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January 31, 2008

The BBC on the persecution of Bahais in Iran

The BBC on persecution of Bahais in Iran.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7215043.stm

Is it just me, or could the BBC have said something in this report about the way that Israel, by contrast to Iran, looks after and cherishes its Bahai population?

After all, the BBC have included a picture of the Bahai centre in Haifa in their report.

And it's worth visiting, believe me.

How to teach English in Haifa, Siberian style!

Just been teaching English to my young friend from Siberia: her text book of choice, Shakespeare's Sonnets, no kidding!

So here is Sonnet Number One, with commentary:

http://www.shakespeares-sonnets.com/icomm.htm

Just goes to show that engineers really can think outside the box. First there was

Wittgenstein

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/

My goodness, the guy actually studied aeronautical engineering at Manchester University!

and then my father-in-law, who can also recite reams of poetry by heart,

and then ... Olga from Omsk!

What is stranger, to be paid on time in Israel, or to find out that the former student reporter for the Jewish Chronicle is now living in Haifa

The weather has eased up somewhat, after thunder and lightning last night. It's still cold, but sunny outside, as I sat for the first time in the Education Dept cafeteria of Haifa University, taking in the warmth and the westerly view of the sea and the hills.

I then handed in some editing I'd done for one of the professors, not only in English this time, but for the first time in Hebrew, as well!

And I was absolutely gob-smacked to be paid straight away, upfront. Working for big companies and institutions is a nightmare out here. Payment is tied up with bureaucracy, and finance departments are a law unto themselves. But there is always the completely honest and straight-forward individual, such as this guy (who shall not be named - wouldn't want him to be embarrassed or to lose street cred), which somewhat makes up for the others.

Plus, I had the opportunity to browse through last week's Jewish Chronicle, thoughtfully brought back from London by a friend. And I found out that the JC journalist who I'd contacted in Cambridge (regarding the imminent visit to the university of Cambridge of a Haifa researcher who'll be there for four months) is now actually resident in Israel and is writing for the JC from here. Some say, he's even living in the Haifa vicinity.

http://www.thejc.com/Home.aspx?ParentId=m86s96&SecId=96

So if anyone knows the whereabouts and e-mail contact for Nathan Jeffay, formerly of Cambridge and now apparently of Haifa, please let me know.

http://www.engageonline.org.uk/blog/article.php?id=771

BBC Radio 4's The Moral Maze: one of my favourite radio programmes

The Moral Maze resumed again on BBC Radio 4 last night. And it was good to listen, whilst accompanied by the thunder and lightening which was pounding against the fragile outside of my little place on top of Mount Carmel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/religion/moralmaze.shtml

Professor John Harris of Manchester University was particularly impressive on the need to attend to the patient in the moment and not be swayed by external factors, such as obesity, tendency to drink, or smoking habits. Mind you, he has been somewhat controversial on other occasions:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/nbaby25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixhome.html

The health service in Israel is differently run than the one in Britain. For a start, it is semi private. You pay a very small amount per month (depending on age) to one of four medical insurance schemes, and then the quivalent of about 75 p for each quarter in which you see your individual doctor. When we visited the country on sabbatical 25 years ago, Maccabi, the one I'm in, didn't even exist.

http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Modern%20History/Israel%20at%2050/The%20Health%20Care%20System%20in%20Israel-%20An%20Historical%20Pe

There's also a Maccabi medical centre in the shopping centre near where I live. This is very convenient and only a twenty-minute walk or a very short bus ride. This shouldn't need saying, but of course the Israeli health service is open to all, regardless of religion, ethnicity, colour or creed. In addition, some of the major personnel at Israel's hospitals are Christian or Muslim Arabs. Again, that shouldn't need saying, but in light of all the boycott attempts ....

I find Israelis to be far more concerned about their health than people in Britain. They believe fervently in preventative medicine. I think my doctor doesn't quite understand my reluctance to go for every check-up on offer under the sun.

On the whole, though, medicine must be very good here, because I've never met as many people approaching their 100th birthdays. But that could also be to do with the sea air, exercise regime for pensioners and the fact above all that children in Israel, many pensioners themselves, take a great deal of care of their very elderly parents.

January 30, 2008

The former head of the Anglican Church in Jerusalem, who wanted to divest Israel of her assests is now himself being accused of alleged fraud by his own diocese

In the meantime, the former Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Riah, who caused no end of trouble for Jewish-Christian relations worldwide, and sucessfully encouraged the Feburary 2006 Anglican Synod to vote in favour of divesting from Israel:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2028504,00.html

has now been making trouble for his successor, Bishop Suheil:

http://www.religiousintelligence.com/news/?NewsID=1521

I met the current Anglican Bishop of Jerusalem, Suheil, last summer at St. George's Anglican Cathedral, Jerusalem. He chatted with me for an hour and was graciousness itself.

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/05/i_am_invited_to.html

I gave a couple of Biblical Hebrew lessons to members of his staff and later learned how excited they were that Bishop Suheil had also organised lessons in Modern Hebrew for them:

I've also visited Nazareth and heard what Anglican clergy there had to say about Bishop Riah. I was also shown the eye-sore which is the school named after the former Anglican Bishop and which seems to be the centre of the scandal he's got himself into.

Bishop Riah hates the Hebrew Bible and thinks that Jews are irrelevant to the Church of England, to Jesus, and to the State of Israel. In fact, he seems to think that we're basically the devil incarnate:

http://www.usislam.org/debate/bishopriah.htm

Bishop Suheil is quiet, thoughtful and gracious, and obviously thinks that Hebrew of both the Biblical and modern variety have their place. He has also prayed for the peace of all the citizens of Israel and the surrounding areas:

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/81808_84974_ENG_HTM.htm

Most important, he backed Lambeth Palace and the two Chief Rabbis of Israel in their establishing of the Commission of Anglican and Jewish leaders, and recently attended one of their meetings in Jerusalem:

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=43222

Many in Israel think that Bishop Suheil is best thing to have happened to the local Church of England in a very very long time and represents a much needed breath of fresh air.

On a karmic level, it's somewhat ironic to see that the same Bishop Riah who advocated, and I quote: 'morally responsible investment' (i.e. denuding Jewish Israel of its assests), is now himself the subject of 'litigation brought by the diocese ... for fraud'.

Quite quite delicious!!

Can't wait to see what Ruth Gledhill of The Times makes of this one!

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2006/02/caterpillar_cri.html

And sure enough, Ruth has now blogged on the story here:

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/01/call-for-bishop.html

Archbishop of Canterbury last night: ... the foundational form of religious hatred ... in our culture has been and remains anti-Semitism

Wiener Library

James Callaghan Memorial Lecture

29th January 2008


Lambeth Palace has just sent me the full transcript of the Wiener Lecture given by the Archbishop of Canterbury last night at the House of Lords. It is entitled 'Religious Hatred and Religious Offence'.

http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1561

The lecture is both thoughtful and thought-provoking. Although the main subject of concern is whether to repeal the blasphemy laws, the Archbishop has obviously thought long and hard about what it is to be the 'other' in society. He concludes that dominant cultures have a duty to understand the position of minorities in their midst and takes the Jewish people as the prototype of this.

The lecture should of course be read in full, but these are the extracts specifically pertaining to the Jewish position and role in Christian societies. What the Archbishop says is even more relevant today, when so many, including atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, pontificate on their own infantile view of the 'Old Testament' for instance, often coupling these statements with references to the myth of 'Jewish power'. 

What follows are the seminal points made by the ABC on antisemitism and its role in society today:

[W]e have just marked marking Holocaust Memorial Day: there is a sense in which the foundational form of religious hatred and religious offence in our culture has been and remains anti-Semitism.  Its history in

Europe

shows how the slippage can occur from abusive words and images to assumptions about the dangers posed by a community stigmatised as perpetual outsiders to actions designed to remove them for good.  The lethal mixture of a Christian tradition of anti-Jewish polemic and routine humiliation – interspersed with murderous outbreaks of popular violence – and a post-Christian, pseudo-scientific philosophy of race illustrates how religious hatred can be generated by both intra-religious and secular forces; one of the most demanding aspects of trying to make sense of this set of problems around religious offence is the clarifying of where the border lies between criticism and contempt and between contempt and violence.  The history of anti-Semitism does not suggest that we shall find a comfortingly clear answer.

This next is the ABC on the anti-Judaism of the New Testament. I would add that I'm not sure that the Judaisms of the time constituted 'an entrenched religio-political establishment'. I should have thought that the Romans were in power, and that the Jewish people were both disintegrating and forging a new 'myth' at the time - the one which replaced sacrifice by prayer and the Temple by learning, study and doing good deeds. But what the ABC says about Christianity as a power lording it over 'vulnerable' Jews is spot on, and, coming from him (the second most powerful figure in today's Britain, after the Queen) absolutely amazing.

He is also to be thanked for pointing out the way the term 'Zionism' has been used indiscriminately as a term of abuse against us. And he is quite right to say that it is not only 'certain Muslims' who use this epithet. No, it's mainly people on the left, Guardian and Independent readers, self-hating Jews and the like, who have cottoned on to the street cred it gives them with their peers, as well as the great self satisfaction it affords them - as I said in a previous blog, the nearest the British get to fox hunting, which is now banned.

Yet again, we should remember some of the history of anti-Semitism. Some of the passionate polemic against Jewish people in the New Testament reflects a situation in which Christian groups were still small and vulnerable over against an entrenched religio-political establishment; but the language is repeated and intensified when the Church is no longer a minority and when Jews have become more vulnerable than ever.  It is part of the pathology of anti-Semitism (as of other irrational group prejudices) that it needs to work with a myth of an apparent minority which is in fact secretly powerful and omnipresent.  It is the pattern we see in the workings of the Spanish Inquisition, searching everywhere for Jewish converts who might be backsliding; it is the myth of the Elders of Zion and comparable fantasies of plots for world domination; it is the indiscriminate attribution (not only by certain Muslims) of all the evils of the Western world to an indeterminate ‘Zionism’.  A rhetoric shaped by particular circumstances has become so embedded that the actualities of power relations in the real world cannot touch it.  There are many instances where the habit of imagining oneself in terms of victimhood has become so entrenched that even one’s own power, felt and exercised, does not alter the mythology.

Then, the ABC, gets a bit more controversial. He uses the fact of anti-Semitism to look at other groups who've apparently been misunderstood by the leading culture. However, the Muslim and Sikh groups referred to reacted violently to this situation, leading to a favourable mention by the Queen, the Supreme Governor of the Church, during her Christmas Broadcast of that year, 2004. Whereas the Jews have never reacted violently, not even when they've been beaten up, and - accordingly - didn't warrant a mention at all - something that some of us found quite shocking at the time. We were, in fact, taken for granted, which some might say is a sign of contempt.

In recent years – even more than at the time of the Rushdie controversy – many commentators have fallen into the classic ‘anti-Semitic’ trap: Islam is perceived worldwide as an organised, coherent and omnipresent danger, and Islam as a local reality in the

United Kingdom

is seen exclusively through that prism.  If that is the world you inhabit, then something like The Satanic Verses or the Danish cartoons becomes a brave assertion of the right to attack the symbols of an oppressive global hegemony.

Now I recognise the qualifications that have to be entered at once.  Some anti-Muslim images or words (foolish or insulting as they may be) may well exhibit courage in a world where terrorist violence reaches across every national boundary and intimidation is more and more common; no-one will forget in a hurry the murder of Theo van Gogh in the Netherlands.  Likewise we can’t overlook the ways in which offence can be deliberately exaggerated for the purposes of fomenting greater violence (as was the case with the Danish cartoons, where some extremist groups circulated far more offensive images than those that had actually been published).  But what if we exercise a little imagination again?  What Webster describes as the insensitivity of an elite means that those who lack access to the subtleties of the English language, to the means of expressing their opinions in a public forum or to any living sense of being participants in their society know only that one of their most overpoweringly significant sources of identity is being held up to public scorn.  This feeling may be the result of misunderstanding or misinformation, it may even be in some cases linked to a failure or reluctance to take the opportunities that exist to move into a more visible role in the nation’s life, but it is real enough and part of a general conviction of being marginal and silenced.  It is not a good situation for a democratic society to be in.  The belief becomes entrenched among minorities that the majority in this society have decided to understand you and your faith exclusively in their terms. 

In the case of the bitter controversy in the Sikh community over the play Behzti in 2004, it was clear that many deeply intelligent members of the Sikh community in Britain were torn between the belief that the play would cement in the minds of audiences largely ignorant of the Sikh religion a distorting and negative set of images and the gloomy conviction that violent protest against the play would have exactly the same effect (c.f. Nash, pp. 34-6): very much a no-win situation.  Once again, there is the disconnection between the firm claim of an artistic establishment that protest against oppressive systems is justifiable, even imperative (and Behzti had identified a real and too-often buried concern among Sikh women), and the counter-claim that this kind of representation of a religious culture in front of what was likely to be a fairly religiously illiterate audience would be experienced as a straightforward flexing of the muscles by a hostile, alien and resourceful power. 

But the second point is to do with what can sometimes underlie the thoughtlessness or cruelty.  The assumption of the naturalness of one’s own position is regularly associated with an experience of untroubled or uninterrupted access to the dominant discourse and means of communication in one’s society.  If I can say what I like, that is because I have the power and status to do so.  But that ought to impose the clear duty of considering, when I engage in any kind of debate, the relative position of my opponent or target in terms of their access to this dominant means and style of communication – the duty which the history of anti-Semitism so clearly shows European Christians neglecting over the centuries. 

I have intimated that I think the law could and should take this into consideration where ‘incitement to hatred’ is concerned; but it is again primarily a moral question, the requirement in a just society that all should have the same means to speak for themselves.  It can reasonably be argued that a powerful or dominant religious body has every chance of putting its own case, and that one might take with a pinch of salt any claim that it was being silenced by public criticism; but the sound of a prosperous and socially secure voice claiming unlimited freedom both to define and to condemn the beliefs of a minority grates on the ear.  Context is all.

Yes, context is all. And the ABC should be congratulated on yet another very insightful piece in honour of Holocaust Memorial Day.

However, what needs now to be addressed, and specifically in Britain, is the way that the Jewish community feels sidelined when the media and others deal more or less exclusively with the Muslim question, or sees things from one particular point of view. Examples are when the teaching of religion and even the Holocaust is skewed towards the Muslim point of view; when state schools provide prayer rooms only for Muslims and not others; and where censorship regarding Islam and Muslim culture abounds at British universities.

However, this is a start, and a very good start. And it would be a very brave person indeed, who would get down to the besetting problem now facing Britain - the attempt of one minority religion to take over all the others.

The Archbishop is probably the one to tackle this, because he has the intelligence, the integrity and the thoughtfulness to do so. Plus, this is his role. With a little help from his friends, I am sure that he will be the one to solve this most thorny of problems in the end.

I feel that this is a seminal moment in the history of religions in Britain.

   

                         

January 29, 2008

Welcome to sunny Haifa by the sea

Which part of Scotland is the focus of this weather forecast, do you think? Or might it even be Siberia, by any chance?

Read on:

Stormy weather and seas. flooding in ???? by the seafront. Trees may be blown down...

Snow from tonight moving south in all locations above 600 m. But right now, there is no serious precipitation here in xxxxxx. The sky even cleared up about an hour ago, although it is now grey and raining a little. Maybe higher in the atmosphere it is appearing as snow, but not down here - yet. Bitter wind.

That's what I love about Israel. People are good in an emergency. And that's what we have right now, weather-wise. My concerned friend sent me this from Jerusalem. Answers to the gaps:

a) ????? lower Haifa

b) xxxxx Jerusalem

No walk on the beach today, then! Although getting to the bank this morning was a Mary Poppins-like experience:

http://www.marypoppinsthemusical.co.uk/

But there's still the Technion to get to tonight for the repeat of Sunday's concert:

http://irenelancaster.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/01/the-exile-is-li.html

Is the Holocaust now Judenrein?

A superb post on Holocaust Memorial Day by Ruth Gledhill of The Times here:

http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2008/01/islam-neo-purit.html

It is truly remarkable that the Archbishop of Canterbury chose the venue in Liverpool to speak of the barbarity of much current Muslim theology. But maybe not so remarkable, after all. Maybe quite apt. Because if there is another Holocaust (and I use the term 'Holocaust' to mean what it's supposed to mean, i.e. the deliberate policy of the Nazis and their abettors to exterminate the entire Jewish people), then it will surely come in our day via the ideas of extreme Islam and their supporters, especially among the left-leaning chattering classes of Europe.

Why the need to define the Holocaust? This, which I've just received, from England of course, and wouldn't you know it, from Brent Council, no less. It's written to a concerned member of the public:

Thank you for your message concerning an article on Brent Holocaust Memorial Day which appeared in the January edition of the Brent magazine. I have been asked to respond to your concern.

I would like to reassure you that we take great care in the planning and publicising of Brent Holocaust Memorial Day, and to this end we work closely with a steering group that includes representatives of Jewish organisations.  The publicity and messages we send out are agreed with the steering group and also the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. The Trust themselves describe Holocaust Memorial Day as an event which: “commemorates the lives of those lost in the Holocaust”
and makes no direct reference that it was Jewish people who were the main victims.
  We aim to ensure that any editorial we are responsible for is entirely in keeping with the wording endorsed by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

I hope this resolves the matter to your satisfaction.

Yours sincerely

Cheryl Curling
Communications Manager
London Borough of Brent
cheryl.curling@brent.gov.uk
020 8937 1063

Wow! Shades of the 'banality of evil' there, and no mistake!. Talk about buck-passing!
http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2008/01/hannah-arendt-t.html

I think that this calls for an elucidation from the Holocaust Education Trust, pretty quickish, if they are not to lose complete credibility.

However, this sort of thing has been going on for ages, since 2001 in fact. No wonder the rabbi of our Manchester synagogue preached an entire sermon in 2005 in which he stated that HMD was nothing to do with us.

Throughout history others have wished to appropriate the Jewishness of our being - first it was the early Christians, with their 'new' testament, which would somehow replace ours. The 'Old' Testament was then redefined in a way now aped by atheist Richard Dawkins. As if God were an imbecile and his followers cretins. And the Oral Law didn't exist at all. Hitler was aware of the importance of Oral Law, though, as he spared the Karaites of Lithuania the fate of their fellow Jews, knowing full well that they were biblicists only and didn't hold with Jewish tradition. It's all there in the archives in Vilnius.

Then, it was the race or the 'blood'. This got going in Spain (where Jews lived in harmony with the Ancient Romans, well before the time of either the Christians or Muslims) and flowered in Nazi Germany. But blood libels and pogroms, as well as expulsions, actually started in England, culminating in 1290, when the expelled Jews were deliberately drowned in the sea.

In our own day, it's the Holocaust. 'What we're going through now in Israel', said an extremely wealthy Muslim translator, who had invited me to her home in the best part of Haifa, 'is like your Shoah. Hamas has got it just right'. I got out of there as fast as I could. I had just arrived and been told that Muslims in that area were particularly nice and conciliatory.

I had been used to such rubbish from Muslims in Britain, usually when they were bested in debate - those who had been attending HMD said that they wouldn't any more. And those who didn't attend it, and had no intention of ever starting, would go on about how Jews use the Holocaust to their own advantage. This is actually untrue. Most Jews are reluctant to draw attention to themselves in this way and in diaspora usually wait for others to look after them. This is the traditional way that the Jews of Britain have behaved, for instance.

But then you get this self-satisfied response from the Brent Councils of this worl and you really do wonder what's going on.

Could someone please enlighten me?

January 28, 2008

The Beatles invited to Israel to celebrate her 60th birthday

Meanwhile, i've just seen this on the BBC's Home Page:

Surviving Beatles invited to take part in Israel's 60th anniversary - May.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7213105.stm

The Beatles in Israel for Israel's 60th - now that would really be something. And yes, they are terribly popular here. I've only been teaching their music for the last four months to the kids in Jaffa, haven't I?

And taken the opportunity to tell them all about Liverpool and what it was like suddenly waking up in that town and finding England changed for ever in the early 60s.

Brilliant idea and would do such a great deal for relations between the two countries.

I remember hearing Paul sing this not so long ago in Manchester:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COMsKPeWAsw

The Independent must have seen my blog, as you'll see from the headline:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-lets-it-be-ndash-with-apology-for-banning-beatles-43-years-ago-775174.html

My family visited Israel for the first time in 1964, just before the Fab Four were apparently banned. I was a small child, but remember Israel as very austere, serious and a place where children were seen, but not heard. Family was all, as it is now, but then it was much more the conventional family as known to the Brits in the 50s, and which was beginning to disappear with the onset of Beatlemania in the Liverpool where I went to school.

If Holocaust Memorial Day can lead to a birthday visit to Israel by the Beatles, then who's not to say that there's a God in heaven and all's right with the world.

'The exile is like a human being. Just as human beings return to life, so Israel will return from exile'

It struck me when preparing the last in a series I'm teaching on Judaism and the Meaning of Life that the book we're using, The Elements of Judaism 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Elements-Judaism/dp/1852304022

states that there are three major events defining Judaism today and that these parallel the three major events of 1492.

In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain, in the year that the New World was discovered, and at about the same time as the first Hebrew book was printed (1475). The expelled Spanish Jews found a relatively secure period of residence under the Ottomans in the Land of Israel, especially in Sfat, Galillee, where Jewish mysticism was developed in new and exciting ways.

The author of Elements of Judaism (first published 1993) sees a contemporary 20th-21st century parallel to all four factors:

The cataclysm of Spain has been re-enacted, in yet more powerful form, in the Holocaust. The transition to a 'golden period' of Ottoman rule [from 1517-1917] is a pale precursor to the establishment of self-rule in the Jewish State. I believe it is not fanciful to equate the expansive climate triggered by the age of geographic discovery to that in our own day triggered by the exploration of space. And finally, the information technology revolution is having an impact on the dissemination of ideas which parallels that of printing in the fifteenth and sixteenth century.

So, the Holocaust, the State of Israel, space travel and IT would seem to be today's significant defining issues.

These ideas came to life yesterday through two key events that took place after each other in quick succession.

BBC Radio 4's Sunday Programme was devoted to Liverpool and Jews - specifically to Holocaust Memorial Day, as commemorated this year in Liverpool.  But more than this, the setting of Liverpool as the 2008 European City of Culture, as well as home to many Jews (including those of 100 years ago, who used it as a base for travelling further afield, for instance to the USA), served to combine a number of seminal issues facing Britain today in one of the most creative programmes ever produced by the network:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/sunday/

The Liverpool Jewish community is dwindling, but it was great to hear our old rabbi, Lionel Cofnas, with his somewhat terse sense of humour at Roseman's Deli. Rabbi Cofnas and his wife offered to look after our elder daughter when our younger one was born, all of 25 years ago. Then, when my mother died on a Shabbat at the other end of the country, he was more than helpful. And when our daughter had her bat mitzvah, he said some very fine words which were totally appropriate to her as a person.

The Liverpool Jewish community was and still is the most hospitable of all Jewish communities. It takes people to its heart in ways that are hard to express in writing. We spent a very happy 13 years there, but even then, many were leaving for the larger Anglo-Jewish communities, or for Israel.

But this programme did not merely celebrate both Liverpool and Jewishness. It also included an incisive item on the hate literature emanting from British mosques (based on authoritative research by Dr. Denis MacEoin of Newcastle University and his team).

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=490597&in_page_id=1770

The programme ended by interviewing the Archbishop of Canterbury, who I think is the first Church of England Archbishop to acknowledge on air that the Church contributed to the Holocaust, or at least set the seeds or conditions for the Holocaust to be perpetrated.

A pity that the Archbishop cannot acknowledge that the are indeed no-go areas for non-Muslims in England, or maybe, as he said, he simply hasn't any experience of them. But they do exist, as made abundantly clear to John Humphrys of the Today programme:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/09/24/do2405.xml

and

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3176455.ece

But the Archbishop was, again I think for the first time, spot on in his analysis of the problems facing contemporary Islam - its adherence to literal interpretations of the scriptural text and its divorce from analysis and interpretation - a science which in which it excelled in medieaval Persia and Spain, for instance, as I make clear in my own book on mediaeval hermeneutics:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Deconstructing-Bible-Abraham-Ezras-Introduction/dp/0415444446

This was truly a miraculous programme, and the producers should be warmly congratulated for every aspect of it.

But the moment it finished, I made my way to what I consider to be the Jewish future. This was to take part in a concert at the Haifa Technion, home to the doctors, engineers and scientists of the new Jewish homeland. Haifa Technion is one of Israel's leading centres for space exploration, IT - the very epitome of modernity, and yet also the home of one of the finest choirs and symphony orchestras in the country:

http://www.technion.ac.il/

Here we sang as we never had before, Borodin and Ramirez. The first is a pounding Russian opera, conducted with fervour by the Siberian-Israeli conductor, Leonty Wolf.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZliL3_IIFA

The second is a hauntingly beautiful Nativity cycle written by the Argentinian composer, Ramirez, based on folk motifs from all over the country. We were accompanied in this piece by an Argentinian-Israeli folk music ensemble.

The atmosphere was electric - the audience ecstatic - the costumes wonderful - and before that the Haifa Symphony Orchestra had played Dvorak and Tschaikovsky, as well as the Elgar Cello Concerto, which reminded me of Jacqueline du Pre in Jerusalem, 1967 and of all that is best about Britain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacqueline_du_Pr%C3%A9

But as I sang my favourite piece of all time, Ramirez' Pilgrimage (Perigrinacion)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdHKuT3WW5U&feature=related

I knew in my heart that as night turns to day:

The exile is like a human being. Just as a human being will return to life, so Israel will return from exile (Rashi on Talmud Sanhedrin 92)

And this is also the conclusion of The Elements of Judaism