Melchior woos Islam
ISRAEL’S FORMER diaspora affairs minister, Rabbi Michael Melchior, discussed plans to enlist religious leaders across the Middle East in the search for peace during a brief visit to London this week.
He said: “I am in conversation with the more radical forces. We are working on a strategic plan, including the Jewish and Muslim side. I hope we can do something dramatic in this area.
“I think that everybody would agree that if Islam – mainstream Islam, radical Islam – would accept peace with the state of Israel, then the whole map would look different.”
The ex-cabinet minister came to the UK at the invitation of the London office of the European Council for Foreign Relations, a pan-european think tank.
He was also due to address a meeting on Wednesday night of alternative Israel advocacy group Yachad, which is chaired by Daniel Reisel, a former student of Rabbi Melchior’s when he was Chief Rabbi of Norway.
Rabbi Melchior said: “I’m not talking only about among the Palestinians, but the whole of the Arab world. I have a network of contacts in the Gulf States, North Africa, Egypt, Jordan, which probably nobody else in thiscountryhas.”
Asked i f his initiative would i n c l u d e s y mpathisers with Hamas, for example, he said: “Everybody can jump to their own conclusions. I will, of course, not confirm or deny anything.”
Athough Rabbi Melchior’s name had cropped up as a possible successor to Lord Sacks as chief rabbi, he confirmed last week that he had not applied for the post and envisaged that his main work would be done from Israel.
But he has voiced worries about the impact of increasing religious polarisation in British Jewry, as elsewhere in the Jewish world.
“I have built a whole new school system in Israel around my philosophy, where very religious kids study together with very secular kids, not with the purpose of them becoming religious or becoming secular, but to build new Judaism around…what we have in common.
“I’m afraid of this, that people are not talking any more, appearing on each other’s forums any more. I feel the polarisation happening. Charedim cannot talk with Reform Jews and hardly anybody can talk with each other any more to build a Judaism together… In Israel, it is tearing us apart as a society.”
He said he feared what Jewish life would look like if Jews could unite only when confronting “catastrophes”.
British Jewish leaders faced some “tough decisions,” he said. “I hope they will find the wisdom.”