A new podcast series has been launched to look at how Rabbi Lord Sacks might have reacted to events post-October 7 in light of his teachings.
The eight-part series is being hosted by Bar-Ilan University philosophy lecturer Dr Tanya White, who will discuss ideas drawn from four of the late Chief Rabbi’s books with a number of prominent Jewish figures.
They include the former head of the Jewish Agency Natan Sharansky, Dara Horn, author of the book People Love Dead Jews, and psychologist Jonathan Haidt, whose latest book The Anxious Generation examines the influence of social media and smartphones on children.
Dr White was prompted to launch Books and Beyond: the Rabbi Sacks Podcast after being approached by people asking her "If Rabbi Sacks were alive today, what would he say in response to this unimaginable tragedy?”
She said, “While we cannot know what Rabbi Sacks would say today, we do know what he did say, because he left us a treasure chest of material from the written books to video to audio. All we need to do is take a deep dive into the many books he left behind to find an answer.”
Four years ago, she added, she “started a class focused on deep engagement with Jewish philosophy, where we immersed ourselves in Rabbi Sacks's writings, critically exploring their relevance to our reality. In the wake of October 7, despite our shock and grief, we turned back to his book Future Tense which we had just finished and began asking hard questions about how his teachings speak to us in this shattered and unprecedented reality.”
Haidt, discussing one of Rabbi Sacks’s last books, Morality, in the final episode, said, “If the prophets of the Hebrew Bible came back to guide liberal democracies and anxious citizens through this difficult time, but first they studied modern history and social science, this is the book they would write for us.”
