Emma Koonse writes for Publishers Weekly:
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, author of more than two dozen books including most recently Not in God’s Name, is the 2016 Templeton Prize winner, the Templeton Foundation announced on March 2 at a news conference at the British Academy in London.
Since the 1970s, Sacks, who served as Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth from 1991 to 2013, has been sharing spiritual insight with the public through mass media, lectures, and books, and a central part of his message is an appreciation and respect for all faiths. Sacks has also defended the relationship between science and religion, making a case that they are compatible in response to those who find the topics separate and distinct.
“We will always inhabit a world of the spirit that searches not just for explanation but also for meaning,” Sacks said in a statement. “Or as Einstein said: ‘To know an answer to the question, ‘what is the meaning of human life?’ means to be religious.’”
Listen: Journalist Eliza Griswold, author of The Tenth Parallel, interviewed Rabbi Sacks in November at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
