Following is the full text of the speech by Sir Jonathan Sacks,
chief rabbi of Great Britain and the Commonwealth,
at a ceremony marking the consecration of the great synagogue of Brussels, as the great synagogue of Europe, on June 4.
''President of the European Union, your excellences, ambassadors of the nations of Europe distinguished guests, friends.
We thank you for your presence here today. It means a great deal to us.
We value Europe deeply and we count your presence here as a sign that you – the leaders and representatives of Europe -- value its Jewish communities and the contribution they have made, and continue to make, to European life.
Today we formally rename and consecrate the great synagogue of Brussels, as the great synagogue of Europe -- and I want to explain the significance of this act.
51 years ago, in 1957, one of my distinguished predecessors, the late chief Rabbi Sir Israel Brodie, brought together the Jewish spiritual leaders of Europe, to form the conference of European rabbis, which has remained active in rebuilding and strengthening Jewish life ever since.
They came together in a momentous act of faith, just as did the nations of Europe when they created the European Union. They sought a Europe that would transcend the wars and narrow nationalisms of the past. It was an act of faith and hope after two world wars had claimed so many millions of lives.
So too the rabbis of Europe made their own commitment of faith -- that after the Holocaust, there was still a future for Jews in Europe, that there could be a Europe cleansed of the virus of antisemitism, and other forms of ethnic and religious hate.
That was their belief then, and it is our belief today.
We think today of what the Jews of Europe gave to its civilisation in modern times. In physics, Einstein. In philosophy, thinkers from Henri Bergson to Isaiah Berlin. In sociology, Emil Durkheim. In anthropology, Levi-Strauss. In psychology, Freud and Adler. In music, Mahler and Schoenberg. In literature, Proust and Kafka. 39% of Nobel prizes in economics. 47% of world chess champions. Jews were among the makers of the modern European mind.
And not only Jews, but Judaism itself. It was in the 17th century, after the great Wars of religion that had devastated the continent, great thinkers turned to the Hebrew Bible and found there the moral architecture of a free society -- thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Milton and John Locke. It was there in the book of books that they rediscovered the principles of the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of human life, the vision of a society founded on righteousness and justice, loving-kindness and compassion, liberty and the rule of law. Without this twin contribution, of Jews and Judaism, Europe today would be a very different place.
But there is a third contribution, not less significant. After the Holocaust, Jews could so easily have said, there is no place for us here. It yet as they did not. They fought against despair. They resolved not to be held captive by the trauma of the past. Instead, they turned to the future, determined to rebuild at least a fragment of what had been destroyed. And that, the faith of which the conference of European rabbis is the living symbol, may yet be the greatest single gift of Jews and Judaism to the Europe of today -- the principled defeat of tragedy in the name of hope.
All that was yesterday. What of today and tomorrow?
It is no coincidence that this synagogue, like so many synagogues, is set in the midst of the city. In Hebrew, we call this betoch ha-ir. And it is a phrase that comes from the Bible, from the 18th chapter of the book of Genesis.
It was there that the founder of Judaism, and the inspiration of both Christianity and Islam, Abraham, made his famous prayer on behalf of the cities of the plain. In some of the most powerful language to be found anywhere in the religious literature of humankind, he prayed to God to forgive the people. Perhaps he said, there are 50 righteous people in the midst of the city. Or even 40 or 30 or 20 or 10.
One of our most famous biblical commentators, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, asked the obvious question. Why did Abraham speak of righteous people in the midst of the city? What did it matter where they were? His answer, eloquent in its simplicity, was that there is a difference between someone who is simply righteous, and one who is righteous in the midst of the city. One who is righteous in his private life saves himself. But one who is righteous in the midst of the city, contributing to its public life, its culture, its academies, its economy, its arts and sciences, does more than save himself. He lifts those around him as well.
That is the way of Abraham, the way Jews have always tried to live: to be true to our faith and at the same time be a blessing to others regardless of their faith. To give, to serve, to help those in need, to be not just righteous but righteous in the midst of the city, as this synagogue is in the midst of Brussels and thus of Europe as a whole.
And that is what we have tried to do. We seek integration without assimilation. And that surely is the challenge of the future, of a Europe of many faiths, many cultures, many nations and languages. The Europe des patries, the family of European nations, is surely all about integration without assimilation. And to this too we seek to contribute.''
