In its peace

One of the many surprises of recent years has been the unforeseen places where you find agreement. Never, only a year or two ago, would I have even thought of reading a book by the Chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth; I barely knew that there was such a thing. Nonetheless, I have been reading Jonathan Sacks' The Home We Build Together: Recreating Society and finding it like fresh water after a desert trek.

It won me from the first line, a rather surprising one from a member of a group that has been , for most of its 4,000-year history, a minority, strangers in a strange land:

Multiculturalism has run its course.

I have not yet got to his solution, but his analysis of the problem is spot on. His basic point is that liberalism is a structure without content and that, socially, it is unsustainable. It has led, in recent decades under the banner of multiculturalism, to inward-looking, isolated groups that feel no loyalty to the host community, which is good for neither. Not that he wants melting pot assimilation; unthinkable for someone who calls himself "the acceptable face of fundamentalism". But he does want the centre to hold.

I've found this interview with two Times journalists, both of whom seem rather obtuse, on the hunt, perhaps, for a soundbite that he wouldn't deliver. They keep pushing him about faith schools, which he supports, but where he sees some problems. His own parents sent him to a Christian school because they

knew that I would be taught hard work, respect for authority, respect for the family, a certain basic set of ethical guidelines that were utterly congruent with their own.

He then goes on to say,

Today parents are very concerned about where their children will find those values – they do not find them in the wider culture.

It seems fairly clear to me that what he is saying is that faith schools themselves are not the problem; the problem is the emptiness outside, which pushes groups from other cultures to compensate though the faith schools, among other means. He contrasts the ambitions of his own parents and their like:

They [Early 20th-century Jewish schools] wanted their kids to be good Englishmen and women, that’s what my parents wanted for me. I think that today there is just too little content to that idea.

I cannot tell you what his solution is; I will when I get that far. But it perhaps adumbrated in a quote from Jeremiah, speaking to the Jewish exiles in Babylon.

Seek the peace and welfare of the city to which you have been exiled because in its prosperity you will find prosperity. In its peace, you will find peace.