Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks at the Olami Impact Leaders Forum

hello good evening to all of you at over me and thank you for being here UI sensational gathering and it's a privilege to address you so let's hear it for the group from Argentina yeah from Australia fantastic Belarus terrific Brazil Thank You Brazil Canada let's hear it for Canada Chile terrific Colombia where the best coffee comes from to Georgia where the best Jews come from fantastic not that they don't come from everywhere else but I love you Georgia Germany to a special welcome to all of you from Germany France just don't mention brexit to me you know I'm sorry it's not my fault a Hungary great to have you with us do Israel let's hear it for Israel fantastic to Mexico great to have you megasuck el Russia superb South Africa special special Jewish community in South Africa Switzerland great to have you here United Kingdom that's it playing at home Ukraine with a Jewish president and the Jewish prime minister absolutely terrific Uruguay that's here at for Uruguay and finally for the United States terrific so welcome to all of you and a very very very special thanks to two people without whom this and so much else could not have happened to Aaron Wolfson and Elly horn for their support for this and for leadership ventures throughout the Jewish well thank you and bless you both let me begin with a little time that I've always used to love from the Liverpool poet Roger McGough about leadership and the poem goes as follows and the leader hey I'm the leader yippee I'm the leader now what should we do now that is not the Jewish school of leadership in Judaism we don't search for leadership just to be the number one Jewish leadership is different and what is Jewish leadership and the answer to that is given in one very simple verse in the beginning of the book of Exodus about the greatest leader we ever had about my share a bed know about Moses and it says why you down more surely it's a life of Moses grew up and he went out to his brothers for obits evil have done and he saw their suffering and let me read he saw an Egyptian attacking physically brutally an Israelite slave and he intervened just before he intervenes the Torah says ye think over over yah he a mesh he looked this way and that and saw that there was no one else there there was no other man now the next day he sees two Jews quarreling and he intervenes and one of them immediately brings up the issue of the previous day and we suddenly realize hang on I thought it said the previous day looked here and there and there was no one else there how come that somebody else knew what he had done the short answer is where did this episode take place where one of the Israelites answer they were on a building site they were building a whole city for Rameses you are not alone on a building site wherever you are there are a lot of people standing around you and that's what happened when Moses saw the Egyptian attacking the Israelite so what does it mean when it says he looked here and there and saw there was no itch there was no man it means he looked here and there and saw that there was no mensch nobody willing to do anything nobody willing to stand up and defend the person being attacked that is what it is to be a leader in Judaism to be a leader is to take responsibility you look this way that nobody else is doing something you do something and that is the Jewish school of leadership it's about taking responsibility when I see my people in trouble I do not simply stand and watch I do not simply stand and complain I do not simply stand and wait for somebody else to do something when I see my people in trouble I stand up and do something but you think over how far your hamish if nobody else is doing something then I am going to do it and that is what leadership is in Judaism taking responsibility sometimes because a little voice that we call the voice of God whispers in your ear as it whispered in Moses ear at the burning bush Michelle Michelle or has God whispered in Abraham's ear and sometimes it just comes as the sight of your people suffering the way well sure understood it when he was a young man and the really fascinating thing about the great leaders of Tanakh is that they did not think of themselves as spectacularly qualified for the job they won't fall over themselves when God said to Moses go lead the Jewish people he said me um uh to somebody else when God said to Isaiah go teach my word to the people he said I'm a man of unclean lips when he said to Jeremiah go and prophesy Jeremiah said in a local t de Becque Inara no thing I cannot speak for I am a child the thing about the great Jewish leaders is they won't full of themselves they were full of the task the task spoke to them and call forth their responsibilities why did they lead because they saw a job that needed doing and there's something else in maschera Bao's question me on of Who am I ask yourself who Moses actually was when God told him to lead the Jewish people number one he'd spent his youth and young adult life as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter he had been raised as a Prince of Egypt then after he was forced to flee because of his intervention he spent the rest of his life as a Midianite shepherd when God said to Moses go and leave the Jewish people Moses was saying Who am I I'm not even very Jewish I could have spent my life at ease with I don't know how many Porsches and Ferraris as a minor role in the one of the Arab Gulf oil States or I could have spent my life in serene solitude as a Midianite Shepherd what did I need all this all this Saracen leading the Jewish people but when you emotional value when you see your people suffering you can't just walk away that is Jewish responsibility no one explored this concept more profoundly in our time and in more extreme circumstances than the late Viktor Frankl one of the real eras of the 20th century Viktor Frankl as a young man was a psychotherapist in Vienna specializing in treating people who had suicidal tendencies in 1938 when the Nazis came to power in Austria he was barred from treating any non-jewish patients in 1942 he was taken with his parents and his wife tutor Asian stud in 1944 he was transferred to Auschwitz his father died in two regimes but his mother and brother were murdered at Auschwitz his wife was murdered at bergen-belsen he lost his entire family he carried with him one possession into Auschwitz the manuscript of a book he was going to write on psychotherapy when the Nazis confiscated it and destroyed it he said my whole life was gone and it was then that he made a discovery that made him one of the most influential people of the twenty 20th century he said the Nazis stole away everything they took away my clothes they took away my hair they took away our names they took away our identities they took away our freedom but there was one freedom they could not take away from us the freedom to choose how to respond and that was when he discovered what he later called man's search for meaning he wrote a book about it after the war which sold tens of millions of copies Tim Ferriss in his book tried of mentors ask people what was the most influential book in their life or what what were the several most influential books and most people chose Victor Frankel's man's search for meaning and in fact its original title was even more remarkable its original title was saying yes to life in spite of everything and what was the core of it the core of it was taking responsibility not seeing yourself as a victim because he knew that if people saw themselves as a victim they would lose the will to live and the second they lost the will to live they began to die he helped people find some meaning in their lives that would give them the strength to survive one of his fellow prisoners had written some of a series of travel books and had to survive in order to complete the others or one of them had a nice waiting frame in Canada and he persuaded him you have to survive for the sake of your niece he believed that we are meaning seeking animals he believed that we have to ask not what do I want from life but what does life want from me all meaning comes from that call from the outside all meaning involves taking responsibility just as it did for Moses when he saw his brothers suffering and he himself saw that he had work to do he had responsibility his fellow prisoners in Auschwitz and that is what gave him the will to live and incidentally he eventually lived to the good old age of 92 what's remarkable is that just recently an even more striking story has just come to life and that is a lady called Edith eager who has just published a book a couple of years ago called the choice which became a best both from the United States and here in the United Kingdom she too like Viktor Frankl worse in Auschwitz but even once she was on the notorious death march from Auschwitz at which almost everyone died she liked Franco eventually became a psychotherapist using her pain to relieve the pain of others and only now in her 90s has she told the story that's what comes amidst is the essence of the choice is do you see yourself as a victim or do you up for the choice of relieving other people's suffering and taking responsibility and that gives you in the end and Edith eager is one example and Viktor Frankl another that that way of life of responsibility gives you physical well-being psychological well-being and an inner strength that is absolutely incomparable Franco himself suggested that America in addition to the Statue of Liberty in you outside New York on the east coast of America should build on the west coast of America a statue of responsibility because Liberty without responsibility cannot sustain itself in the long run right now the Jewish world needs your response and your responsibility number one anti-semitism unbelievably has returned within living memory of the Holocaust that's important that we stand and fight and not that we just let it happen that we get involved even if we fail even Kovach over your key image if we deceive nobody else engage with it we must getting engaged and not only for ourselves because as I have said often they hate that begins with juice never ends with Jews number two look at what is happening about the deep legitimation of Israel that's important because whether or not we agree with the policies of Israel Israel is the only place in space and time where we have ever been a majority where we have ever exercised sovereignty whether where we have ever been able to defend ourselves and build a society in accordance with our highest values and finally three we are losing Jews we are losing Judaism the only areas of Jewish life today that are flourishing of those communities that have by and large cut themselves off from the wider society and here Judaism is full of customs values practices that are made for the 21st century but that's another talk not this one so will you lose anything by taking on Jewish responsibility I promise you the answer to that is no I have worked with some of Britain's leading businesspeople leading professionals leading heads of public corporations the most successful businesspeople in our country and they have worked with me on Jewish education or Jewish security of business ethics on fighting anti-semitism of defending Israel and they gave leadership with total concentration with strategic intelligence with absolute attention to detail and they gave their time and their businesses didn't suffer they really didn't I remember working with so many people for so long on these issues and them saying that their business is flourished despite the fact that they giving this time to Jewish leadership I tried to say why to a group of high school children in New York there is here's a story there is a very exclusive school in New York it's called Trinity school was founded in 1709 and in 2010 Forbes magazine described it as the best private school in the whole of America well for some reason a couple of years ago Trinity School which is a Christian school decided to change its ethos in line with a book that I've written called home we build together and so they change the whole ethos because the book talks about covenant and contract about the difference between it and one way or another it talks about leadership and taking responsibility for society as a whole and last year I spent a day with the teachers and with the school children themselves discussing the issues and so on and one of these students asked me the following question he said I've got to get my grades I have got to get top grades to get in to the school I want to go to I think you wanted to go to Stanford how on earth am I going to make time for these other issues of responsibility that you talked about I told him a story about my knees I don't know if this story resonates with you but I put in a lot of exercise on a treadmill and after doing this for a few years I discovered I had completely ruined my knees was weird here I was keeping fit and all I'd done was damaged my knees well in the end that you need especially Sammy to a psychotherapy 278th physiotherapist and he said go tell her she'll explain to you and the physiotherapist explained it to me very simply she said you on your treadmill are exercising all muscles in your Lake your transverse muscles are completely uh next and the end result is these two sets of muscles meet in your knee and they are completely unbalanced because the vertical ones are very fit and the trance one verse were once a very unfit and the end result is that you can run very fast but you've completely lost your balance and I said that is what exercising responsibility for other people actually does for you they are the transfers muscles they're the ones that gives you balance and that's what led those great businesspeople and great professionals within my work to realize that they had to give some of their time to other people to their people to the Jewish people you spend all your time on business you will have strong vertical muscles but you'll lose the ones that give you balance and that is why showing Jewish responsibility will be better for you even in your professional life and certainly in your personal and psychological life and if you ask me on a fee or my to lead remember that the greatest leaders of the Jewish people all ask the same question or if that is a very long time ago let me be very honest with you I asked that question every single day Who am I to assume some kind of role of leadership in the Jewish people I'm just not up to it there has to be somebody better but then when you see the challenge you realize you can't walk away you can't wait for somebody else to turn up and do the job you have to do it yourself that's responsibility and that is Jewish leadership that's what the Jewish people needs from you right now and believe me you will look back one day and say you know what that's the thing I ever did so go and lead and may all you do be blessed thank you