JINSIDER - Rabbi Jonathan Sacks on Doubt

Short Summary

Main recommendation: Treat faith not as certainty but as "the courage to live with uncertainty," and take the risk of commitment while still acknowledging doubt. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues that doubt is built into human life and that a life without risk or uncertainty is not really living.

Key Points

• Sacks contrasts the common definition of faith as certainty with his own view that faith means acting despite doubt.
• In Exodus, Pharaoh does not believe in God even after plague after plague, showing that overwhelming evidence does not compel belief.
• A medieval commentary reading of "God hardened Pharaoh's heart" holds that God kept Pharaoh's free will intact and strengthened his heart so he would have room to doubt.
• Sacks notes that the world can be read as either meaningless or meaningful, and that God took a massive risk in creating humanity, which regretted the creation by Genesis 6.
• Jeremiah's words that Israel followed God "into an unknown, unsown land" are cited as the model of courage that God loves.
• Even with vast knowledge of the cosmos and the human genome, the future remains unknowable, so every commitment carries an element of doubt.

Details Worth Noting

• Concrete instructions: No step-by-step instructions are given. The actionable guidance is to acknowledge doubt openly and still commit to the risk, as Sacks frames faith as "the ability to recognize doubt, live with it, and still take the risk of commitment," and to avoid waiting for certainty before acting.
• Examples Sacks gives of risk-taking include marriage, having a child, and starting a new business, each requiring action before outcomes are known.
• The Jeremiah passage is referenced as something read on Rosh Hashanah, linking the theme to the Jewish high holiday liturgy.
• Sacks cites figures of 100 billion galaxies, each with 100 billion stars, and 3.1 billion letters in the human genome to illustrate how much can be known, contrasted with what cannot.
• His reading of Pharaoh is attributed to "one commentator," a medieval interpreter, and differs from the common view that God removed Pharaoh's free will.

Bottom Line

Sacks reframes faith as a practical willingness to act without certainty, suggesting that doubt is not a failure of belief but a condition that commitment must accept.