So Rabbi Sacks:

Every crisis, for Jews, is chevlei leida, something new is being born.

And that is why, when crises happen, we as Jews have to lead the world to a better place, and that is the challenge I want us to accept, individually and as a people.

And how do we do it? The answer is … by starting, each one of us, individually and collectively, a Jewish journey, a Jewish journey that will help change us and help change the world.

What is a Jewish journey? The answer is contained in the opening words of the parsha, of the portion of the Torah we read just yesterday in our synagogues, the first recorded syllables of Jewish time, when God says to Abraham and Sarah, Lech lecha, “Begin a journey, get thee out,” me’artzecha umimoladetecha umibeit avicha “From your land, your birthplace, and your father’s house.” And so began the world’s oldest, longest, and greatest journey of all, and we have to move on that journey to the next stage.

What do we learn from those words to Abraham and Sarah at the beginning of Jewish time? Three things.

Number one, uniquely Judaism begins with a journey. With two journeys. With Abraham’s journey from Mesopotamia, and with Moses and the Israelites’ journey from Egypt …

To be a Jew is to help heal a broken world. We are the people who don’t stand still. We are the people for whom life is a journey to a world of justice and compassion and healing, which is not yet, but which we will not cease until we help bring it about. And that is the first thing we learn from Abraham and Sarah, that we as people have to journey and travel and grow.

Second thing, Lech lecha. What do those words literally mean? We translate them as Get thee out, leave. But the Chasidim pointed out that the words Lech lecha literally mean, “Get to yourself.” Become the person that you really are. Have the courage to be different. Have the courage to do the Jewish deed. The really great Jews are the ones who are unashamed to be Jews and to do the Jewish deed …

And the third message has to do with the politics of the world. The world is moving into a new and dangerous phase that I call the politics of anger. And the politics of anger comes from where? It comes from fear …

What makes people despair? Let me tell you what makes people despair. We think to ourselves, “How can I change the world? How can I make a difference? There’s only one of me, there’s seven billion people out there. I am no more than a wave in the ocean, than a grain of sand on the seashore, than dust on the surface of infinity.”

But I want you to think of this: Tell me, who is the most influential human being who ever lived? To be honest, there’s only one candidate, and that is Abraham, because today, literally or metaphorically, the people who consider Abraham to be their ancestor in faith are 2.4 billion Christians, 1.6 billion Muslims, and a few of us, most of whom happen to be in this room today …

Chevra [Friends], this one individual, or these two individuals, Abraham and Sarah, think about it, they ruled no empire, they commanded no army, they performed no miracles, they delivered no prophecies. All they did was heed the call of lech lecha to begin a Jewish journey, and to define for all time what it is to be a Jew.

And these are what we learned from Abraham and Sarah: To be a Jew is to be true to your faith, and a blessing to others, regardless of their faith. And that is the greatest message of healing that the world needs to hear in the 21st century, and we have to deliver it.

Friends, that was all I was gonna say, until I suddenly realized there’s one thing, in addition, I probably ought to say.

Tell me, when you’re looking at journeys – you know how long it took us to get out of the station in Washington today? – everyone’s going one way, right? Now, tell me, are there more people queuing in America to go to Iraq, or queuing in Iraq to go to America? Where do people travel? They travel from poor countries to rich ones. They travel from low civilizations to high civilizations. What was the highest civilization in the days of Abraham? Mesopotamia, Ur Kasdim, where he came from. Everyone else is trying to get in, he’s leaving with Sarah. What was the highest civilization in the days of Moses and the Israelites? Answer, the Egypt of Ramses the Second. Everyone else is trying to enter, Moses and the Israelites are trying to leave.

We are the world’s contrarians. Everyone’s going that way, we’re going the other way. So let me make a simple suggestion. You know as well as I do, that when the world is united, Jews are divided, right? Now the world is divided, let’s us do the opposite thing and show that we are united …

So when, out there, there is despair, let us bring hope. When out there there is hurt, let us heal. And when out there is division, let us show that we are enlarged and not diminished by our differences. Let us show the world what it is to stand together and respect one another.

Therefore, I say this, never waste a crisis. Never stand still. Go out there, continue the Jewish journey, and be a blessing to the Jewish people, and to the world.

You can read the rest here.

As so many leaders of religious communities and religious organisations (including theological colleges) make the turn inwards towards, in my tradition, an ecclesiocentricism characterised by idolatrous efforts directed towards self-preservation and self-propagation, Rabbi Sacks bears witness to another – a better – way. So too does brother Dietrich: ‘the church is church only when it is there for others’. May the State of Israel too hear that word, and so follow the way that Sarah and Abraham walked, and so ‘be true to [the] faith, and a blessing to others, regardless of their faith’.

‘Never waste a crisis’.