Talk:Jonathan Sacks, Baron Sacks

message: "A similar stance was taken by Sacks and his Beth Din when they prevented the retired rabbi Louis Jacobs, who had helped establish the British branch of the Masorti movement, from being called up for the Reading of the Torah on the Saturday before his granddaughter's wedding." Whose granddaughter, Sacks' or Jacobs'? --Hugh7 (talk) 06:34, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Jacobs'.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:47, 12 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: ambiguity

message: Rabbi Sacks is a terrific speaker, and an intellectual gem!
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.139.114.199 (talk • contribs) .
The suggestion that he personally blocked non-Orthodox participation in JABE is not evidenced by any of the coverage of this issue.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.50.2.9 (talk • contribs) .
:Stanley Kalms of Dixons seems to lay it fairly squarely at his door:
::"The Chief Rabbi stood on a platform of inclusivism," trustee and Dixons founder Lord Kalms told the Jewish Chronicle. "Once again, after many other examples, he has tossed it into the long grass." .
:It was Rabbi Sacks who instigated JABE, he's their president, and if he wanted to change this, he had the weight to make it happen.
:Wikipedia shouldn't find itself perpetrating a whitewash of his position and his attitude, when given half a chance his preferred approach seems to be to carry on as if trying to give the impression that no other systematic set of views and no other part of the Jewish community even exist. -- Jheald 16:52, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Speaker

message: The first sentence refers to Rabbi Sacks as "Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks."  Which knighthood did he receive from the Queen, and why isn't it listed in the article along with the rest of his accolades? Micahbrwn 07:22, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: He was knighted in 2005; see recognition. YeshuaDavid (talk) 16:29, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: &ldquo;Sir&rdquo;?

message: reference is made to his having been given a dd  by the archbishop of canterbury. my general impression is that honourary degrees are conferred by academic institutions, not ecclesiastical leaders.but i don't know the vagaries of the british system. expanation please.Toyokuni3 (talk) 02:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: This edit was reverted -- but I think it was a good change.  It is certainly more precise and aligned with what the rest of the lead says.  I propose that it be adopted.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:59, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I take back my revision. I agree now that I think about it.Nerguy (talk) 21:31, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Excellent!  thanks, Nomoskedasticity (talk) 21:46, 12 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  First sentence 

message: The entire bent of this Wikipedia article is hostile to Rabbi Sacks, and displays a strong POV.  The major focus of the article seems to be on all the negative things he is alleged to have done or said or the controversies or criticisms that have been made, many of which are quite marginal and even dubious factually or taken out of context and/or exaggerated.  Much of this does not rise above petty imaginative gossip and malicious carping.  One would not guess from the article that Rabbi Sacks has led the way in seeking inclusive policies within the Jewish community, engaging positively with all religious movements while clearly and with great dignity (and without defensiveness or offensive language, contrary to the impression given in this article) delineating the Orthodox position (which, since he is Chief Rabbi of the modern Orthodox community, should not surprise nor offend anyone), and as one commentator above has pointed out, cultivating warm relations with many figures in the Liberal and Reform sectors.  Rabbi Sacks consistently avoids harsh black-white condemnations or anathemas.  One would also not guess from this account that he has led the way in the wider non-Jewish community in inter-faith dialogue.  Many of his books are devoted to creating a more harmonious relationship between all Jewish movements, and others zero in precisely on broader inter-faith and societal issues.  He is admired throughout Britain in the non-Jewish religious world because of his indefatigable work to promote harmony between faiths, which is obviously why he has been given formal honors by the Archbishop of Canterbury and honorary doctorates by various universities as well as a knighthood and peerage by the British government.  One of the only books by him mentioned specifically in this slanted review article, The Dignity of Difference, is entirely devoted to such issues, and indeed it offers a positive model of tolerance that arises integrally out of Judaism and that provides a new and much more positive way than most other proposed remedies for alleviating communal conflict, but one would not guess this from the article here where the book is only mentioned in terms of being offensive and controversial.  No positive evaluation is given.  Thus even in this detail the article is biased and one-sided. 
Chief Rabbi Sacks has written many ground-breaking books in the areas of contemporary Jewish thought, which ought to be given some positive recognition here.  He is certainly one of the most important Jewish philosophers of modern times, and is generally acknowledged as such.  An account of his contributions to modern Jewish thought would be in place.  He has also contributed major innovative proposals for the wider society, showing through his own books and deeds how Judaism can contribute to a better and more humane and inclusive society.  Thus he is also a political philosopher and needs to be considered within the wider Western tradition relating to social thought and political philosophy.  The omission of his place within both Jewish philosophy and general Western philosophy is only one of the many failures and omissions of this article.  Because of this omission, however, we can get no idea from this article of whom the chief intellectual influences on Chief Rabbi Sacks were and are.  The account of his life before and even in the rabbinate is simply inadequate and unworthy of the subject.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 11:29, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Please help to address this subject on the page itself! Chesdovi (talk) 11:35, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

text: I have modified the offensive paragraph on The Dignity of Difference to reflect a fairer evaluation.  But a lot more can be done by other contributors.  By the way, a demonstration of the sort of misleading and malicious comments complained of above is presented in the earlier comment on the discussion page casting doubt on whether Rabbi Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the mainstream Orthodox movement, even has a "real" rabbinic semichah, ordination.  This astonishing charge, given that Jews College has ordained rabbis down through the generations, and that the mainstream Orthodox community obviously would not accept as their rabbinic leader a man without proper ordination, really only reflects on the critic, not on Rabbi Sacks.  Clearly, this commentator objects to the fact that Rabbi Sacks is not Ultra-Orthodox.  Such charges do not belong in Wikipedia.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 12:13, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have reverted it -- only because the way it was constructed implied that what you added was supported by the Telegraph reference.  An edit along these lines that used a proper reliable source would be welcome.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 12:17, 5 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I have rewritten the entry to clarify this and other aspects of the original entry.  E.g., the original entry was phrased in such a way as to misrepresent not only Rabbi Sacks's views, but even in part those of his critics (they objected above all to his seeming "relativism"), and then the original entry stated that Rabbi Sacks was "forced" to revise his text but nevertheless, inconsistently, refused to withdraw the allegedly heretical version already in the stores.  Actually, Rabbi Sacks did not accept the validity of the criticisms, but did agree of his own volition to tighten up loose language in his Second Edition.  That leads to a very different understanding of the controversy from that in the original entry.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 08:07, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

text: One further comment on the entire article: the paucity of information about Rabbi Sacks's life, intellectual history, contributions to modern Jewish thought, to modern thought as such, or his manifold contributions to the maintenance and renewal of British- and wider English-speaking Jewries' institutions, his halakhic contributions and leadership, etc., leads to the absurd result that there is more space devoted in this article to criticisms of him and "controversies" than appreciations of his actual activities and writings.  Even in regard to the criticisms, no indication is given of how Rabbi Sacks has answered them so they are taken as being proven true and valid - until, that is, I presented some such information in regard to the row over The Dignity of Difference.  I frankly think that this disqualifies the article from serious consideration.  In this light, I will simply revert the "controversy" over "selfish" Europeans, which is mere malicious trivia anyway.  It gives no context and is obviously over-generalizing in Rabbi Sacks's name.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 08:19, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Each time I have removed the paragraph stating that Rabbi Sacks claimed in an address in 2009 that Europeans are "too selfish" to have children, it has been reverted.  This has happened three times so far.  It finally occurred to me that I ought to check the references given in the footnotes to this supposed statement, and when I did, it became evident that Rabbi Sacks had not in fact said that at all.  It was a false quote.  The person posting that statement was instead quoting the newspaper headline, not Rabbi Sacks.  The Rabbi's own comments, as quoted in the articles themselves, were less essentialistic or simplistic, and were instead to the effect that there was too much consumerism and too little sense of social or family obligation or self-sacrifice in contemporary European society. The poster's essentialising and simplifying false quote merely underlines the heavy bias of the poster, so evident in general.  The motivation of this bias might perhaps be indicated by the fact that one of the references was to the website of Richard Dawkins, the militant atheist.  Interestingly, this item did not actually speak of Rabbi Sacks criticising the "selfishness" of Europeans at all, but rather of his criticisms of militant secularism and his suggestion that militant secularism and relativism promote the rise of militant fundamentalism, its mirror opposite, both of which pose a threat to community stability and decent society. That is an important point ignored by the poster of false quotes.  My own revision therefore of the item in question, relating to "Secularism and Europe's Changing Demographics," is as follows: 'Along with most other religious leaders, Rabbi Sacks is deeply concerned with the corrosive effects of materialism and secularism in European society, arguing that it even undermines the basic values of family life. In 2009 Sacks gave an address claiming that Europeans have chosen consumerism over the self-sacrifice of parenting children, and that "the major assault on religion today comes from the neo-Darwinians." He argued that Europe is in population decline "because non-believers lack shared values of family and community that religion has."'  This, I believe, is much more accurate and fair an account than the one preferred by the reverting poster.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 11:32, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: You ought to get your ducks in line before you start shooting at them.  I am not the person who added that section.  I reverted your deletion because deletion of properly sourced material is considered vandalism here, whatever your personal opinion of the content might be.  You might also want to consult WP:NPA.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 15:44, 9 February 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: The assertions in the deleted material were not properly sourced, Nomokedasticity, they were false quotes.  You might consult Wiki guidelines about whether they are acceptable or not.  However, in my revised version, given just above, I left in all the references anyway (as you may have noticed).  I can also accept your revision of this last version inasmuch as it does not falsify the criticisms of Rabbi Sacks as did the original version which you apparently approved of and did not even check.  Merely giving a footnote does not legitimate a correction to an article, I think you will find if you consult Wiki guidelines.  The citation has to be supported and validated by the reference.  You never bothered to check.  And since you seem to be taking up an umpire's role in regard to this article, Nomokedasticity, how is that you have allowed the whole thing to have such an obvious POV, to be so very one-sided and hostile?  That is apparently in some part your own fault, then.  It is remarkable that although there is a section that lists some of the cascade of honors and evidences of high esteem and support from almost all sectors of society, Jewish and non-Jewish, that have been given to the Chief Rabbi, often the highest honors the various institutions and groups can bestow, the reasons why Rabbi Sacks might have been awarded these honors is simply not indicated in this article.  They just happened, without cause.  The donors of these highest accolades could or did not explain themselves as far as this article is concerned, and Rabbi Sacks apparently did nothing to deserve them.  So that section ends up being very short, a few sentences long.  But there is extensive discussion in the article presenting things that might conceiveably have offended those same sectors, creating a very noticeable imbalance in the article.  Furthermore, these entries have been shown by me often to magnify misunderstandings, exaggerate language and distort matters.  While I get my ducks in a line I would suggest you pull up your socks.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.107.237.116 (talk) 22:51, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

text: I have since added to the 'Position on Gay Marriage' section (previously named, opposition to). I added references to his most recent comments on the topic, to show a more holistic approach to his position on Gay Marriage, opposed to only including his opposition to it. Noxiyu (talk) 04:40, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Strong bias in article

message: The reference given merely states that he is vegetarian nothing to do with religious position as implied by the link to Jewish vegetarian page which describes a particular religious basis which he may or may not have and which the reference didn't show. Reference merely showed incidental reference to him being vegetarian. Should replace Jewish vegetarian link and statement with vegetarian link and statement. Not every vegetarian who is Jewish will be a Jewish vegetarian as defined on that page as they may not do it for the described religious reasons on that page but for others e.g. he may have health issues or do it due to a different Halachic interpretation (not stated one on that page) or for another reason entirely. Either the jewish vegetarian link should be removed or a better reference given.
:Being described as Jewish vegetarian is looser than that. Jewish vegetarianism is not an ideology, one just has to be Jewish and vegetarian. Many though do have a concern for ethics, personal health and/or the environment. All of which have a religious basis. I believe Sacks is vegetarian due to ethics. Nirvana2013 (talk) 06:31, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  On Jewish vegetarian statement  

message: Can we have the "Awards Received" in the order of past to present? Buscus 3 (talk) 23:27, 13 May 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: yes, I have done this now. Noxiyu (talk) 04:02, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Past to Present? 

message: There is no need whatsoever for either the Rabbi Gryn incident or the controversy over Dignity of Difference to receive two extended, largely identical, discussions in the same article. Given that the version in Chief Rabbinate is written in a clearly POV fashion, uses highly unencyclopedic language ("it is regrettable" "noble and kind comments"), and almost certainly violates BLP, it seems that it should be the one of the two to be cut out. Given the rule that BOLP violations should be corrected immediately, I am deleting the repeated paragraphs in question, and moving those portions of them which seem sufficiently new and important to their corresponding passages. It may be better at this point to simply merge the two section, but I'm not making a call on that. g.j.g (talk) 05:39, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: They're not BLP violations, and so I'll be restoring this material.  I'll try to deal with some of the POV issues; you're invited to do so as well. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 07:19, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I only meant that they were BLP violations inasmuch as they were blatantly POV in a way which was unacceptable when discussing a living person, something which I admit was on its own quite fixable (and which I attempted to work on). For most of the article I tried to only remove lines which did not present any new, relevant facts, and were clearly written as personal criticism. The two passages I deleted entirely I did so merely because they had nearly word for word repetitions later in the article, and it seemed to make more sense to condense them and cut out overlap (anything new which was mentioned in the things I deleted I tried to transfer downwards). g.j.g (talk) 05:27, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Any controversy material should be presented once and properly sourced. It needs to avoid WP:UNDUE. It can, if not a breach of WP:UNDUE, also lightly be referred to in the Lead, where it need not be referenced, so long as the same material appears, with its reference below. --Dweller (talk) 11:08, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  BLP 

message: I have corrected the spelling of "antisemitism" where it was shown as "anti-Semitism".  Although the latter is widespread, it is the Microsoft Word auto-correct version, not the correct one.  There is a specific meaning attached the word, and the former spellng is the one also adoped by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)   Dori1951 (talk) 14:52, 8 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spelling of "antisemitism" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I have added a 'citation needed' tag next to the quotation on his 'two principles' (under section entitled 'Relationship with the non-Orthodox denominations' paragraph three). However, two more questions about citations. Citation 41 on Rabbi Louis Jacobs - first, the citation for the times links to payment wall to access the infortmation. Secondly, the statement "prevented the retired Rabbi Louis Jacobs ... from being called up for the Reading of the Torah..." this is a very vague and inaccurate statement to make. There were assumably many places that Rabbi Louis Jacobs could still be called up to read from the Torah - his own masorti synagogue for example - this prevention must have instead taken place in a specific synagogue that Jacobs was not a member of. The statement as is - at best - showing a thorough lack of understand on how or where someone can be 'called up' in a synagogue. And at worst, is quite inflamatory, that Rabbi Sacks or Beit Din has the power to prevent someone in every synagogue in the country. Seeing how this is the biolgraphy of a living person, this should definitely be updated. 
Also, citation 47 (on i, i, i culture) links to computersweekly - an online blog about computers. This isn't really a quality citation, and since there are others, I'm deleting it. It degrades from the quality of the article. Again, especially because this is an article on a living person. Noxiyu (talk) 03:40, 27 November 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Further to this point, citation 44 links to a "RichardDawkins.net" which I have no idea if this is considered a valid source, however the link in particular is dead. And no article on the topic is visible. So I have removed it. (Citation read as: Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks: Europe is dying from secularism – Ruth Gledhill – TimesOnline. RichardDawkins.net (5 November 2009). Retrieved on 3 December 2011. Archived 8 November 2009 at the Wayback Machine.) Noxiyu (talk) 03:53, 27 November 2016 (UTC)

text: I have added the citation for the 'two principles' quotation. Noxiyu (talk) 17:08, 8 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Citation Queries 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article could add Jonathan Sacks to the category called "Templeton Prize laureates" because, as the article itself says, Sacks won the Templeton Prize in 2016. Vorbee (talk) 10:10, 8 April 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Templeton Prize laureates

message: This article could note that Jonathan Sacks has presented a programme on BBC Radio Four called Morality in the Twenty-First Century, beginning in September 2018. Vorbee (talk) 08:08, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
thread_title: Morality in the Twenty-First Century

message: User:LeeSawyer (diff) recently added to the article that Jonathan Sacks "was the nephew of neurologist and author Oliver Sacks", on the strength of this tribute in The Guardian, written by a Jonathan Sacks.  
However, according to the tribute, that Jonathan Sacks was the son of a David Sacks who was "Oliver’s elder brother by nine years", so born c.1924 (Geni.com  gives dates of November 07, 1924 to January 11, 1993 ). In contrast, the Chief Rabbi's father, Louis David Sacks, was born on 13 Feb 1908, according to his entry for his 1996 death in the Registrations Index .
Also, Oliver Sack's family background was strongly medical; whereas I think the Chief Rabbi's was not.
So it would seem the concurrence of names was most likely a coincidence, and the two were not closely related. I have therefore removed this addition. Jheald (talk) 19:38, 11 November 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oliver Sacks