A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding Our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World's Oldest Religion

by Jonathan Sacks

Book Overview

For too long, Jews have defined themselves in light of the bad things that have happened to them. And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743267427
• ISBN13: 9780743267427
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Free Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The reason for your being....

Rabbi Sacks clarifies how it is that every Jew is represented as A Letter in the Scroll(the Torah). The consequences of this brings one to understand his/her inherent value and responsibility to the whole of Creation. By perfecting ourselves in the image of Hashem, we sustain the purpose of Creation...this being our foremost task in life.

must read

well written, easy to read discussion about the history of judaism and how and why it is relevant and worth preserving

Substantive and Inspiring

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks is always articulate and thoughtful. This book is no exception. Using beautiful language, he explains why Judaism is valuable for both individuals and for the world. The fact that the manuscript was a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law just adds to the poignance of the writing.

well written but outdated

Rabbi Sacks wrote this to persaude Jews to be better Jews - but I'm not sure he would persuade anyone who isn't already converted, especially in view of recent events.On the positive side, this book is very well written and easy to read. I started it at 4:30 Shabbos afternoon and was 2/3 done with it five hours later. And when Rabbi Sacks writes as a rabbi, he does quite well - that is to say, I found his analysis of difficult Torah passages (e.g. the almost-sacrifice of Isaac) quite enlightening. Much of his writing is a historical attempt to show Judaism's contributions to the world and how Judaism differed from paganism; I don't really know enough about paganism to agree or disagree with all of his points. (I generally find his analysis persuasive, but as a Jew who doesn't have a lot of pagan friends, I'm kind of biased).The only reason I gave this book four stars instead of five is that because of the recent outbreak of anti-Semitism around the world, it is totally outdated. Sacks writes that Jews have no reason to be ambivalent about their identity or scared to be Jews, because "neither now nor in the foreseeable future can [anti-Semitism] hold center stage in the political arena" (p. 221) - words that made sense in the late 1990s when he wrote them. Yet now a worldwide terrorist army, incited by al-Jazeera and other state-supported media in Islamic states, has announced its plan to destroy all of the world's Jews, and is only a few nuclear weapons away from making substantial "progress" in that direction. And Israel is being hammered at by terrorist aggression, and most of the world sympathizes with the terrorists. If Rabbi Sacks writes a second edition (and I hope he does) it will have to be substantially modified to address these unpleasant realities.

An excellent Jewish philosophy book

Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi of England, writes fluidly and lyrically. While this is a general, basic Jewish philosophy text, it is appropriate not only for beginners but also for those with a more advanced knowledge of Judaism. Rabbi Sacks explores a variety of ideas within Judaism including: the egalitarian nature of each Jewish person's relationship with G-d, the Hebrew Bible as the first way to understand the world and how it works without resort to myth, the covenantal relationship between the Jewish people and G-d and the covenantal relationships within Jewish families, Judaism as a rejection of both tribalism and universalism, the synagogue as a revolutionary institution, etc. The only piece of the book that troubled me was Rabbi Sacks' treatment of the destruction of the Second Temple. While he regards it as political disaster in which the Jewish people lost their national independence, he also feels that it brought about "the flowering of its religious vision." Sacks further states, "[n]ow that the Temple lay in ruins, every Jew became a holy person, offering prayer instead of sacrifice, and achieving atonement through repentance. At long last the ideal of Sinai had become a reality. Israel really was a 'kingdom of priests.'" This fits in nicely with other ideas earlier expressed, affirming the dignity of every individual, particularly in their relationship with G-d. However, Sacks does not deal with the desire to rebuild the Temple (together with its attendant priests and sacrifices) as an important strain within Jewish thought and liturgy. Overall, this was a pleasure to read and I recommend it highly.