First published 2015. Schocken Books, hardback, 2015, pp 305, c.85,000 words.
Sacks was a senior orthodox Rabbi and prolific communicator on radio, in lectures and with many books.
In this book, he makes the case against religious justification for violence. Unfortunately he doesn’t succeed. He is concerned with the monotheistic Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, who all consider The Bible as a holy book. His argument is based around a close reading and interpretation of the text of The Bible. It is an intelligent reading and his scholarship is clear. He suggests that the text can only be understood this way – through scholarship, and by building on the work of previous scholars. He claims that the book is easily misinterpreted and that there is no basic truth available to any who chose to read it. It can only be ‘correctly’ understood and explained by those scholars. This seems to be like the argument the medieval Christian church made for retaining the book only in Latin, and not to make it accessible in local language for the masses to read for themselves. An informed intermediary, a priesthood, was necessary to interpret the word for the masses. The enlightenment took an axe to that argument and showed that this simply maintained political and economic power in the hands of a privileged elite. Only when the masses started to question the dogma of the elite could progress be made, and our infinitely better material lives be realised. Sacks would argue that this has resulted in our spiritual impoverishment. The two are not connected unless the religious faith was only necessary to get us through the arbitrary and misery of most lives. I know which I would rather have.
Sacks occasionally veers off and makes stupid points like the idea that religiosity will eventually prevail because the religious tend to have more children than the non-religious. As though all the children of the religious become ardent believers themselves.
Overall, although I felt that Sacks had failed to make his case and wouldn’t convince a single fanatic that their act of violence wasn’t in God’s name, I found this a well written and thought provoking read.
© William John Graham, May 2022