Jonathan Sacks, Baron Sacks

Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks (8 March 19487 November 2020) was an English Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and author.

Jonathan Henry Sacks was born in the Lambeth district of London on 8 March 1948, the son of Polish textile seller Louis David Sacks (died 1996) and his English wife Louisa (née Frumkin; 1919–2010), who came from a family of leading Jewish wine merchants.

He had three brothers named Brian, Alan, and Eliot, all of whom eventually made aliyah.

He said that his father did not have "much Jewish education".

Sacks commenced his formal education at St Mary's Primary School and at Christ's College, Finchley.

He completed his higher education at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he gained a first-class honours degree (MA) in Philosophy.

While a student at Cambridge, he travelled to New York City, where he met with rabbis Joseph Soloveitchik and Menachem Mendel Schneerson to discuss a variety of issues relating to religion, faith, and philosophy.

He later wrote, "Rabbi Soloveitchik had challenged me to think, Rabbi Schneerson had challenged me to lead."

Schneerson urged Sacks to seek rabbinic ordination and enter the rabbinate.

Sacks's first rabbinic appointment (1978–1982) was as the Rabbi for the Golders Green synagogue in London.

Sacks subsequently continued his postgraduate studies at New College, Oxford, and King's College London, completing a PhD which the University of London awarded him in 1982.

He received his rabbinic ordination from the London School of Jewish Studies and London's Etz Chaim Yeshiva,

with semikhah respectively from Rabbis Nahum Rabinovitch and Noson Ordman.

In 1983, he became Rabbi of the Western Marble Arch Synagogue in Central London, a position he held until 1990.

Between 1984 and 1990, Sacks also served as Principal of Jews' College, the United Synagogue's rabbinical seminary.

Sacks served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013.

As the spiritual head of the United Synagogue, the largest synagogue body in the United Kingdom, he was the Chief Rabbi of those Orthodox synagogues but was not recognized as the religious authority for the Haredi Union of Orthodox Hebrew Congregations or for the progressive movements such as Masorti, Reform, and Liberal Judaism.

As Chief Rabbi, he formally carried the title of Av Beit Din (head) of the London Beth Din.

At the time of his death, he was the Emeritus Chief Rabbi.

After stepping down as Chief Rabbi, in addition to his international travelling and speaking engagements and prolific writing, Sacks served as the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and as the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University.

He was also appointed Professor of Law, Ethics, and the Bible at King's College London.

Dr. Sacks was inducted to serve as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth on 1 September 1991, a position he held until 1 September 2013.

In his installation address upon succeeding Lord Immanuel Jakobovits as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in September 1991, Sacks called for a Decade of Renewal which would "revitalize British Jewry's great powers of creativity".

In recognition of his work, Sacks won several international awards, including the Jerusalem Prize in 1995 for his contribution to diaspora Jewish life and The Ladislaus Laszt Ecumenical and Social Concern Award from Ben Gurion University in Israel in 2011.

The author of 25 books, Sacks published commentaries on the daily Jewish prayer book (siddur) and completed commentaries to the Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Pesach festival prayer-books (machzorim).

His other books include, Not in God's Name: Confronting Religious Violence, and The Great Partnership: God, Science and the Search for Meaning.

A visiting professor at several universities in Britain, the United States, and Israel, Sacks held 16 honorary degrees, including a doctorate of divinity conferred on him in September 2001 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, to mark his first ten years in office as Chief Rabbi.

His books won literary awards, including the Grawemeyer Prize for Religion in 2004 for The Dignity of Difference, and a National Jewish Book Award in 2000 for A Letter in the Scroll.

Sacks became a Knight Bachelor in the 2005 Birthday Honours "for services to the Community and to Inter-faith Relations".

He was made an Honorary Freeman of the London Borough of Barnet in September 2006.

On 13 July 2009 the House of Lords Appointments Commission announced that Sacks was recommended for a life peerage with a seat in the House of Lords.

He took the title "Baron Sacks of Aldgate in the City of London" and sat as a crossbencher.

Covenant & Conversation: Genesis was also awarded a National Jewish Book Award in 2009, and his commentary to the Pesach festival prayer book won the Modern Jewish Thought and Experience Dorot Foundation Award in the 2013 National Jewish Book Awards in the United States.

His Covenant & Conversation commentaries on the weekly Torah portion are read by thousands of people in Jewish communities around the world.

Sacks' contributions to wider British society have also been recognized.

A regular contributor to national media, frequently appearing on BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day or writing the Credo column or opinion pieces in The Times, Sacks was awarded The Sanford St Martin's Trust Personal Award for 2013 for "his advocacy of Judaism and religion in general".

He was invited to the wedding of Prince William of Wales and Kate Middleton as a representative of the Jewish community.

At a Gala Dinner held in Central London in May 2013 to mark the completion of the Chief Rabbi's time in office, the Prince of Wales called Sacks a "light unto this nation", "a steadfast friend" and "a valued adviser" whose "guidance on any given issue has never failed to be of practical value and deeply grounded in the kind of wisdom that is increasingly hard to come by".

He won the Templeton Prize (awarded for work affirming life's spiritual dimension) in 2016.

He was also a Senior Fellow to the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights.