Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks visits Monash University
On Friday, October 20 2006 Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks visited Monash University and presented a lecture on "Closed and Open Belief Systems". Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks is one of the most important Jewish figures in public life and a vital voice in the expression of religious humanism. His lecture encapsulated the important idea of "the dignity of difference," that monotheism is compatible and even requires a plurality of different religions, all of which are valid.
To listen to Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathon Sacks' lecture, please click here . You will require RealPlayer to listen to this recording, which can be downloaded free at http://www.real.com .
Prior to becoming Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Sacks had been Principal of Jews' College, London, the world's oldest rabbinical seminary, as well as rabbi of the Golders Green and Marble Arch synagogues in London. His secular academic career has also been a distinguished one. Educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where he obtained first class honours in Philosophy, he pursued postgraduate studies at New College, Oxford, and King's College, London. Professor Sacks has been Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Essex, Sherman Lecturer at Manchester University, Riddell Lecturer at Newcastle University, Cook Lecturer at the Universities of Oxford, Edinburgh and St. Andrews and Visiting Professor at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. He is currently Visiting Professor of Theology at Kings' College London. He holds honorary doctorates from the universities of Bar Ilan, Cambridge, Glasgow, Haifa, Middlesex, Yeshiva University New York, University of Liverpool, St. Andrews University and Leeds Metropolitan University, and is an honorary fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and King's College London. In September 2001, the Archbishop of Canterbury conferred on him a doctorate of Divinity in recognition of his first ten years in the Chief Rabbinate.
He is the author of a number of books, including: Celebrating Life(2000), Radical Then, Radical Now (2001), Dignity of Difference (2002), The Chief Rabbi's Haggadah (2003), From Optimism to Hope (2004), and Heal a Fractured World (2005).