The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has called for bridges to be built between Jewish people and others to prevent antisemitism taking hold.
Speaking at Yad Vashem, Israel’s memorial to the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust, Welby said the museum’s art revealed “the depths of human evil”.
He said: “Within European culture, the root of all racism, I think, is found in antisemitism. It goes back more than 1,000 years in Europe. Within our Christian tradition, there has been century upon century of these terrible, terrible hatreds in which one people … [are] hated more specifically, more violently, more determinedly, more systematically than any other people.”
The Jewish people had advanced science, art, music and had founded economies. “You would have thought we would rise up together in gratitude,” he said. Now, with antisemitism on the rise, he added: “We must dedicate ourselves afresh … to building and maintaining bridges and friendships, understanding, tolerance, unity and peace.”
The leader of the global Anglican church is on a 12-day visit to the Holy Land. He was accompanied to Yad Vashem, near Jerusalem, by the UK’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, who also called for “bridges of understanding, of tolerance, of hope, of unity and of peace”.
Earlier the two faith leaders prayed together at the Western Wall, the religious site revered by Jews. Afterwards, Mirvis said: “I would so love to send a message of hope back through the annals of history – to Clifford’s Tower in York [where 150 Jews were massacred in 1190], to the medieval communities who endured the scourge of the blood libel and to those whose lives were devastated by the Crusades – to let them know that a chief rabbi and an archbishop of Canterbury would one day pray alongside one another, as close friends, in the holy city of Jerusalem.”
Welby also visited the Dome of the Rock, one of the most important sites in the Islamic faith, and other holy places. Later, he was due to lead prayers for Hannah Bladon, the British student who was killed in a knife attack in Jerusalem last month.
