Revitalisation
Thirty years ago today, Jonathan Sacks was installed as Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth. In his installation address, he presented an audacious programme full of hope: a ‘A Decade of Renewal’. He explained:
“I choose the word renewal carefully. Judaism recognises not shinui but chiddush, not change but revitalisation. And if we do not renew our institutions they will die the slow death of increasing irrelevance. […] We must search out a hundred new ways of letting prayer speak to our souls, learning to our minds and mitzvot to our lives; and if they fail we must search for the hundred-and-first way.”
To revitalise, not necessarily to alter; to rediscover the potential of what has been passed on; to let this heritage form our spiritual, intellectual, and moral lives; to discern a task for the future in the experience of the past; to know where we come from, where we are going, to whom we must give an account: this enables growth and progress, not the merry-go-round of constant restructuring.
