The rabbi’s lessons from Lebanon

IT IS not every day the Grand Mufti of Tripoli, Lebanon — where security forces have clashed with Islamist militants in recent years — meets a rabbi from London.

And it is not every day he admits to doing so on social media.

But, after meeting Rabbi Alex Goldberg — the first rabbi to travel to the city since the 1970s — Mufti Sheikh Malek Shaar went on Facebook to speak positively about his meeting with “Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews and Baha’is”.

As well as the risk Rabbi Goldberg faced in travelling to a city the Foreign Office warns against visiting, there was also a risk for Muslim leaders to admit publicly to meeting someone Jewish.

The visit, which took place earlier this month, was an opportunity for Rabbi Goldberg, a Surrey University chaplain and chief executive of the Carob Tree Project, to find out more about how Catholic, Orthodox, Druze, Sunni and Alawite leaders are working together in the city.

Flanked by soldiers during his visit, which was organised by interfaith group the Lokahi Foundation, the rabbi was given “a tonne of safety advice” before he travelled.

He was told to remove the barcode from his passport that showed he had travelled to Israel, which would have barred his entry to Lebanon.

But that was not enough to deter Rabbi Goldberg, who went there to “make friends and not history” and pointed out that “fighting still erupts between militants from the Alawite Shia and Sunni communities.”