Chiefy Fails to Address the Case in Point

no, i don't look or sound *anything* like that rowan williams

generally speaking, i am a great admirer of jonathan sacks, or to give him his complete title: chief rabbi of the united hebrew congregations of the commonwealth lord sacks of aldgate (he’s a “sir” too, but i think it gets trumped by the “lord” bit) as a visionary thinker and one of the great voices of modern orthodoxy who is, as many visionary thinkers are, monumentally unappreciated by his own constituency.

this is, unfortunately, because he is sometimes unable to display a similar level of political nous to match his undeniably deep scholarship. i won’t go into the “hugo gryn-gate” scandal again, because i think he’s learned since then – i think, for example, he’s done well to keep his nose clean over the jfs entry furore and has maintained a studied neutrality as far as orthodox rabbinic attendance at the the #1 anglo-jewish smash-hit success story, the grass-roots limmud conference is concerned; this is all to the good. however, every so often one is reminded that he is, i believe the first chief rabbi not to simultaneously sit on the london beth din. this is both the source of his appeal to the broader community and the source of his weakness within it – he was always firmly under the thumb of the recently-retired “rosh beth din”, dayan (rabbinic judge) chanoch ehrentreu. it is not uncommon for the beth din to exert considerable pressure on “chiefy” if he says anything too liberal.

not the least of these occasions was his lamentable failure to stand up for the contents of the original edition of his interfaith-ish book “the dignity of difference”, which was condemned as heretical when it first came out because – shock horror! – it implied that truth might not be the exclusive possession of “Torah judaism”, which didn’t go down at all well with the people in gateshead. the second edition was thoroughly bowdlerised, which made it far less interesting, of course. all this is probably by the by – but my issue today is about this morning’s bbc radio 4 “thought for the day”, which you can read here. the bit which i object to is not the standard boilerplate “judaism thought of this first” positioning (we probably did, but it’s still quite arrogant), but this:

I’ve asked all the synagogues under my aegis to make tomorrow a special environmental Sabbath in which through prayer we commit ourselves to sustainable habits of consumption and energy use.

judaism is a religion of action. this is crucial. it is what we do that defines our willingness to do the Divine Will. prayer is all very well, but what are we actually going to *do* about inculcating these sustainable habits of consumption and energy use? are we going to look into low-energy shabbat urns? into carbon calculators for blechs? into the massive waste caused in the jewish community each and every Shabbat and festival by using disposable plastic cutlery and crockery? into the gigantic use of tin-foil? judaism as a religion is nothing if not practical. if you really want to do something about this, sir jonathan, please call for technological innovation to do something about measuring and reducing the carbon footprint of strict observance of the mitzvot, especially with regard to the avot melakhot of Shabbat. it is not beyond you to frame this as a halakhic imperative. the united synagogue is already way behind the “progressive” movements in practical measures to reduce consumption and live sustainably – fine words and Torah sourcing is all very well, but let’s see a clear practical lead from someone sensible with orthodox credibility – of course it will be a long time, if ever, before anyone right of “modern orthodox” does anything about it, but at least this is an opportunity to display some practical moral leadership with Torah principles front and centre.