News / Yoni Jesner Memorial Mirvis and Welby lament ‘vanishing of religion from our public squares’

by Jenni Frazer @JenniFrazer

The Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, has praised the Archbishop of Canterbury as “one of our greatest friends, a friend of Jews and of Judaism”.

Archbishop Welby, meanwhile, spoke of actions taken in Israel “about which I have heard both the Board of Deputies and the chief rabbi express concern”. Recently this had been the vandalism of Christian graves in Jerusalem. The condemnation of such actions was “hugely appreciated”, said Welby, adding that the Jerusalem church leaders believed such immediate responses helped them in their relationship with Israeli authorities.

The two men were in conversation this week to mark the 20th anniversary of the death of a Glasgow Jewish student, Yoni Jesner, killed in a suicide bombing in Israel in September 2002.

In an often emotional discussion, moderated by journalist Jonathan Freedland, Welby said he was “privileged” to take part in the memorial for Jesner, and was aware that there would be “families in Israel” currently mourning in the same way the Jesner family had 20 years before.

Both religious leaders were asked what were the most difficult conversations they had. The archbishop said the most pressing problem was not with people of other faiths, but with “religious illiteracy’”.

This sentiment was echoed by the Chief Rabbi, who said he lamented “the marginalisation of religion today, to some extent the vanishing of religion from the public square”.

Friends for more than 10 years, the two men pulled no punches when it came to dis- cussing how religious belief played out in public. Chief Rabbi Mirvis recalled “the way in which Tony Blair ‘didn’t do God’, his momentous speech in parliament prior to sending British troops o to fight in Iraq. In his prepared script, he was going to conclude, ‘May God bless you’, and it was taken out by his advisers.”

Challenged by Freedland to say how far they might go in expressing controversial views on something like BBC Radio’s Thought for the Day, the two men gently teased each other over their contributions. “I wish I could do it like you,” Welby told Mirvis, who responded that he had enjoyed the archbishop’s message a few days before. “Well, if you swing the bat enough, you’re bound to hit the ball occasionally,” joked the archbishop.

More seriously, the chief rabbi said that while it was possible to be a crowd-pleaser, it was more important to deliver a spiritual message to encourage people to lead better lives — “Otherwise why are we in the positions we are?”

Welby described antisem- itism as “the taproot of all racism in European society”.

He recalled a phone conversation with the chief rabbi before the 2019 election in which Mirvis declared his intention to speak out about what was happening in the Labour Party. “I said immediately, I will support you,” Welby recalled. “I know my history: you have to cut these things o straight away, because if you don’t, they become overwhelming.”