Things Worth Remembering: Jonathan Sacks on the Improbability of Israel

Welcome to Douglas Murray’s column, “Things Worth Remembering,” in which he presents great speeches that we should commit to heart. Scroll down to listen to Douglas reflect on Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’s speech at the 2013 American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference, in which he reminded the audience that “Israel is the greatest collective affirmation of life in the whole of Jewish history.” 

Tomorrow, Israel will commemorate the first anniversary of the most brutal, most destructive pogrom since the Holocaust.

It would be understandable to feel despair, at this moment.

The attacks on Israel are only mounting. On Tuesday, more than 100 missiles were launched from Iran, with the aim of ending more Jewish lives. They failed, but one Palestinian lost his life. 

That very day, I sat down with Bari in New York City, and we discussed the other assault on Israel, which continues across the West: the rhetorical assault. Recently, just 40 blocks away at Barnard College, students had been chanting for an intifada. Manhattan had also, as I wrote in my last column, been playing host to the United Nations General Assembly, which many global leaders saw as an opportunity to demonize the world’s sole Jewish state.

All the while, the United States offered the most feeble defense imaginable.

The Jewish people have been betrayed, again. But amid this week’s attacks, the celebrations of Rosh Hashanah took place; it is a new year in Israel.

Today, I am not going to write of despair. I am going to write of hope.

To do so, I will lean on my late friend Jonathan Sacks, who served as Chief Rabbi in the United Kingdom between 1991 and 2013. The year he retired, he gave a speech at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. I was fortunate enough to be present, and I have recalled his words often in the last year.

Jonathan was born in London in 1948. He confesses in his speech that, as a child, he had never understood the line in Jewish scripture that says, It is not only one enemy that stands against us. “I used to say: That belongs to my parents’ generation, not to us—not to us born after the Holocaust.”

Living in London, Jonathan said, “I never experienced a single incident of antisemitism. Until 11 years ago.”