Ben-Gurion University honors UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

UK Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks was honored by Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba on Wednesday for his exceptional work as “a widely published theologian and philosopher, whose aspirations for truth and mutual respect of all peoples guide his actions.”

The Ladislaus Laszt Ecumenical and Social Concern Award, presented for the first time in 1985, “acknowledges and rewards people whose deeds reflect tolerance, hope and vision – those aspects so essential to the survival of the human race.”

Harold Paisner, president of the Ben-Gurion University Foundation in London, saluted Jonathan Sacks, calling him a “true beacon of hope, who brilliantly advances Jewish values to the wider community.”

Paisner added that Sacks is a “gift to the Anglo- Jewish community, and British society as a whole.”

In a speech titled “The Challenge of Religious Difference in a Desecularizing Age,” Sacks declared “there is no such thing as a ‘postsecular age’” – explaining that since Alexis de Tocqueville’s seminal 1831 work, Democracy in America, “intellectuals” have been sure that enlightenment and democracy would spell the end of religion.

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