Addressing the “desperate plight” of the hostages, Williams said they are “a bitterly vivid symbol of the way that so many lives, Jewish and non-Jewish, are held hostage by a climate of terror.”
Williams made the remarks speaking at the second annual Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Memorial Lecture 2025 on Tuesday night at King’s College London.
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Described by his close friend HM King Charles, as a “light unto this nation” and by former UK Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair as “an intellectual giant”, Rabbi Sacks served as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth for 22 years, between 1991 and 2013.
He was a nationally respected figure, moral voice, prolific writer, Templeton Prize winner, and distinguished scholar and academic. He passed away in November 2020.
Rabbi Sacks served as Professor of Law, Ethics, and the Bible at King’s College London, where he received his PhD in 1981, the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University.
Williams, who was a “close personal friend” of Sacks, spoke eloquently about how Sacks might have approached the profound challenges of our time. Williams said Sacks’ contribution to his own work and thinking was “considerable”.
Williams also spent some of his address deliberating the strong feelings surrounding the proposed National Holocaust Memorial besides the Houses of Parliament.
Regarding some people’s view that the centre should be a place to memorialise all genocides, he said such a place would “miss the point” of the unique historical significance of anti-Jewish hatred and how the Shoah relates to the “entire history of Jewish identity in Europe.”
“Simply listing the Shoah along with other atrocities means letting the Jewish identity be reduced to another example of randomly persecuted victimhood,” he said.
Further, in order for the perception of Jewish people to not just be associated or reduced to the Shoah, Williams emphasised the importance of the Holocaust memorial also being a place of education to explore the richness of living Jewish life.
“Insisting that the specific ethical and religious vision of Judaism be presented and explored, as part of any serious engagement with the Shoah, is not trying to diminish other horrors, but to insist that, as some Jewish writers have morbidly expressed it, our attention is directed to living Jews as well as dead ones.”
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Rt Rev Rt Hon Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury, speaks at the Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks Annual Memorial Lecture 2025, March 11, 2025[Missing Credit]
Addressing the audience ahead of Williams’ keynote address, Professor Shitij Kapur, vice-chancellor and president of KCL, said the Rabbi Sacks Annual Memorial Lecture is “very special to King’s because Rabbi Sacks was very special to King’s.”
Gila Sacks, Sacks’ youngest daughter, closed the evening and thanked Williams for playing “an important role in my family” as a friend of many years.
Stuart Roden, a trustee of The Rabbi Sacks Legacy, said the annual memorial lecture is a means of paying “tribute to Rabbi Sacks, who had a unique ability to convey Jewish teachings and texts in a way that resonated with people of all backgrounds and faiths, drawing on our shared humanity as a foundation for a better society and future.”
