LONDON -- Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Kingdom, is a deeply spiritual and thoughtful man. Again and again he brings us back to the really central question of our times -- central in all societies and all religions, and becoming more so in a globalized age. What now binds us together? What are the bonds that maintain civic society, and within it, the family structure, with all its relationships, duties and obligations, upon which civil society rests? Of all Britain's religious and spiritual leaders, Sacks is the most inspiring -- and the most effective in sharing his insights.Spiritual leaders tend to come in two sorts -- the inspiring and the uninspiring, the relevant and the irrelevant, those in touch and out of touch. Sacks clearly comes in the former category -- he inspires, through his books and views; his questions and concerns are highly relevant, and he is in touch.
Or is he? Until very recently I had no doubts on the matter. His worries were mine, and he expressed them far better. But the other day I suddenly paused. In an interview (in the Daily Telegraph) the rabbi, repeating his views about the prospect of family breakdown, added that the great debate, or conversation, as he calls it (on the social challenges in the 21st century), "has not started."
Not started? This amazed me. Where had Sacks been? All around us the great debate is reaching a crescendo -- about the future of the traditional (patriarchal) family structure, about the future of the community, of society as a whole, of the nation-state, of relations between states on the global stage. The arrival of the network age, linking growing millions of people, regardless of border or nationality, in common causes and communities -- mostly good, but some selfish or evil -- has pitched this debate up to a new level of intensity. The flow of books, learned and superficial, pouring forth on the issue all through the 1990s, has become a cascade. Countless seminars and editorials focus on it. Will the informational age tear nations apart, as well as families? Will supranationalism pull one way and regional and local pressures the other, leaving the nation-state in crisis? And if so, what will then command our loyalties?