Rabbi Andrea’s Sermon 16th May / 29th Iyar 5786
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Count me in - but not without Israel
At the Pesach Seder I always try to have representatives of other religions with us, such as my
friend Archdeacon Martin Lloyd Williams, who also did us the honour of visiting us at Chanukah.
I am proud, too, to have welcomed young people from a mosque during the week of Sukkot in
I believe deeply in the importance of interfaith dialogue.
I was one of the founders of Faith in Action: a network bringing together people of different
faiths, united by the desire to contribute to making our city a more just place, through action.
I believe in interfaith dialogue at a personal level: invitations to celebrate one another’s festivals,
friendships, shared meals, and mutual hospitality. And I also believe in it at an institutional level:
through associations, networks, and public initiatives. As a Jew living in England, I know how important it is to build relationships with the Muslim schoolfriends of my children. This matters not only because vulnerable minorities need alliances to defend our shared rights, for example, circumcision, or kosher and halal slaughter. Of course, that matters. But even more important are the simple human things: celebrating festivals together, facing the
challenges of parenthood together, and helping our children grow up, find confidence, and
navigate adolescence.
As a Zionist, I know that peace in the Middle East cannot be achieved by leaving religion out of the conversation. That land is holy to us, and it is holy to other religions too. Secular politics, the kind of nationalism influenced by the Soviet Union, has failed. We must seek common ground between religions. As a Zionist, I am also proud that, over the decades in which Netanyahu has been one of the dominant figures in Israeli politics, the number of mosques in Israel has grown dramatically.
From fewer than 80 in 1988 to more than 400 in 2016. There are more Muslims living in Israel than there are Jews in the entire Arab world. And I consider it a sign of progress that an Arab party was able to become part of an Israeli governing coalition.
I see myself walking in the steps of Menachem Froman that extraordinary rabbi of the settlement
of Tekoa, highly respected by Muslim leaders. Froman taught that the Land of Israel does not belong to us; rather, we Jews belong to the Land of Israel. Nationalism without religion, without humility, and without hope becomes possessive. It cheapens itself into a politics of control, the desire to control another people. The fascist believes he owns the Land of Israel; the Zionist knows that the people of Israel belong to the land. This is a fundamental difference.
When I was a rabbinic student, between 2010 and 2012, I was part of the steering committee
of Jewish-Christian-Muslim Week in Germany. Rabbinic students like me would meet young
Muslims involved in the life of their mosques, together with student ministers and Catholic
priests, for a week of study and discussion, tackling difficult subjects, for example our attitude
towards violence. It was a stimulating environment: a whole week of small-group meetings, of text study: and there really is a great deal in the Qur’an that seems to come from our Midrashim, and even group analysis. There, I learnt what interfaith dialogue is about.
At the JCM, we Jews noticed that one could talk about almost everything, except two subjects.
With the Christians, one could not talk about sex. With the Muslims, one could not talk about
the Middle East. In a certain sense, that was fine with me — with us.
Sexuality is a personal matter, and conversations can be opened while still respecting the right
to privacy. And as for the Middle East, no sensible person could imagine that sharing a plate of hummus between Jews and Muslims would have an international impact. I realise that I am speaking in the past tense. We now live in a different time.
Sexual identity is now asserted in the public square, often aggressively, as a weapon against
patriarchy; and conversely, we are all under pressure to identify traces of patriarchy to be
dismantled, in every moment of daily life, even the most private.
And as for the connection between hummus and international politics — well, the boycott of
Israeli products, including hummus, has become a real obsession. It really does seem as though the Middle East conflict is to be decided here. At the Jewish-Christian-Muslim conference we used to say: “We are not here to solve the Middle East conflict. There are so many other things we can do together” We have said it in our town, too. But those days are gone.
Now it seems to be compulsory, for Jews who wish to enter the religious community of
interfaith dialogue, to distance themselves from Israel, to distance themselves from Zionism,
and to denounce Israel’s crimes, first and foremost, apparently, the crime of forcing the
Palestinians into armed resistance. In relations between Jews and Muslims, the conflict in the Middle East is no longer the elephant in the room, the thing everyone knows is there but tries to avoid by looking elsewhere. It has become the only subject people talk about
The condemnation of Israel has become the compulsory rite of passage for those Jews who
wish to maintain relations with the Islamic world. In many interfaith spaces, there seems to be room for Jews only if we are prepared to make a painful renunciation, for me, unacceptable: a renunciation of Zionism, of the State of Israel, and of the central place that Israel has in contemporary Jewish life This is a problem for me. I am convinced that my survival is inseparable from the existence of the State of Israel, from the permanence of a Jewish majority in the Land of Israel.
I belong to the first generation of Jews free to access the holiest places of the Jewish faith, a
freedom denied before the reunification of Jerusalem. In our own city, I have seen trustees of Faith in Action take part in anti-Israel demonstrations. Not demonstrations calling on Israel to respect the project of two peoples and two States, a project that I personally continue to support. Demonstrations alongside political forces that call for the cancellation of Israel.
It hurts deeply to hear statements against antisemitism, only then to realise that at the
commemorations of the massacre of 7 October, which, let us remember, were held every single
day, representatives of the Catholic and Anglican churches were present, but not representatives
of other faiths. I say this, and I repeat it: in the Middle East, religion must be part of the solution, not only part of the problem.
And if we have to talk about the Middle East here, then why not acknowledge that part of the
anti-Israel rhetoric currently circulating is drawn straight from the antisemitic repertoire,
especially in its Islamist variety? Legends about dogs trained to rape Palestinians; legends about parties and orgies organised by filthy Jews in order to blackmail the world’s elites. These are complete nonsense. The paedophile Epstein was an American Jewish Democrat, a
supporter of the two-state solution, not of Zionist domination over the entire Middle East.
And yet these are the things circulating on social media and not a single Muslim voice is raised
to say that they are lies. And so, sadly, I have to acknowledge that the situation opened up by the massacre of 7 October has not only made things difficult, but has also shattered many of the certainties I thought I had built up, first and foremost, the sincerity of those who declare that they will stand by us Jews when we are attacked. That is why I have resigned, irrevocably, as a trustee of Faith in Action. This week we begin the Book of Numbers, Sefer Bamidbar.
And it begins, famously, with a census. The Israelites are counted: tribe by tribe, family by
family, name by name. But the Torah does not count anonymous individuals. It does not count souls stripped of memory, origin, tribe. Each person is counted precisely as part of a people, part of a camp, and part of a covenant moving towards the Land of Israel. That, for me, is the lesson. I am willing to be counted. I want to be counted among those who believe in dialogue, friendship, hospitality and the possibility of building a better city together.
But I cannot be counted by leaving part of myself outside the camp. I cannot be counted as a Jew only if I leave behind my peoplehood, my Zionism, my attachment to the State of Israel. I cannot enter the tent of dialogue by pretending that the road to the Promised Land is not part
of the Jewish story. In Bamidbar, each tribe has its own place around the Mishkan. Unity is not achieved by erasing difference. The camp of Israel is ordered precisely because each tribe brings its own flag, its own history
That is the kind of dialogue I still believe in: not a dialogue that asks anyone to disappear, but a
dialogue in which each of us comes honestly, with our whole selves and with our hopes.
And so, I remain committed to dialogue. But I cannot remain in a space where being counted
requires me to be diminished.
I will continue to seek friendship with people of other faiths. I will continue to open my door,
share my table, celebrate festivals, study texts, and work for justice wherever I can. But I will do so as a Jew, as a rabbi, as a Zionist, as someone bound to the people of Israel and to the Land of Israel. Because in the Torah, to be counted is not to become less than oneself. To be counted is to stand, fully and truthfully, in one’s place.
Further Reading
Reflections similar to the ones offered here, though applied mainly to Jewish-Christian dialogue, can be found in Jon D. Levenson, “How Not to Conduct Jewish-Christian Dialogue,” Commentary, 2001, and in Edward Kessler, “Theology of the Land in Judaism and Its Implications for Jewish-Christian Relations,” JCRelations.net, 2006:
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On Jewish, Christian, and Muslim encounter in the Holy Land, see Yossi Klein Halevi, At the Entrance to the Garden of Eden: A Jew’s Search for God with Christians and Muslims in the Holy Land, HarperCollins, 2001.
On the present crisis in Jewish-Muslim relations after 7 October, see Simon Kupfer, “Interfaith Dialogue Requires More Than Words,” Times of Israel Blogs, 2025:
For essential works on contemporary antisemitism, see David Hirsh, Contemporary Left Antisemitism, Routledge, 2018; and Robert S. Wistrich, A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad, Random House, 2010.
The most important book by Rabbi Menachem Froman is Sokhaki Aretz: Shalom, Am,
Adamah Yedot Ahronoth, 2014.
In English, see Tchiya Froman, “The Shekhinahas a Tool for Political Critique: The Mystico-Political Thought of Rabbi Menachem Froman,” The Lehrhaus,:2025
On Islamist antisemitism, see Bassam Tibi, “From Sayyid Qutb to Hamas: The Middle East Conflict and the Islamization of Antisemitism,” Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Antisemitism, 2010; and Ronald L. Nettler, “Islamic Archetypes of the Jews: Then and Now,” in Robert S. Wistrich, ed., Anti-Zionism and Anti-Semitism in the Contemporary World, Macmillan, 1990. On the situation in the United Kingdom, see the Commission for Countering Extremism, Islamist Antisemitism: A Neglected Hate, 2025: https://counterextremism.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/CEG-Islamist-Antisemitism-A-Neglected-Hate.pdf
For a definition of Islamism, and for the important distinction between Islam as a religion and Islamism as a political ideology, see Bassam Tibi, Islamism and Islam, Yale University Press, 2012.
On the Soviet and Stalinist origins of contemporary antisemitic anti-Zionist discourse, see Izabella Tabarovsky, “Soviet Conspiracist Antizionism in Contemporary Left-Wing Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, 2022
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