2020年经济学人 著名的拉比萨克斯勋爵(2)（在线收听）

A rabbi was, after all, a teacher. He was a clear, kind one, still with a touch of East End about him, his father had sold shmatters, clothes, in Petticoat Lane, and when he was made a peer in 2009 he took the title "Baron Aldgate". But he was also firm, even stern. He wanted to leave his mostly secular listeners in no doubt that things were good or evil, true or false, absolutely, and that moral relativism was the scourge of the age.

毕竟，拉比是个老师。他是个清白善良的人，身上还带着一点东区的气息，他父亲在衬裙街市集卖过衣服，当他在2009年被评为贵族时，他获得了“阿尔盖特男爵”的头衔。但他也很坚定，甚至很严厉。他想让大多数世俗听众确信事情是好是坏，不管是真是假，绝对如此，道德相对主义是这个时代的祸害。

Judaism, as he pointed out, often provided antidotes to the chaos. The Torah, God's will revealed in words, was an algorithm that gave discipline to life. Keeping Shabbat was an ideal way to achieve work-life balance. The festivals and High Holy Days reminded Jews of their shared traditions and history: the "we", not the "I". Above all, out of the suffering endured by Jews for centuries, Judaism had distilled hope.

正如他指出的，犹太教经常为混乱提供解药。律法，上帝的旨意，在文字中揭示，是一个算法，给予生活纪律。庆祝安息日是实现工作与生活平衡的理想方式。节日和圣日提醒犹太人他们共同的传统和历史：“我们”，而不是“我”。最重要的是，在犹太人几个世纪的苦难中，犹太教提炼出了希望。

Every crisis gave birth to opportunity. The world could be changed not by force, but by ideas. Unhappily, though, much of the raucousness that dogged him came from Jews themselves. Though non-Jews saw him as the spokesman for all the Jews of Britain, officially he was the leader of only an Orthodox minority, the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth. A much larger number, Reform and Liberal and ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, were outside his purview, but still looked to him. Pleasing everyone was impossible. His intellectual instincts, honed at Church of England schools and Cambridge rather than religious shuls, were on the liberal side, and in that spirit he made services more lively and revised the daily prayer book, translating the Hebrew from scratch.

每一次危机都会带来机会。改变世界不是靠武力，而是靠思想。然而，不幸的是，困扰他的喧嚣大多来自犹太人自己。虽然非犹太人视他为英国所有犹太人的代言人，在官方上，他只是一个东正教少数民族的领袖，即英联邦希伯来联合会众。但大多数，比如“改革和自由”运动以及极端正统派教徒哈雷迪，这些都不在他的管辖范围，但都尊敬他。取悦所有人是不可能的。他的智力本能是在英国教会学校和剑桥大学而不是宗教学校磨练出来的，是自由派的一方，本着这种精神，他使礼拜更加生动，并修改了每日祈祷书，从头开始翻译希伯来语。