Writing exclusively for the Jewish News, Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks explains the story of Jewish "ethics of responsibility."

We live today with a strange paradox. We are confronted daily by images of global catastrophe: terror, suicide bombings, environmental damage, countries and continents afflicted by poverty and disease, alongside natural disasters like the tsunami that cost so many lives five months ago. There is something natural – a basic instinct of empathy and sympathy – that makes us want to help when we see people in pain.

At the same time, we often feel insignificantly small. What can we do to help? The impact we can make seems inadequate to the sheer scale of these tragedies. There are six billion people alive today. What difference can one individual make? We are no more than a wave in the ocean of humanity, dust on the surface of infinity.

In To Heal a Fractured World I have tried to tell the story of Jewish “ethics of responsibility”. It is a story for our time. Judaism begins with Abraham, a single individual. It continues to be the faith of one of the world’s smallest peoples. Yet Jews have always had an impact out of all proportion to our numbers. Why?

The reason lies in the radical belief at the heart of our faith that we can make a difference – and that we should. G-d calls on us to become his “partners in the work of creation”. Judaism is not a faith that leads us to accept the world as it is. It is a faith that challenges us to make the world as it ought to be. It is a sustained cry of protest against the injustices and random cruelties of the world.

In the book I explain some of the key ideas of Jewish ethics: tzedakah (social justice), chessed (acts of kindness), darchei shalom (the ways of peace), Kiddush Hashem (sanctifying G-d’s name), and the principle that “all Jews are responsible for one another”. It takes its title from the famous idea of the sixteenth century mystic Rabbi Yitzhak Luria, known as tikkun olam – namely that we are called on to mend the fractures of the world, an act at a time, a day at a time.

We tend to take these ideas for granted as if they were self-evident, but they are not. They are rooted in a unique view of G-d, the universe and our place in it. Judaism takes an astonishingly high view of the dignity and significance of the individual – as opposed to the mass, the crowd, the nation, the empire. We do not believe that we are tainted by original sin, or that fate is wholly in the hands of Providence. G-d empowers us, as a wise parent empowers his or her child, to grow, develop and exercise responsibility. We are here to make a difference.

Originally, when I wrote the first draft, I assumed it would be of interest to Jewish readers only. I was surprised when one non-Jew after another told me – when I mentioned to them the book on which I was working – that they wanted to read it. That was when I realised how relevant Jewish ethics is to the problems of the twenty-first century. Time and again, these past years, I have been amazed at how receptive the general public is to Jewish ethics, born so long ago. The Torah really is, as it says in Dvarim, “your wisdom and understanding in the eyes of the nations”.

The ethics of responsibility is the key that unlocks a satisfying life. In the end what makes us feel fulfilled is not how much we earn, or what we own, but the sense that we contributed something of value to the world. The book is my way of saying thank you to the thousands of Jews I have met who engage in acts of compassion or generosity, tending the sick, comforting the bereaved, offering hospitality to the lonely and helping those in need. To Heal a Fractured World tells their story and the faith on which it is built – that every act of kindness lights a candle of hope in an often dark and dangerous world.

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