Rabbi Sacks calls finding allies, especially among Indians, Chinese and Catholics, ‘biggest mitzvah’

Five Towns Jews were charged this week with performing a new mitzvah: Making friends for Jews.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggested that Jews should especially nurture relationships with people in India and China, and among Catholics.

Rabbi Sacks, the former chief rabbi of Great Britain, spoke to a full house motzei Shabbat at Congregation Beth Shalom in Lawrence, having delivered a drasha earlier in the day at the Young Israel of Lawrence Cedarhurst. His Saturday night talk, sponsored by Yeshiva University, was in conversation with attorney Ben Brafman.

“We have ememies, but we also have good friends,” he said, citing good relations with the prime ministers of Germany, France and Canada, and with the people of Australia. Pope Francis has said “nicer, more genuine and positive things about Jews than any Pope in hstory,” Rabbi Sacks observed.

“The biggest mitzvah of the Jewish people right now is to go and make friends,” he said.

With 1.2 billion Catholics, 1.2 billion Indians, 1.1 billion Chinese, “we win the battle with them alone.”

China and India are both civilizations nearly as old as Judaism, with no history of anti-Semitism, he said, and India is threatened by an unstable, nuclear armed neighbor in Pakistan.

With radical Islam on the verge of imposing “the complete elimination of Christians from the Middle East,” Christians are natural allies, as are the millions of Muslims who are also threatened by radical Islam.

“The time has come to say exactly what this is, not to equivocate,” Rabbi Sacks said.