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Letter #50, 2017: The Rabbi[2017-09-21][Engleză]September 20, 2017, Wednesday"The humans of Genesis 1, made in Gods image, were told to 'fill the world and subdue it.' That is what he called 'majestic man,' what we would call secular humanity, the dominating nature. "In Genesis 2 the humans are created from the dust of the earth into which God breaths life. Theyre placed in the Garden of Eden not to subdue it and conquer it, but to guard it and protect it, and that Rabbi Soloveitchik called 'covenantal man.' "So he said these are always present in us, the secular urge to dominate and control nature and the religious urge to be in awe of nature." British Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in a July 13, 2017 talk (link) which we reproduce below ================ The Rabbi on Our Times: "Cultural Climate Change" When you have a spare few minutes, this is a pretty reasonable and well-written description of a deep divide in our times, that arises in the very beginning -- "majestic man" versus "covenantal man." A thesis worth thinking about... The author is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, 69, the emeritus chief rabbi of the Orthodox Jewish community of Great Britain. (Below, a photo of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks with the German Pope, Benedict XVI) Jonathan Henry Sacks, Baron Sacks, was born on March 8, 1948 (the same year as the creation of the State of Israel). He is a British Orthodox rabbi, philosopher, theologian, and politician. He served as the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013. Since stepping down as Chief Rabbi, Sacks has served as the Ingeborg and Ira Rennert Global Distinguished Professor of Judaic Thought at New York University and the Kressel and Ephrat Family University Professor of Jewish Thought at Yeshiva University. He has also been appointed as Professor of Law, Ethics and the Bible at King's College London. He won the Templeton Prize for 2016. ================ Cultural Climate Change By Jonathan Sacks July 13, 2017 There is an old Chinese curse which goes, May you live in interesting times. We are living in interesting times. Sometimes, I think the world has gone so crazy that the best account of it was that wonderful remark by Woody Allen: More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. Well, thats how it seems sometimes. Or it seems like my favourite Jewish text of all time, which goes, Start worrying. Details to follow. Because the truth is we are living through one of the most profound revolutions in all of human history. It is a time of political economic and social change brought about by the internet; a revolution which is the greatest and most fateful since the invention of printing in the West in the 15th century. I sum it up in a single phrase: Cultural climate change. We are worrying about our physical climate change and that climate change doesnt just make things warmer. What it does is produce more extreme weather conditions, and so it is with cultural climate change. Its not just extreme heat, but sometimes it expresses itself in the cold and the wind and the rain. An old pattern that has governed the West for four centuries is broken. A new one has not yet emerged and it has brought great damage to that spiritual experience that is our ozone layer. The result is a revolution, which goes in many directions about the role of religion in society. It is not so much a matter of more religion or less religion because the truth is, both are happening at once: a lot of people getting more religious, a lot of people getting less religious. The result is a series of storms in the West and even more so elsewhere, in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. I want to say why I think it has happened and what we can do about it to save the planet from cultural climate change. So first of all, let me analyse what is happening. The simplest answer I can give is that the West had three master narratives which we have held since the 17th or 18th century. Today, they have all broken down. Those three master narratives are, first: the world is getting progressively more secular. Second: the world is getting more Westernised. Third: to survive in the contemporary world any religion has to accommodate to society. It has to go with the flow. Those three stories have held for four centuries. But today each one of them is breaking down. Let us take them one by one. The secularisation thesis has been functioning for four centuries. It has four dimensions, one for each century. First of all came the 17th century, which saw the secularisation of knowledge. In science, there was Newton. In philosophy, there was Descartes, both of whom were not irreligious or anti-religious. They were very religious indeed, but they sought to base knowledge on non-doctrinal foundations. Thats the essence of Newtonian physics and Descartesian philosophy. In the 18th century came the secularisation of power, in two great revolutions, the French in 1789 and, before that, the American in 1776. But the 18th century saw for the first time the separation of religion and power, or, as it was put in the United States, between church and state. The 19th century saw the secularisation of culture. People built concert halls, art galleries and museums as a way of encountering the sublime without necessarily going to a house of worship. They were substitutes for the church. The 20th century, beginning in the 1960s, saw the secularisation of morality, as the West broke free from its traditional Judaeo-Christian ethic, especially in relationship to the sanctity of life on the one hand and the sanctity of marriage on the other. However, four centuries of secularisation lead us to expect that the process will continue. But it isnt continuing because in the 21st century we are seeing, at least in the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the world getting more religious, not less. We have begun an age of desecularisation. The second metanarrative was Westernisation. It said that any country that wants to enter the modern world has to become Westernised. That too has been true for four centuries, but today no longer, because what were seeing is four very ancient civilisations that had been eclipsed by the modern age suddenly returning with a vengeance. By that, I mean China, India, Russia and Islam, whether in the Sunni form in Saudi Arabia or the Shia form in Iran. All of those cultures believe that tomorrow belongs to them, not to the West. So, thats the second master narrative Westernisation. The third was accommodation. That is, that any religion to survive in the modern world has to accommodate and adjust to the wider society. Today, the opposite is the case. For the last half-century, it has been conservative churches and Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox synagogues that have been growing faster than liberal ones. Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 1089, Ultimul acces: 2026-07-26 14:58:53
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