The Great Partnership: Science, Religion, and the Search for Meaning

Sacks (chief rabbi, United Hebrew Congregations of Great Britain & the Commonwealth), a leading voice in contemporary Judaism and public policy, here presents a broad-minded approach to problems of religion in public life, offering profound answers that speak to all faith traditions. Chapters address such matters as the problem of evil, faith as a source of social cohesion, and the relationship between religion and science. The author finds that much of the tension between religion and science involves conflict between left-brain analytic thinking and right-brain integrative thinking, expressed, respectively, through Greek and Hebraic intellectual traditions and lauds the “wondrous achievement” of its synthesis in Western civilization. Sacks’s call for a “partnership [of the secular and religious] in the work of redemption” supports his viewpoint that in faith readers can find a source of meaning and human dignity.