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The idols of today are unmistakable - self-esteem without achievement, sex without consequences, wealth without responsibility, pleasure without struggle and experience without commitment.

Jonathan Sacks

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Jonathan Sacks
Age: 72 †
Born: 1948
Born: March 8
Died: 2020
Died: November 7
Clergyman
Politician
Rabbi
Theologian
University Teacher
St Pancras
London
Jonathan Henry Sacks
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Jonathan H. Sacks
Baron Sacks
Yaakov Zvi
Jonathan Henry Sacks
Baron Sacks
Self
Sex
Wealth
Unmistakable
Struggle
Idols
Responsibility
Consequences
Pleasure
Esteem
Experience
Consequence
Today
Achievement
Without
Commitment

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Happiness is not made by what we own. It is what we share.
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In the post-enlightenment Europe of the 19th century the highest authority was no longer the Church. Instead it was science. Thus was born racial anti-Semitism, based on two disciplines regarded as science in their day - the 'scientific study of race' and the Social Darwinism of Herbert Spencer and Ernst Haeckel.
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Marriage, sanctified by the bond of fidelity, is the nearest life gets to a work of art.
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True freedom requires the rule of law and justice, and a judicial system in which the rights of some are not secured by the denial of rights to others.
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We have lots of heroes today - sportsmen, supermodels, media personalities. They come, they have their 15 minutes of fame, and they go. But the influence of good teachers stays with us. They are the people who really shape our lives.
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Religiosity turns out to be the best indicator of civic involvement: it's more accurate than education, age, income, gender or race.
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When we love and make loving commitments, we create families and communities within which people can grow and take risks, knowing that hands will be there to catch them should they fall.
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The meaning of the universe lies outside the universe.
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When everything that matters can be bought and sold, when commitments can be broken because they are no longer to our advantage, when shopping becomes salvation and advertising slogans become our litany, when our worth is measured by how much we earn and spend, then the market is destroying the very virtues on which in the long run it depends.
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Jews read the books of Moses not just as history but as divine command. The question to which they are an answer is not, What happened? but rather, How then shall I live? And it's only with the exodus that the life of the commands really begins.
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We should challenge the relativism that tells us there is no right or wrong, when every instinct of our mind knows it is not so, and is a mere excuse to allow us to indulge in what we believe we can get away with. A world without values quickly becomes a world without value.
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Britain, relative to the U.S., is a highly secular society. Philanthropy alone cannot fill the gap left by government cutbacks. And the sources of altruism go deep into our evolutionary past.
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Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.
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The message of Passover remains as powerful as ever. Freedom is won not on the battlefield but in the classroom and the home. Teach your children the history of freedom if you want them never to lose it.
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In her religious role, the Queen is head of the Church of England, but in her civic role she cares for all her subjects, and no one is better at making everyone she meets feel valued.
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In an ecology of love, people can relate in trust and face the future without fear. They do not need to play it safe. They can take uncertainty in their stride.
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In our interconnected world, we must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened, by difference - that is what I have argued.
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Values are tapes we play on the Walkman of the mind: any tune we choose so long as it does not disturb others.
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We believe that what we possess we don't ultimately own. God is merely entrusting it to us. And one of the conditions of that trust is that we share what we have with those who have less. So, if you don't give to people in need, you can hardly call yourself a Jew. Even the most unbelieving Jew knows that.
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The faith religious believers have in God is small compared to the faith people put in politicians, knowing how many times they have been disappointed in the past but still insisting that this time it will be different.
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