Sermons

The Burial of the Dead, Richard Joseph Leitsch, 1935-2018, by the Rector

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was for over two decades a leader of part of the Orthodox Jewish community in the Commonwealth—what we Americans often call “The British Commonwealth of Nations,” but it’s simply “The Commonwealth.” I follow his blog called Covenant and Conversation. This week he wrote about the revival of Anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere—and these are his words—“within living memory of the Holocaust.”[1] His starting point was a phrase from the fourth book of Moses, Numbers, “a people dwelling alone.”[2] He writes, “If people do not like you for what you are, they will not like you more for pretending to be what you are not.”[3] He summarized his reflection with these words, “In our uniqueness lies our universality. By being what only we are, we contribute to humanity what only we can give.”[4]
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