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tolerance of Jews, and other minority communities in Scotland, is not yet won – far from it. The Lord Advocate tells me that he has learned a couple of interesting things on his visit to the synagogue.

First, Scotland is the only country in Europe that has never had anti-Semitic laws and, second, there was a time when Scottish universities were the only universities in Europe that did not require students to take an oath on the Christian Bible.

On the other hand, Howard Brodie, a volunteer at the Jewish archives centre, tells me of the manifestations of anti-Semitism he has seen: name-calling and abuse on the street, for example; he also says anti-Semitic comments are on social media all the time. And then there’s the furore in the Labour Party, which has been accused of being institutionally anti-Semitic.

Brodie says it is a recent problem with the left-wing and the Momentum movement in particular and says he wouldn’t vote for Labour if it was the last party on Earth. “Not in a million years,” he says for emphasis. When I ask Wolffe for his views on the matter, he says he can’t comment on Labour because of his position as Lord Advocate, but he acknowledges that there is still a problem with anti-Semitism in Scotland.

I suggest to Wolffe that he must also understand that many hate crimes – perhaps most of them – are never reported to the police: the shouts in the streets, the jibes on social media.

“As prosecutors we can only deal with cases that are reported to us, and where there is evidence,” he says. “It’s important that we deal with the cases that we can deal with firmly because I’d like to think that does send a signal about what’s not acceptable in our society and it also sends a signal that the law has a part to play in underpinning a tolerant society in which difference is valued.”

Wolffe tells me that he isn’t really into psychologising, but I ask him if he can see where this view on tolerance might have come from, and whether there’s a direct line from his father’s history.

Antony Wolffe was interned during the Second World War, first on the Isle of Man and then in Canada, where the conditions were spartan, but he never held it against Britain. As far as he was concerned, the UK was the country that offered him refuge in the 1930s and a place where he found the freedom and tolerance that was being taken away by force in Germany. It probably helped to make him a welcoming and open person.

“My sister said a nice thing about my father and the fact that he would say things twice,” says Wolffe. “He would start a sentence, ‘Well, well,’ and if someone came into the house, he would say, ‘Welcome, welcome,’ and my sister believed saying it twice was reflective of his character and his welcoming nature.”