Porcupines, Silos and Light: Three Short Timely and Timeless Thoughts from the Late Great Rabbi Sacks, z’l

This past fall, we lost a true giant in the world of Jewish thought and impact. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of the UK and author of dozens of books.Rabbi Sacks had a gift for taking his incredibly vast trove of knowledge and being able to communicate it to all of us with both depth and meaning.  Up until his passing, he was still writing, publishing Morality, this past fall.

While one can spend years reading and rereading Rabbi Sacks’ words, I wanted to share three meaningful passages from this book that speaks to our time and our missions to make the world a better place.

We, I and the Porcupine Dynamic

In his book, he discusses a conversation between him and Robert Putnam, political scientist. Putnam has focused on how our society has moved from a We society to an I society.  R. Sacks undergoes some research online on the subject. He writes, “The use of “We” is relatively stable over time, but the use of I falls steadily from 1900-1965, at which point it begins a rise...the linguistic shift does seem to reflect this deep move from the structures of togetherness to the solitary self..” (p. 24) 

R. Sacks then spends much of the book analyzing the pitfalls of this trend and the fine balance we all must achieve between We and I. He writes..

“What do porcupines do in winter? Asked Schopenhauerf.  If they come too close together, they injure one another with their spines.  But if they stay too far apart, they freeze in the cold…..we need a little more We and a little less I if we are to negotiate some of the challenges the present century has in store for us.” ( P. 84) 

The Security and Danger of Being Only with our Own

Certainly sharing values and choosing community is an important element to our human nature, but R. Sacks points out the dangers of this dynamic gone awry.

“Cass Sunstein of Harvard has shown that if we surround ourselves with people with the same views as us, we get more extreme.  We need to renew those face-to-face encounters with the people not like us, to realize that we can disagree strongly and yet still stay friends.  It's in those face-to-face encounters that we discover that the people not like us are just people, like us. Everytime we hold out the hand of friendship to someone not like us….we heal one of the fractures of our wounded world. (p. 312) 

Light and the State

“Much of the state works through wealth and power--”wealth and power operate by division. The more we share, the less we have.”

“Imagine you have a certain measure of influence or friendship or knowledge or love and you decide to share that with nine others: you do not have less. You have more. That is because these are social goods: goods that exist by sharing. These are goods that have a moral or spiritual dimension, and they have this rare quality that the more we share, the more we have.” (p. 18 )

This is similar to the Chanukkah lights we lit just a few weeks ago.  Chanukkah teaches us that as the candles receive more light the more they give, so, too, we receive more when we realize the importance of giving--a critical lesson we all need to internalize all year long. 

May Rabbi Sacks’ knowledge of text and wisdom of life inspire us as thinkers, feelers and "doers" for many years to come.

May his memory be for a blessing. - יהי זכרו ברוך