A Letter in the Scroll

“In a clear, steady style that can also soar [Rabbi Sacks] explains why this disaster-driven thinking denies the beauty and strength of Judaism.” —Booklist

For too long, Jews have defined themselves in light of the bad things that have happened to them. And it is true that, many times in the course of history, they have been nearly decimated: when the First and Second Temples were destroyed, when the Jews were expelled from Spain, when Hitler proposed his Final Solution. Astoundingly, the Jewish people have survived catastrophe after catastrophe and remained a thriving and vibrant community. The question Rabbi Jonathan Sacks asks is, quite simply: How? How, in the face of such adversity, has Judaism remained and flourished, making a mark on human history out of all proportion to its numbers?

Written originally as a wedding gift to his son and daughter-in-law, A Letter in the Scroll is Rabbi Sacks’s personal answer to that question, a testimony to the enduring strength of his religion. Tracing the revolutionary series of philosophical and theological ideas that Judaism created—from covenant to sabbath to formal education—and showing us how they remain compellingly relevant in our time, Sacks portrays Jewish identity as an honor as well as a duty. Never has a book more eloquently expressed the joys of being a Jew.

This is the story of one man’s hope for the future—a future in which the next generation, his children and ours, will happily embrace the beauty of the world’s oldest religion.