{"product_id":"to-heal-a-fractured-world-isbn-9780805211962","title":"To Heal a Fractured World","description":"One of the most respected religious thinkers of our time makes an impassioned plea  for the return of religion to its true purpose—as a partnership with God in the work  of ethical and moral living.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat are our duties to others, to society, and to humanity?  How do we live a meaningful life in an age of global uncertainty and instability?  In To Heal a Fractured World, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers answers to these questions  by looking at the ethics of responsibility. In his signature plainspoken, accessible  style, Rabbi Sacks shares with us traditional interpretations of the Bible, Jewish  law, and theology, as well as the works of philosophers and ethicists from other  cultures, to examine what constitutes morality and moral behavior. “We are here to  make a difference,” he writes, “a day at a time, an act at a time, for as long as  it takes to make the world a place of justice and compassion.” He argues that in  today’s religious and political climate, it is more important than ever to return  to the essential understanding that “it is by our deeds that we express our faith  and make it real in the lives of others and the world.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo Heal a Fractured World—inspirational  and instructive, timely and timeless—will resonate with people of all faiths.\u003ci\u003eAcknowledgements\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart 1: The Call to Responsibility\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Ethics of Responsibility \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e2 \u003c\/b\u003eFaith as Protest \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e3 \u003c\/b\u003eCharity as Justice\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e4 \u003c\/b\u003eLove as Deed \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e5 \u003c\/b\u003eSanctifying the Name \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e6 \u003c\/b\u003eMending the World \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e7 \u003c\/b\u003eLike a Single Soul\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e8 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Kindness of Strangers \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e9 \u003c\/b\u003eResponsibility for Society \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart 2: The Theology of Responsibility\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e10 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Birth of Responsibility \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e11 \u003c\/b\u003eDivine Initiative, Human Initiative \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e12 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Holy and the Good \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e13 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Monotheistic Imagination \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e14 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Faith of God \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e15 \u003c\/b\u003eRedeeming Evil\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePart 3: The Responsible Life\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e16 \u003c\/b\u003eTransforming Suffering \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e17 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Chaos Theory of Virtue \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e18 \u003c\/b\u003eThe Kind of Person We Are \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e19 \u003c\/b\u003eWho Am I? \u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e20 \u003c\/b\u003eOn Dreams and Responsibilities \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e\"I have rarely met anyone who combines spirituality, intelligence, wisdom,\u003cbr\u003e  and compassion in quite the way Dr. Jonathan Sacks does. He has taught me\u003cbr\u003e  so much about the Abrahamic faiths. He is truly a spiritual Master, which\u003cbr\u003e  is why I believe he can be called Mahatma, or Great Soul.\" \u003cbr\u003e --Professor Akbar Ahmed, Ibn Khaldun Chair of Islamic Studies, American University\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \"Upon receiving this latest volume by Rabbi Sacks, I appreciated again his\u003cbr\u003e  well-deserved reputation for marrying high content to elegant style.  There\u003cbr\u003e  are no pious preachments here, and no self-conscious intellectual\u003cbr\u003e  posturings.  To Heal a Fractured World is carefully reasoned yet warm,\u003cbr\u003e  intellectually engaging, and entirely quotable.\"  \u003cbr\u003e--Dr. Norman Lamm,  Chancellor, Yeshiva UniversityJonathan Sacks has been Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain and the Commonwealth since 1991 and has received honorary degrees from universities around the world. He is the award-winning author of a dozen previous books, writes frequently for The Times (London) and other periodicals, and is heard regularly on the BBC. Rabbi Sacks was knighted in 2005. He lives in London.Chapter 1The Ethics of Responsibility                One of Judaism's most distinctive and challenging ideas is its ethics   of responsibility, the idea that God invites us to become, in the   rabbinic phrase, his 'partners in the work of creation'. The God who   created the world in love calls on us to create in love. The God who   gave us the gift of freedom asks us to use it to honour and enhance   the freedom of others. God, the ultimate Other, asks us to reach out   to the human other. More than God is a strategic intervener, he is a   teacher. More than he does our will, he teaches us how to do his.   Life is God's call to responsibility. That is the theme of this book.    More than any previous generation in history, we have come to see the individual as the sole source of meaning. The gossamer filaments   of connection between us and others, that once held together   families, communities and societies, have become attenuated. We have   become lonely selves in search of purely personal fulfilment. But   that surely must be wrong. Life alone is only half a life. One spent   pursuing the satisfaction of desire is less than satisfying and never   all we desire. So it is worth reminding ourselves that there is such   a thing as ethics, and it belongs to the life we live together and   the goods we share - the goods that only exist in virtue of being   shared.    That is one of Judaism's enduring insights. To give an example: in   1190 Moses Maimonides, the greatest rabbi of the Middle Ages,   published The Guide for the Perplexed, the most challenging work of   Jewish philosophy ever written. In it he addresses the most exalted   themes of religious thought - the existence of God, the limits of   human knowledge, the problem of evil and the reasons for the   commands. It is a formidably difficult work. Yet in its closing   chapter he summarizes his teachings with a quote from Jeremiah:        This is what the Lord says:    'Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom    or the strong man boast of his strength    or the rich man boast of his riches,    but let him who boasts boast about this:    that he understands and knows Me,    that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness,    justice and righteousness on earth,    for in these I delight',    declares the Lord. (Jer. 9:23-4)        I find it moving that at the end of his journey through intellectual   space, Maimonides is drawn back to this simple affirmation of   kindness, righteousness and justice. We cannot know God, Maimonides   implies ('If I could understand him', one Jewish writer said, 'I   would be him'), but we can act like him. Within the limits of human   intelligence, we can climb at least part of the way to heaven, but   the purpose of the climb is the return to earth, knowing that here is   where God wants us to be and where he has given us work to do.   Judaism contains mysteries, but its ultimate purpose is not   mysterious at all. It is to honour the image of God in other people,   and thus turn the world into a home for the divine presence.    Maimonides lived what he taught. More than most, he valued solitude   and meditation. He writes of it eloquently. Only when removed from   the stresses and cares of the world, he says, can the soul soar in   intellectual union with the Author of being. Yet he lived the latter   years of his life as a physician (he was doctor to the Sultan in   Cairo and had an extensive practice in his town, Fostat) and as a   communal leader, consulted by    Jews and non-Jews alike. The acknowledged head of Egyptian Jewry, he   answered questions sent to him by communities throughout the world.   When the Provencal scholar Samuel ibn Tibbon wanted to visit him to   seek guidance on the translation of the Guide from Arabic to Hebrew,   Maimonides wrote him back a letter describing his typical week, in   which he rarely had time to take a meal, let alone discuss   technicalities of translation. It is a moving glimpse of the life of   the great philosopher, spending his time healing the sick, guiding   the members of his community, studying and praying with them,   concerned no less with their bodies than with their souls.    When the disciples of the greatest Talmudist of the late nineteenth   century, R. Hayyim of Brisk (1853-1918), asked him to define the task   of a rabbi, he replied: 'To redress the grievances of those who are   abandoned and alone, to protect the dignity of the poor, and to save   the oppressed from the hands of his oppressor'. Constantly in debt,   he gave most of his salary to the poor. In the winter he would leave   his wood store unlocked so that the poor of the town could take the   fuel they needed, without the embarrassment of having to ask. When   the lay-leaders of the town complained that this was costing them   money, he replied that he was saving them medical expenses, since   otherwise he would be forced to sit in the cold and catch pneumonia.   It was impossible, he said, for him to light a fire in his own home   if he knew that, in other homes, the poor were freezing.    Judaism is a complex and subtle faith, yet it has rarely lost touch   with its simple ethical imperatives. We are here to make a   difference, to mend the fractures of the world, a day at a time, an   act at a time, for as long as it takes to make it a place of justice   and compassion where the lonely are not alone, the poor not without   help; where the cry of the vulnerable is heeded and those who are   wronged are heard. 'Someone else's physical needs are my spiritual   obligation', a Jewish mystic taught. The truths of religion are   exalted, but its duties are close at hand. We know God less by   contemplation than by emulation. The choice is not between 'faith'   and 'deeds', for it is by our deeds that we express our faith and   make it real in the life of others and the world.    Jewish ethics is refreshingly down-to-earth. If someone is in need,   give. If someone is lonely, invite them home. If someone you know has   recently been bereaved, visit them and give them comfort. If you know   of someone who has lost their job, do all you can to help them find   another. The sages called this 'imitating God'. They went further:   giving hospitality to a stranger, they said, is 'even greater than   receiving the divine presence'. That is religion at its most   humanizing and humane.    So too is its insistence that the ethical life is a form of   celebration. Doing good is not painful, a matter of dour duty and a   chastising conscience. There is a Hebrew word, a key term of the   Bible, for which there is no precise English translation: simhah,   usually translated as 'joy'. What it really means is the happiness we   share, or better still, the happiness we make by sharing. One of the   great statements of individual dignity and responsibility, Judaism is   also an intensely communal faith, not simply a matter of the lonely   soul in search of God, Plotinus' 'the flight of the alone to the   Alone'. It is about sharing what we have, seeing possessions less as   things we own than things we hold in trust, one of the conditions of   which is that we use part of what we have to help others. That is not    self-sacrifice. If there is one thing I have heard more often than   any other from those who spend part of their time in service to   others, it is that they gain more than they give. They do not want to   be thanked; they want to thank. Lifting others, they find that they   themselves have been lifted.    The ethic of responsibility is the best answer I know to the meaning   and meaningfulness of a life. When I first became a rabbi, the most   difficult duty I had to perform was a funeral service. New to the   position and the people, I often hardly knew the deceased, while to   everyone else present he or she had been a member of the family, or   an old and close friend. There was nothing to do but to get help from   others. I would ask them what the person who had died meant to them.   It did not take long before I recognized a pattern in their replies.    Usually they would say that the deceased had been a supportive   husband or wife, a loving parent, a loyal friend. They spoke about   the good they had done to others, often quietly, discreetly, without   ostentation. When you needed them, they were there. They shouldered   their responsibilities to the community. They gave to charitable   causes, and if they could not give money, they gave time. Those most   mourned and missed were not the most successful, rich or famous. They   were the people who enhanced the lives of others. These were the   people who were loved.      This reinforced for me the crucial distinction between the urgent   and the important. No one ever spoke, in praise of someone who had   died, about the car they drove, the house they owned, the clothes   they wore, the exotic holidays they took. No one's last thought was   ever, 'I wish I had spent more time in the office'. The things we   spend most of our time pursuing turn out to be curiously irrelevant   when it comes to seeing the value of a life as a whole. They are   urgent but not important, and in the crush and press of daily life,   the urgent tends to win out over the important.    Happiness, as opposed to pleasure, is a matter of a life well lived,   one that honours the important, not just the urgent. This has been   confirmed by many recent research studies. One showed that life   satisfaction increased 24 per cent with the level of altruistic   activity. Another discovered that those who had more opportunities to   help others felt 11 per cent better about themselves. Several studies   have shown that the best predictor of happiness is the sense that you   have a purpose in life. Those who hold strong spiritual beliefs are   typically satisfied with life, while those who have no spiritual   beliefs are typically unsatisfied. People who feel responsible for   their lives express one-third more life satisfaction than those who   feel they lack control. When subjects were asked to choose any of   twenty different factors contributing to happiness, there was only   one no one chose: financial status. People who own the most are only   as happy as those who have the least, and half as happy as those who   are content with what they have. The desire to give is stronger than   the desire to have. This alone is enough to defeat cynicism and   fatalism about the human condition.    Happiness is the ability to say: I lived for certain values and acted   on them. I was part of a family, embracing it and being embraced by   it. I was part of a community, honouring its traditions, sharing its   griefs and joys, ready to help others, knowing that they were ready   to help me. I did not only ask what I could take; I asked what I   could contribute. To know that you made a difference, that in this   all-too-brief span of years you lifted someone's spirits, relieved   someone's poverty or loneliness, or brought a moment of grace or   justice to the world that would not have happened had it not been for   you: these are as close as we get to the meaningfulness of a life,   and they are matters of everyday rather than heroic virtue.   Machiavelli famously said that it is better to be feared than to be   loved. He was wrong.        Social responsibility needs reaffirmation because it has become   problematic in recent times. What links me to children starving in   Africa, or the victims of an earthquake in India? What, for that   matter, implicates me in the fate of the unemployed, the homeless,   the poor in my own society, my own neighbourhood? For one thing, the   problems are too vast for my acts to make a difference. We have grown   used to delegating such responsibilities to governments, in return   for which we pay taxes - substituting politics for ethics, law for   moral obligation, and impersonal agencies for personal involvement.   As a result, ethics has tended to turn inward, becoming a matter of   personal choice rather than collective responsibility. There was a   time when people lived in close, ongoing contact with neighbours,   creating networks of shared meaning and reciprocal duty. Nowadays we   live anonymously among strangers whose religious, cultural and moral   codes are different from ours. By what duty or right do we share a   responsibility for their fate?    Some of the complexities of contemporary ethics were first signalled   by Hans Jonas in his The Imperative of Responsibility. In previous   generations, he argued, people had a fairly clear sense of the   connection between act and consequence, between what they did and   what happened. Today's challenges are not like that. Global warming   is not the result of one person using leaded petrol or an aerosol   spray, but of billions of acts distributed throughout the world. The   effects of environmental damage caused by the destruction of rain   forests or over-exploitation of non-renewable energy sources may not   be apparent during our lifetimes. Where then is my responsibility? My   acts are less than a drop in the ocean of humanity. What I do or   refrain from doing has an infinitesimal effect on the rest of the   world. What duties do I have to something as amorphous as humanity in   general, as inanimate as nature, or as intangible as generations not   yet born? Any simple notion of responsibility is inadequate to such   problems, which is why religious responsibility - responsibility to   the infinite in terms of space, eternal in terms of time - can   sometimes be more cogent than secular alternatives (not, I hasten to   add, that religious individuals are more environmentally active than   their secular counterparts: we all know the problem and we all try to   help). James Lovelock was forced to have recourse to the pagan   earth-goddess Gaia to construct a compelling environmental ethic. I   do not think we have to travel that far.    Another and deeply ironic turn has been the impact of the various   social and natural sciences on our sense of human freedom. The entire   thrust of modern thought, from Marx to Freud, from neuroscience to   evolutionary psychology, has been to undermine the idea that we act   because we choose, choose because we form intentions, form intentions   because we are free, and because we are free, we have responsibility.   The result is paradoxical.","brand":"Schocken","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305180319973,"sku":"NP9780805211962","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780805211962.jpg?v=1767742705","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/to-heal-a-fractured-world-isbn-9780805211962","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}