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that our common humanity precedes practical outcome of this dual theol- guests have left. Shemini Atzeret is
our religious differences. It also means ogy – the universality of G-d and the chamber music, not a symphony. It
that by creating all humans in His particularity of Torah – is that we are is a quiet time with G-d. We are reluc-
image, G-d set us the challenge of commanded to be true to our faith, tant to leave, and we dare to think that
seeing His image in one who is not and a blessing to others, regardless of He is reluctant to see us go. Justice is
in our image: whose colour, culture, their faith. That is the Jewish way. universal, love is particular. There are
class and creed are different from our Shemini Atzeret reminds us of the some things we share because we are
own. The ultimate spiritual challenge intimacy Jews have always felt in the human. But there are other things,
is to see the trace of G-d in the face of presence of G-d. The cathedrals of constitutive of our identity, that are
a stranger. Europe convey a sense of the vastness uniquely ours – most importantly
Zechariah, in the vision we read as the of G-d and the smallness of human- our relationships to those who form
our family. On Sukkot we are among
Haftarah for the first day of Sukkot, kind. The small shuls of Tzfat, where strangers and friends. On Shemini
puts this precisely. He says that in the Arizal and Rabbi Yosef Caro prayed, Atzeret we are with family.
the End of Days, “Hashem shall be convey a sense of the closeness of G-d
King over all the earth; on that day and the greatness of humankind. Jews,
Hashem shall be One and His name except when they sought to imitate
One” (Zechariah 14:9), meaning that other nations, did not build cathedrals.
all the nations will recognise the Even the Beit HaMikdash reached its Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks was the Chief
sovereignty of a single transcendent greatest architectural grandeur under Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations
G-d. Yet at the same time, Zechariah Herod, a man better known for his of the Commonwealth from 1991 until his
envisages the nations participating political ruthlessness than his spiri- retirement in 2013. He spent decades bring-
ing spiritual insight to the public conversa-
only in Sukkot, the most universal of tual sensibilities. tion through mass media, popular lectures,
the festivals, and the one in which they When all the universality of Judaism and more than 30 books. Rabbi Sacks passed
have the greatest interest since they all has been expressed, there remains away in 2020, leaving behind a legacy as one
need rain. He does not envisage them something that cannot be univer- of the greatest Jewish thinkers of our gen-
becoming Jews, accepting the “yoke salised: that sense of intimacy with eration, one who bridged the religious and
of the commands”, all 613 of them. He and closeness to G-d that we feel on secular world through his remarkable and
does not speak of their conversion. The Shemini Atzeret, when all the other ground-breaking canon of work.

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