachically Jewish; and whether Progressive rabbis should be called up to the Torah in Orthodox synagogues. The most recent one, only a few months old - and Persoff is to be congratulated on making the book so up to date - focused on the admission criteria of the JFS, the largest Jewish secondary school in Europe. Sacks emerged from none of these covered in glory, being criticized for whatever he did or said by both sides.
There is probably no one better qualified than Persoff to write such a book, having been at the heart of communal matters in his career at the Jewish Chronicle for more than 40 years and, since his retirement to Israel, having the time to research archive material - and the knowledge of what to look for - not only in England but in America as well. He set out with the aim of proving that the Chief Rabbinate will not - indeed should not - survive. Personally, I hope he is wrong because, among other things, it brings prestige to Anglo-Jewry from the outside world. Having read the book, however, I am beginning to have doubts.
JEWISH CHRONICLE (London):
Persoff argues that "many (if not most) regard the Chief Rabbinate as divisive, and would not miss it should it cease to exist." Building on this statement, by analyzing how the inclusivist vision explicitly laid down as a template for the Sacks Chief Rabbinate has repeatedly failed to be implemented, he collates an impressive array of sources to demonstrate how separatism, bitter infighting and a marked failure to cultivate inclusivism have prevailed. He examines the variety of crises that have mired the Chief Rabbi, including the fate of Jewish Continuity, the Women in the Community project, and the Hugo Gryn affair, and highlights the Chief Rabbi's role in recent controversies over conversion, especially as played out in the JFS case.
In a chapter entitled "The Mirage of Unity," Persoff shows that calls have repeatedly been made throughout the history of the Chief Rabbinate for the abolition of the office. He assesses how, from both the religious left and right, it has been criticized either as unrepresentative or as an inappropriate secular construct. While drawing attention to the perpetual problems of the Chief Rabbinate, he largely follows the received historiography of Anglo-Jewry. This suggests that a once-largely unified community, which sought to uphold an umbrella model encompassing all who wished to be included, has become increasingly polarized as a result of religious shifts. Quite aside from internal shifts, the transformation of British sensibilities towards religion over that period is also significant. Indeed, Persoff's analysis points to the growing importance of ethnicity, rather than religion, as a factor in Anglo-Jewish identity.
As Lord Sacks approaches retirement in 2013, Persoff argues against the lasting value of the post. The latest data on synagogue affiliation highlights how Anglo-Jewry is changing. Mainstream Orthodoxy is losing its majority share - indicating the seeming necessity to reconsider the future role of a Chief Rabbi.
CANADIAN JEWISH NEWS (Toronto):
Meir Persoff's "Another Way, Another Time" is a devastating indictment of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' 20-year tenure [as Chief Rabbi]. It illustrates in embarrassing detail the yawning gap between learning and erudition, which the incumbent has in spades, and wisdom and maturity, which he seems to be lacking to an even higher degree. But perhaps nobody could have done better, because the office itself has become obsolete.
The book is replete with examples. On the one hand, the chief rabbi is trying to present Judaism as an open and inclusive faith calculated to make a good impression on the gentiles. On the other, he sees himself as an advocate of an Orthodoxy, the right-wing of which is determined to "out-frum" him. The radicalism that has come to dominate the Orthodox world has no room for alternatives in Judaism and no respect for other faiths.
By now, many of those who once supported him seem to realize that his office has become irrelevant. Some may even wish that he'd retire now as a first step towards abolishing the Victorian institution (which the British mandate bequeathed to the yishuv and from which Israel is now suffering). This may even help revitalize Anglo-Jewry, which the dwindling community badly needs and richly deserves.