Philosopher. He was the chief rabbi at the rabbi at the United Kingdom and the commonwealth of wealth of nations. He is the author of over 30 books. And there will be a link at the bottom of the screen. I know most of you have already preordered the book thank you so much. You can purchase it right at the beginning of the screen. David brooks who was an off at columnists. He is the author of several books most recently the second mountain. I am getting handed over to the rabbi in one second. After a couple of minutes we will open this up to q a. If you have a question you can go ahead and write in your question in your ask the question box. Without further ado. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks and david. I will do some questions we can have a backandforth conversation. I like to start out with the most broad first question and that is even had written 30 books. This is the first one called morality. What took you so long . In some sense morality is the subject of all your books. What is a subject in the broad topic right now. What happened david. Is the first time i became aware of the extent to which western liberal democracy they have just lost the plot of morality. The kind of free society that was conceived in the 17th century in by washington and jefferson the wisest of them all. They understood that you could not have a free society they accepted the collective responsibility in which they say the effect we are all in this together. That was an absolute given and then they started looking at the weird things that were happening in britain in hand america. The unequal economics. The fake news and the post truth. The canceled culture. And all of the rest of it. Really horrendous phenomenon. They were not discrete phenomenons. They were all symptoms of a single thing that happened to us. What i call Cultural Climate change. Somehow or another in the 60s 80s and 90s we decided to outsource morality what shall i do. What can i buy or afford and the consequences of my choices i outsource those to the state. If i make bad choices than the state will step in and cure me of my addiction. Whatever it is. I dont need to worry about personal responsibility. That means we have a society built on two arenas of competition. And weve lost the arena of cooperation that used to be. Always i grew up in a moral britain. I just noticed it have gone. I would say sometimes and when i noticed is not that they are bad people but they have not been given a moral vocabulary. And even the words. If you ask what the word sin means. You cant get a straight answer. I guess one explanation we have always had markets and states. They were counter balance by the moral culture in the u. S. And in the uk. I was called mainline protestant. It has not been replaced by anything. The religious affiliation 30 of young people identify as of no faith. It is far more religious than britain almost completely secular. Religion doesnt have a voice her presence. And they want the basis of that morality that is so very british. Its an astonishing thing when you go back and in the 40s theyre talking about britain as a gentle crowd. With peoples manners. Who is the gentleman thief. I was once in israel and there was a man i didnt like the british very much. But he said to me they cut could took it for granted. The brits are gentlemen. And of course not always in the way that jane austen per trade them. But all of them have a very strong moral sense. They all did. So somehow or another that was just part of the culture in which i grew up. It was based on the church if there was one thing people and printed they sat around the family table midday on sunday and they have their sunday lunch. Today, only a small minority of people in britain actually had a dining table. They take something out of the freezer. They sit and watch television. Oddly enough. It was Margaret Thatcher who deregulated a sunday. I argued against it greatly. This is the one noncommercial day of the week. Its very important. Its the one time that we all enter on it doesnt matter. And one sunday was deregulated sunday lot lunch got lost. I think it was the rabbi who called it a cathedral of time. I get asked this question all the time. Im curious to know the answer. Can you be good without god. Can you in the way you see in the culture rebuild a secular morality it can. I dont know if you noticed but i put it very low profile in the book. Quite deliberately. Because i did not want to imply religious or moral. First of all. We know that there is something very natural about being moral. You know the whole story about how we have the capacity to fight in groups all of which is based on that. Even fruit is all touristic. They expect others to share their food with them. It is natural to be moral. It number two, it is very easy to get people to be moral in the way to do so is to empower them so for instance you have a fantastic program i think he probably still you probably still do. Call teach for america. The high flyers who dedicated a couple of years to teaching in schools. That needed an extra left. In the privilege actually up persuading him when he was a prime minister. The same project. Looking for others. And what we havent necessarily done is to find ways of empowering young people. You make a great difference on time. On the moral behavior. They published a book called moral freedom. He went out to the west. He asked people what the morality was. Basically he found an individualized morality. He was describing an easygoing relativism. Easygoing morality. Now when you go on campus. There is definitely a morality and its not easygoing. It is extremely judgmental. Somehow that moral freedom has given way to almost moral intolerance. Do you see that change and what explains that. Talk about a lot about multiculturalism in the book. They directly destroyed the concept of the national culture. It automatically destroys the concept of a national morality. One of the things that happen not just multiculturalism but the relativism that came in is that we lost any kind of vocabulary. As aj here who said this is good you cant argue over taste. The morality was rendered inarticulate. Charles taylor. They wrote a little book called the ethics of inarticulate. Young people today who feel very passionate no concepts to argue rationally and persuade others. And all you can do is resort to that force. Now that i think is horrendous. It is the beginning of the end of freedom. They have a very inflamed strong sense of morality than right and wrong is based on something. Obviously the orientation for justice is a very strong orientation. Has a real moral content. I have looked at my nieces in israel. The first in your child says its not fair. This is the first thing any child anywhere says with paul bloom. Even very Young Children have a sense of fairness. In fairness is the most basic of all. A virtually anyone who cares. It is more the method that you can find troubling. Morality is about the exercise of freedom. You had written about this beautifully. It is about choice and responsibility. That of course what the movement is trying to do. Without any choice in the measure. A great many people who had the nuance understandings of those issues. They feel completely inhibited. Just a month ago in british university. A great number of students feel and not able to say what they really feel. I know thats true in some campuses here. So the way to engage people morally. To show our community what our young people could do. Too actually help people. Some of things that are totally in absolute extraordinary. A young girl who brought up a deaf and dumb parents, kids are going out spending endless hour hours, they are heroes. It wasnt just to make heroes of them is to educate our community as to what is a good life, what you would call the eulogy virtues. Try to make those compelling. Let me play the role of a 25yearold witchel four filed a 25 year old in the audience. Doing good work and teach american serving the elderly is noble. But we live in societies are systemically screwed up in a very fundamental way. And then when they tolerate and foster. The task of morality these days is disruption. Its built around the phrase no justice, no peace which reported every rally youve ever been too. Therefore the presumption is many to disrupt in order to build justice. That is a morality of disruptio disruption. And then you wonder how much disorder do we really need to create justice . Or just disorder undermine justice . Or really having a debate of how much disruption is more, giving the circumstances of widespread inequality and racial injustice. It is a very, very good points. Theres absolutely no doubt that all of us being moral we want to write the inequities of the market right now. We expected there to be some reform of the banking system. Some form of ceo pay after the financial collapse of 2008. It did not happen in the system is as corrupt today as it was then. The real question you have to ask, do we have a precedence for disruptive violence . Actually changing things politically. And they would actually change things politically, was the conscience of the leadership. You know, i have no idea what it was like to be there during the great crash and 29. The Great Depression of the 1930s. I have no idea, i have no idea. For me personally, i switch on youtube on a play that song from that time, buddy can you spare a dime. It just tears you apart. Somehow fdr comes along and understands conscience information and does what he does even tell is very difficult for him to pull a nation out of recession. Its very difficult and if it would not have been how he achieved it i do not know. Seems to me that come along with a conscience and they make a difference. And many ways lbj was a very difficult man. And heaven knows haiti and all the rest of it was a terrible stain on his time. But you read his inaugural it is a declaration of faith about the american covenant this absolute extraordinary. Did not happen but to my eyes the one that didnt happen that i most regret was robert f kennedy. I really thought these things through. Robert f kennedy was able to breach the color gap there is friendship with Martin Luther king have both assassinated in the same year. We need that kind of conscience. To go back in the policies. How happens i dont know. That is the greatest need right now. Im not sure the violence always helps those people who instigated. Host be undiplomatic of me not to mention the american revolution. Which was a step to establish my countrys founders thought were justice and just principles. You know perfectly well. [laughter] let me go into a little bit of whats in the background. You say you dont really make this a plea for religious faith you dont find faith is necessary for goodness. Spent a lot of time talking about virtue and goodness. And you think you will be a lot better than they are. They dont didnt emerge from nowhere, you covet that, what features of the jewish tradition prepare you to think in that way theres a concept and kindness for you personally are the animating or stories that really form the way you think about this . Through the book of deuteronomy you will see that most is a single one very simple thing. A society flourishes. If it is a moral society. That loves the stranger, if it feeds the poor. If it cares for the widow, the orphan, all else forget about. A country strength is not military, its not political, its not demographic. Its not economic its immoral. That message is taken up all the way through the prophetic lead, elijah, elisha, jeremiah, to my mind the most impassioned moral literature in existence, absolute total extraordinary. I think it is judaisms great truth. And it emerge from the experience. You know it feels like to be a slave. So dont allow other people to be slaves. Another bread of affliction taste like. You know the bitter herbs, the slavery. So dont allow other people to each bitterness. I saw this all the way through my childhood. Who could not read or write came from russia. Had a wine shop on the east end on yeah she would sell some wine. But twice a year before the new year end before passover she would give out free wine to everyone in the east end. When anyone came into by wine, should never allow them to buy wine. She would sit them down, she would pour them out a little bit, should get them to drink and find out how are they, how are their children . What are their economic circumstances . Did they need help . And she quietly was a fixer. I think it awful lot of jews and their childhood remember that sort of sense of moral responsibility of being there to help others. As definitive of what being jewish was. See what you are a humanitarian person and you get that sense of peoplehood down from the centuries there judaism. But the thing you get, my favorite definition of commitment is falling in love with something in building a structural behavior around it for those moments when love falls through. And so jews love god but there are kosher rules to keep you in line. There are blessings you say on almost any occasion. And so i wonder if those guardrails, those habits, those norms, all the rituals all the lighting of candles, is necessary to structure moral life. And for muslims it is prayer five times a day. It is all their rules. Without those structures and those disciplines, the influence of the market sort of take over in the course of normal everyday life. There is a jewish, english philosopher and was an atheist. He wrote a book called religion for atheists. And he says, day of atonement is so good that it is a shame it only happens once a year. [laughter] which is a decidedly eccentric to say with a 25 hour fast its quite arduous. Why does he say this . Because he says we all know that there are people we should apologize to. But without a date in the diary, we never get around to it. So, what i think is understudied, almost completely neglected in books on ethics, is the connection between ethics and a ritual. You know, just making a habit of doing some things but if you are jewish and you are about to pray on a weekday, the first thing you do is you give some money to charity. That may be a very small thing, but it is a habit and you do it six days a week. So ritual is very important. Something as simple as on the doorpost, it marks a transition from one room to another. One of the nice things about that tradition is we have these transitions and life. And the transitions require us to become different people. For this getting married or having kids. And it ritual is a physical manifestation of the physical change were going through at that moment. Its a beautiful way to structure life is not a meaningless flow. That kind of right of passage in those lifecycle moments become so, so much richer may are accompanied by the secretion of thousands of years of ritual. While we got married all those years ago, marriage was a state of affairs. Somehow the way things are done in israel, and how they did thing kind of taken over. And that is spiritual. And the result is you are not moving from one empty space to another empty space. No sound or bullet and gravity or something. You are taking your own personal journey along a road with well marked stages where the entire past of your people is accompanying you on the way. I was at an orthodox wedding faculty could still do it in person. A former student of mine, a brilliant young man, the reception was tremendous. It was as you know a circle of men dancing any circle of women dancing over here. And there is the center of the circle of men was a groom. Hed pull us to kind of a leap with. And then you proceed. It was a joyous dual gathering. And it was a little odd for me being an orthodox the bride and groom barely saw each other. But that does lead to a serious question. One reason their people arent nonreligious especially in the u. S. Anything in the uk, has to do with the sense that the institutionalized religions basically got the sexual revolution wrong. And that they have attitudes or did toward sexuality, towards equality between the genders, that were simply retro gate and they lost face and have faith over that. She think that is why there are so many nuns, people have lost faith in participation in organized religion . And you think they have a point . I noticed like in the states. I will tell you what it was like in britain. As soon i became chief allie was clear to me that the position of women within judaism was really badly unfair. And i took it on myself to change that is far as i could. Now to take all of my rabbis with me on that in a fairly Small Community was not easy. But we did it. We really, really, really did i it. When i was leading this is not with the women of something i did. Barely early on i was asked to have a meeting with the jewish gays and lesbians. Then i was asked to have a meeting with the orthodox gays, jews, and lesbians. And i person found those two meetings the most beautiful i ever had. The chief rabbi, you are the chief rabbi, you cant make a blessing over what we do. But there are certain things you can do. They are sensitive to this. They make sure they never say think derogative from the pulpits. You can make sure they are trained to be good counselors because a lot of our members have difficult problems psychologically. And i thought the requests were absolutely correct. I sat down with all of my rabbis, it is easiest thing i ever did. They understood straightaway that you have to be compassionate and open to the gays and lesbians. And what made that possible they understood my position. And of course the same is true about trump and people and so on who did not really know about when i was chief rabbi but i became aware of when i was living in Greenwich Village when i was teaching in nyu. These things are obvious. To stand up and fail to understand the sense of slights and the humiliation, that people have is simply not acceptable. By in large is to be completely uncontroversial. I was in britain but the confrontation with the gays and lesbians who interrupted in canterbury at the canterbury cathedral. They demonstrated around westminster cathedral, the catholic center, we managed to absently find in judaism. I want to ask you about isaias berlin i dont if you ever met isaias berlin. I did not know that. Four days before he died, he asked me to officiate at his funeral. Wow. Wow. That is an honor. My new him very well. He had an argument at the core of his argument that cultures are what he calls commiserate, they do not go together. There certain moral truths that dont fit brady of the Greek Culture that celebrates heroism and glory, that culture, that moral culture is going to be different than a culture that celebrates charity and empathy. And then he would say theres all these other moral cultures. It is just a series of tradeoffs. And there is no answer because we are always trying to balance competing truths. Was that your understanding of morality . Or does it all fit together . Totally and absolutely. The first person to really see this, there are fundamentally different moralities. Aristotles concept of the great man hes proud the virtue of suburbia with moses whos more humble than anyone else on the