Jonathan Sacks is both a philoso­pher and the­olo­gian, and has been Chief Rab­bi of the Unit­ed Hebrew Con­gre­ga­tions of the British Com­mon­wealth since 1991. The book under review, The Dig­ni­ty of Dif­fer­ence, is an impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion to our under­stand­ing of the impact of glob­al­iza­tion on the world in the after­math of Sep­tem­ber 11. Rab­bi Sacks argues that the ben­e­fits posed by glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, and the pow­er of tech­nol­o­gy, rep­re­sent a his­toric oppor­tu­ni­ty to treat dis­eases on an unprece­dent­ed scale, alle­vi­ate pover­ty, defeat igno­rance, and elim­i­nate the great dis­par­i­ty between the rich and the poor that he con­tends has con­tributed to the cur­rent ​“clash of civ­i­liza­tions” that has pit­ted Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism against the West in gen­er­al and the Unit­ed States in particular.

Sacks, how­ev­er, argues that there is a real dan­ger that the mar­ket, left to its own devices, will con­tin­ue to con­cen­trate wealth into few­er and few­er hands. The result, Rab­bi Sacks writes, will leave, 

“Whole nations destitute…without sta­ble employ­ment, income or prospects. Envy, anger and the sheer sense of injus­tice are rich soil for the growth of protest, vio­lence and terror…The sub­sti­tu­tion of mar­ket price for moral val­ue ren­ders us inar­tic­u­late in the face of the ran­dom cru­el­ties of fate.” 

He con­cludes that although we have a glob­al econ­o­my, we do not as yet have a glob­al cul­ture, or a coher­ent vision of glob­al concern. 

Fram­ing his work with­in the con­text of Judaism, Sacks con­tends that the Torah has a great deal to offer toward a solu­tion to the present cri­sis. He argues that unbri­dled mar­ket cap­i­tal­ism that eschews moral con­cerns, as well as the con­cept of tzedakah, will only widen the gap between the rich and the poor and cre­ate fer­tile ground for the recruit­ment of ter­ror­ists. He notes that, in Jew­ish his­to­ry, God, for the Israelites, was active­ly con­cerned with uphold­ing the cause of the oppressed, and ​“lifts up those who are bowed down.” Rab­bi Sacks’ bril­liant chap­ters on edu­ca­tion, the envi­ron­ment and the con­cept of con­cil­i­a­tion as a blue­print for tikkun olam are all derived from Judaism. 

Although what Sacks writes makes a great deal of sense, he fails to present a prac­ti­cal way his ideas can be imple­ment­ed. Nev­er­the­less, the book should be required read­ing for those con­cerned with the present strug­gle between Islam and the West and the promis­es, but also the poten­tial threat, that mar­ket glob­al­iza­tion represent.