Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks |
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Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks |
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Yesterday in Bevis Marks, Britain's oldest synagogue in the heart of London, we held a special service to commemorate the 350th anniversary of the Jewish community in Britain. Today in parliament there'll be a debate about Anglo-Jewry's contribution to the life of the nation. And it's a story that has some bearing on current debates about multiculturalism and national identity.
The Jews who came here were almost all asylum seekers. First to arrive were the descendants of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492. My late father came here as a child fleeing from persecution in Poland. Others came as refugees from Czarist Russia and Nazi Germany.
They owed to Britain their freedom to live as Jews without fear; in many cases they owed it their lives. They loved this country and wanted to give something back in return. There's hardly an area of British life to which they haven't made a contribution. Yet a hundred years ago the same abuse today directed at other minorities was being said about Jews.
It takes time to integrate; sometimes three generations. But in truth, every ethnic and religious minority has given something to Britain, endowing it with a richness, a diversity, a buzz of creative energy it wouldn't have had otherwise. Great countries grow stronger by being open.
Like today, the 17th century was an age of high religious tension. Catholics and Protestants had been fighting each other across Europe. And the re-admission of Jews in 1656 marked the beginning of a new age of tolerance.
What made England then the leader of liberty in the modern world was that it knew who and what it was. It was the age of the King James Bible, Milton and John Locke. It was a Christian country but a tolerant one, and the Jews who came here were proud to be British and Jewish, knowing you could be both at the same time. What we need to do now is to strengthen our identity as a nation so that Jews, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims and others can feel pride in the British story that now embraces us all.
The best advice ever given to religious minorities was that of the prophet Jeremiah 26 centuries ago, when he told the Jews in Babylon: "Seek the welfare of the city to which you have been carried and pray to God on its behalf for if it prospers, you too will prosper." A diverse society will not be a divided society, if we bring our differences as contributions to the common good.
Copyright 2006 BBC