Dignity of Difference: How to Avoid the Clash of Civilizations | 
 enlarge | Author: Jonathan Sacks
Publisher: Continuum
Category: Book
List Price: $18.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 102723
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2 Sub
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 156
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0826468500
Dewey Decimal Number: 210
EAN: 9780826468505
ASIN: 0826468500
Publication Date: July 2003
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Product Description
The tragedy of September 11 intensified the danger caused by religious differences around the world. As the politics of identity begin to replace the politics of ideology, can religion, Sacks asks, become a force for peace? "The Dignity of Difference is his radical proposal for reconciling hatreds. Sacks argues that we must do more than search for values common to all faiths; we must also reframe the way we see our differences.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 The best book I read last year August 29, 2008
"The Dignity of Difference" should be read by all four of the folks running for President..if they followed its dictates the world would be a safer place. It echoes Obama more than McCain, but both would benefit from its wisdom. Rabbi Sacks' voice promotes tolerance, asks us to respect those who wish us ill. The mere title should be medittaed on by all who seek a more peaceful world. Inspiring quotes leap from almost every page. For example: "peace means living with those who have a different faith and other texts." The Rabbi quotes the Jewish sage who lived two thoousand years ago and asked "who is the hero of heroes?" and answered "he who turns an enemy into a friend."
Read it, no matter what your faith or if you have no faith...you will emerge at the end of the book a wiser soul.
A must read June 15, 2008
This book is one of my favorites and is always a pleasure reading. Jonathan Sacks joins great thinkers of the past and present with a construcive discussion into one of modern societies' main challenges - the dealing with diversity in a global age.
This book is a wonderful introduction into a healthy discussion on the virtues of diversity and responsibilities enshrined in its proper management by politics, society and religion.
Although the author paves a theoretical path, further explored in his later book "the home we build together", he does not make the necessary dive into practicality. In this sense its a great book about postive notions but a limited guide into how actually to make the world better.
All in all, its a fascinating book where every reader can feel at home. Highly readable, highly engaging, and leaves a taste for more.
The Dignity of Difference June 14, 2008
Outstanding. Clearly delivered message about the present problems with religion and some quite serious suggestions for dealing with the present "clash of civilizations.
 sometimes moving, but doesn't really get into contrasting views March 20, 2008
This book is less one complete book than it is a set of essays on a wide range of topics- sometimes insightful, sometimes less so. Generally, I found the book to be most persuasive when it explains the appeal of traditional religion, less so when it sets out an independent argument for the way things ought to be. A few of the issues covered:
*The growth of religious fundamentalism. Rabbi Sacks writes: "The power of conservative religious movements has been precisely the fact that they represent protests against, rather than accommodations to, late modernity." In other words, right-wing religion is successful because it appeals to the dissatisfied; the satisfied by definition aren't going to be as motivated to switch religions or even to invest as heavily in their own.
*The value of religion generally. Why are religions so much more successful in attracting adherents than, say, philosophical systems with similar visions of the good life? Sacks points out that religions don't just have points of view, they "embody [their visions] in the life of the community. They make it vivid and substantial and prayer and ritual, in compelling narratives and collective acts of rededication." By contrast, a philosophy without ritual, or even a religious movement that lacks a lot of ritual, may not seem as "vivid and substantial" to some people. I completely agree; I grew up Reform and have moved towards a more ritual-oriented form of Judaism, and the reason I find traditional Judaism more appealing has less to do with ideology than the felt reality that the latter seems a bit more, well, "vivid."
*The value of religious diversity. Rabbi Sacks argues that the very fabric of creation supports diversity: just as God is glorified by the "astounding multiplicity" of the millions of species, and of the hundreds of human cultures and languages, the multiplicity of ways of approaching God are equally valuable. Sacks writes that "God has spoken to mankind in many languages through Judaism to Jews, Christianity to Christians, Islam to Muslims. But just as God is greater than any language, God is greater than any one way to relating to God." Makes sense to me- but maybe that's just because I am a non-haredi Jew. But what would Sacks say to the haredi Jew who says "But there's a difference- our revelation really happened and theirs is fictitious"? Or to the Christian or Muslim who argues that their way of relating to God presupposes the universality of their religion? I did not see how Sacks really addresses this tough issue.
*Economics. Rabbi Sacks correctly points out that Judaism has sought to steer a middle course between pure capitalism and socialism, by endorsing a market economy combined with mandatory charity. But is the view of Judaism relevant to a secular society? That is- should public policy reflect the voice of Torah, or should it follow the libertarian view that people can express their religious values with their own money rather than using the government to address poverty and related issues? Rabbi Sacks doesn't seem to me to focus on this issue, perhaps because he comes from a society where a generous welfare state is taken for granted to a greater extent than in the USA.
*Environmentalism. As Sacks suggests, there is quite a bit of justification for environmentalism in Jewish tradition. Sacks does address one strand of tradition that I was unaware of before reading this book: Jewish support for preserving endangered species. Sacks writes that according to the medieval sage Nachmanides, the Torah's prohibition of seizing a bird and its mother at the same time exists to prevent Jews from culling species to the point of extinction- a kind of early Endangered Species Act. Of course, translating Jewish environmental values into public policy is even more difficult than translating Jewish economic values into public policy, for the simple reason that environmental issues often involve not just values, but difficult factual questions that most nonscientists don't really understand. For example, I might have a rational opinion that global warming is caused by human activity, if I think there is a scientific consensus behind this view. But that doesn't mean that I know what policies will actually be effective in reducing global warming, let alone whether those policies are cost-justified.
Universals Need Not Apply June 4, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
There's much to like about Sacks' book. For example, its appreciation/critique of globalization is persuasive. "Morality," Sacks reminds us, "belongs no less in the boardroom than the bedroom, in the market-place as much as in a house of prayer."
The book discusses theology as much as economics, and in doing so it does not capitulate to relativism (as a tired title like "Dignity of Difference" might lead one to believe). How could one call the book "relativist" when for Sacks, "the human project is inescapably a moral project"? How could the book be dismissed as another vacuous plea for ambivalence masked as "tolerance," when Sacks insists "something far stronger than toleration is required" in order for us to survive?
Here is Sacks' recipe for the postmodern world: "Absent religious faith, add the failure of the 'Enlightenment project' to create a universal ethic, and the result is moral relativism - a way of thinking (or rather, refusing to think) about life choices that may be suited to a consumer culture, but one that is wholly inadequate... to the challenge of assertive ethnicities and exclusive belief systems."
Rather than accepting the recipe, Sacks insists on the missing ingredient of religious faith. Though the Enlightenment predicted that religion's "public roles was at an end... The strange fact was, however, that religion refused to die. What has emerged is, in George Weigel's phrase, the 'desecularization of the world.'"
In other words, the lunar eclipse is over, and turns out the sun was there all along. Contrary to the claims of generations of European intelligentsia, God is not going away. Religion is back (even though it never really went away). Therefore, as Sacks puts it, the book is a "a theological basis for respect for difference, based not on relativism but on the concept of covenant."
And so, deeply respectful of various religions, Sacks sets out to give us religious folk a lesson in successful twenty-first century planetary cohabitation. But he does so by establishing what might be called a "New Covenant" with all world beliefs.
"The paths to salvation are many," Sacks explains. "There are multiple universes of wisdom, each capturing something of the radiance of being and refracting it into the lives of its followers, not refuting or excluding the others, each as it were the native language of its followers, but combining in a hymn of glory to the creator." If the religions of the world therefore can just accept this idea (an idea which is arguably itself a religion) then, Sacks insists, there is hope.
Sacks' motivations are of course laudable. He doesn't want us to kill each other. God, Sacks writes, "has given us the means to save us from ourselves... we are not wrong to dream, wish and work for a better world." At such points the book, in my estimation, tends to degenerate into a well documented and sophisticated version of Why can't we all just get along?
When Sacks attempts to weave his very specific Judaism into his universal covenant for all religions, things get confusing. He writes, "The God of the Israelites is the God of all mankind, but the demands made of the Israelites are not asked of all mankind." This is true enough. He concludes, "There is no equivalent in Judaism to the doctrine that extra ecclesiam non est salus, outside the Church there is no salvation." But as we've seen, Sacks is not writing only to Jews.
What if one, while revering Judaism deeply, is nevertheless not "in Judaism"? What happens when the religion one professes is founded upon the fact that it is for everyone, as Christianity certainly is. In fact, one could make the case that the universal character of the Christian faith is the point of the New Testament (or at least of Luke, Acts, Galatians and Romans). Scholars often refer to the "sociological miracle" of the first century that resulted when the tribalized Roman world found unity in diversity in one new social body - the Church. The diversity that Sacks is seeking on a global scale may be contained by design within the Christian faith.
This ideal has of course often failed (miserably failed) to be realized. But could anyone convincingly argue that it's not in the charter? A Christian will have difficulty following suit with Sacks' book, unless of course Christ's charge to "baptize all nations" actually reads "baptize some nations," or the promise that "every tongue shall confess and every knee shall bow," actually reads "some tongues and some knees," or the assurance that "Christ shall be all in all" actually reads "Christ shall be some in some."
A Christian can of course read Sacks' book, learn from it, and strongly recommend it as a thoughtful perspective on globalization from a man both deeply intelligent and faithful. But the very universal insistence that there can be no universal is hard to sign on to. A good Christian, Buddhist or Muslim or Marxist (perhaps even a good many Jews) will find themselves scratching their heads. Because Sacks deploys a universal masquerading as a diffusal of universality, his arguments should be listed among these universal options, not as a solution to their conflict.
As a Chrisitian, I'd like to conclude on a Trinitarian note. Sacks claims that "Unity in heaven creates diversity on earth." A Christian, however, does not believe in mere unity in heaven, but a diversity in heaven (the Trinity) that, strangely, can creates a unity on earth. Sacks is concerned that we make space for one another in our dialog, and it is of course a genuine one. So much so that even God has followed Sacks' advice. If within the Trinity itself God has already permitted a diversity amidst Father, Son and Spirit - then there is no risk in humanity losing our distinctions (individually or even nationally) by participating in the life of this kind of God. To put it otherwise, if the "Absolute" is in itself diversified, then the postmodern prejudice against "Absolute Truth" (a prejudice which haunts Sacks' book as clandestinely as Plato's ghost haunts the West) has no beef with the Trinity.
This God is so free in fact that he can even give the different persons within his Godhead freedom - so free that he can even give his own creatures freedom to rebel against him. He is free enough to give them the choice to accept, or not accept his reconciling love. This God is so powerful that he can become a creature among his creatures, allowing himself to be tried and condemned as a criminal in a gesture of suffering love. Such is the "freedom" and "power" of the Trinity. So free and powerful it can be bound helplessly to a cross. One might suggest a concept of God like that can afford to be universal.
I only wish there was room for such universality in Sacks' book.
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