The Prince of Wales has paid tribute to former chief rabbi Lord Sacks, describing him as a leader whose “wisdom, scholarship and humanity were without equal”.

Lord Sacks died on Saturday aged 72.

He served as the chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, the figurehead of British Jews, for 22 years, stepping down in September 2013.

He was succeeded by the current chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.

Charles said in a statement: “It was with the most profound personal sorrow that I heard of the death of Rabbi Lord Sacks.

“With his passing, the Jewish community, our nation, and the entire world have lost a leader whose wisdom, scholarship and humanity were without equal.

“His immense learning spanned the sacred and the secular, and his prophetic voice spoke to our greatest challenges with unfailing insight and boundless compassion.

“His wise counsel was sought and appreciated by those of all faiths and none, and he will be missed more than words can say.

“Although Rabbi Lord Sacks’s death is a cause of the greatest possible sadness, we give thanks for the immeasurable contribution which – in the tradition of the most revered teachers of the Jewish people – he made to all our lives.

“I send my deepest condolences to his family.”

A statement on Lord Sacks’ Twitter page said he died on Saturday morning.

It read: “Baruch Dayan Ha’Emet. It is with the deepest sadness that we regret to inform you that Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (HaRav Ya’akov Zvi ben David Arieh z’’l) passed away early this morning, Saturday 7th November 2020 (Shabbat Kodesh 20th MarCheshvan 5781).”

Lord Sacks was an outspoken critic of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn amid the row over anti-Semitism in the party.

Current chief rabbi Mr Mirvis said the world had lost an “intellectual giant who had a transformative global impact”.

He added: “Rabbi Lord Sacks was an extraordinary ambassador for Judaism, helping many to understand and be proud of their heritage.”

Lord Sacks was also a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day.

Controller of BBC Radio 4 Mohit Bakaya said: “Rabbi Lord Sacks was a man of great intellect, humanity and warmth.”

Tributes were also paid to Lord Sacks by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who said: “His leadership had a profound impact on our whole country and across the world.”

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: “He was a towering intellect whose eloquence, insights and kindness reached well beyond the Jewish community.”

Monotheism means the indivisibility of God. This is not just the basis of Jewish theology, but of universal humanity.

When the Torah, in chapter one, teaches that every human being is created in God’s image, it leaves no place for the notion of ‘children of a lesser God’. There exists no one who doesn’t matter, whose life is less important than anyone else’s. Black lives matter; God is the ‘life of all life’, ‘God of all flesh’.

The shocking and cruel death of George Floyd at the hands of a policeman, and the racism, contempt and injustice it has highlighted, shock our societies and souls. The violence which has followed is frightening. But the vast majority of protesters and protests have been peaceful and courageous, and how and by whom the destruction has been manipulated remains complex, sinister and opaque. The record of disdain from the highest office has inflamed the land and disgraces the history of often brave American leadership.

Reverend Anthony Jackson, whose grandfather founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference together with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, addressed the Jewish community in the columns of The Forward. What we need from you, he wrote, is to help us put an end the murder of innocent Blacks with the exact same fervor, dedication and commitment that you show towards preserving and defending your own families, that you show for Israel…. We need you to understand that Blacks and Jews are in this together; white racists view you as the N-word, too. We need you to embrace Blacks as absolute equals. Jews have used their influence to make a difference in society… We need you to use it again. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel once said, “The Black church is the salvation of Judaism.” We need each other.

Rev Jackson’s words remind me of the line I’ve italicised line in Dan Pagis’s searing Holocaust poem

No. no, they were created in the image

Uniforms, jackboots…

As for me, I had a different creator…

Judaism knows of no such entity as a ‘different creator’ and no such human being as someone with lesser rights. There are no geographical, racial, religious or gender limits to our equality before God as understood, and as should be practised, in Judaism.

But that is not the reality we witness in our societies. We are not at liberty to do nothing about it. We cannot limit ourselves to idle outrage. Examining prejudice in our own minds, communities and conduct is not comfortable, but, as was said in our synagogue just before lockdown, acknowledging and entering the zone of our discomfort is an essential first step.

Just as God’s oneness underlies the equality of all human beings, so it informs the interconnection of all of nature. If God is within all life, if Ruach Elokim, God’s spirit, breathes in all creation, then no species, forest or river is merely dispensable.

Here again, whatever this may say to us theologically, it means everything practically. The very future of life on our planet depends on the realisation that we and all of nature are interconnected. Today is World Environment Day, instituted by the United Nations in 1974. Interestingly, the date has a second name, ‘People’s Day’, because our own future, our children’s lives, depend on how we now act.

Indifference is no option: we must waste less, plant more, cherish this earth. For me, this concern, this passion, migrated long ago from my head to my soul; it’s a terror, a hope, a split vision: the world as arid and bleak, the world as wonder and beauty.

Though seemingly separate issues, how we behave to each other and how we treat nature are united within the prophetic call for justice and humility. We have no right to conduct ourselves as superior, neither to one another whatever our colour, nor towards nature, nor towards God, who weeps in our soul at every outrage and abuse.

Romanian police were investigating vandalism at the childhood home of Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, which was painted with anti-Semitic graffiti.

Wiesel, an activist and writer, was born in the northwestern Romanian town of Sighetu Marmatiei. His family was deported to Auschwitz, where his mother and one of his sisters died. Wiesel and his father were later taken to Buchenwald, where his father died.

Wiesel survived to become an academic, a writer and political activist. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.

His house in Sighetu Marmatiei, a protected building, was vandalised with anti-Semitic graffiti written in red paint on Friday night.

“At present, a police investigation is ongoing to identify the authors and press criminal charges,” the county council said in a statement. “There are surveillance cameras in the area and the images will be analysed by the police, who already have a ring of suspects.”

The Israeli embassy thanked local authorities for promptly removing the messages and said it hoped those responsible would be punished as soon as possible.

According to a 2004 report by a commission headed by Wiesel, between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews and thousands of Roma were killed by civilian and military authorities in Romania and areas they controlled during the war.

Romania was an ally of Nazi Germany until August 1944, when it changed sides. Much of the Jewish property seized during the war was later nationalised by the communist dictatorship that followed.

Romania has only in recent years begun to come to terms with its role in the extermination of Jews, admitting for the first time in 2003 that it took part. Sensitivity towards the Holocaust and knowledge of it remain patchy.

President Donald Trump will visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, the White House said on Monday amid controversy in Israel over reported comments by a U.S. diplomat that the wall was in the occupied West Bank.

Trump will say a prayer at the Western Wall, national security adviser H.R. McMaster said, as well as pay a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, considered by Christians to be the site of Jesus’ tomb.

The wall, representing the remains of the Jewish Second Temple, sits on territory Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war and has been a flashpoint of violence in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Israel will be the second stop on Trump’s first foreign trip, following Saudi Arabia. The Republican president will meet with Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

The announcement of Trump’s visit to the Jewish holy site came amid the controversy in Israel over a report that a U.S. diplomat preparing Trump’s visit referred to the Western Wall as being part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Israel’s Channel 2 reported that during a planning meeting between U.S. and Israeli officials, the Israelis were told that Trump’s visit to the wall was private, Israel did not have jurisdiction in the area and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not welcome to accompany Trump there.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem as its indivisible capital, a claim that is not recognized internationally.

An official in Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel has contacted Washington about the matter.

Asked about the matter, a White House official told Reuters on Tuesday: “These comments were not authorized by the White House. They do not reflect the U.S. position and certainly not the president’s position.”

McMaster sidestepped questions on Tuesday about whether the Trump administration considers the Western Wall part of Israel.

Dear Community,

Our synagogue received three unusual Chanukkah cards last week. They each begin

Dear Jewish Community,

I send this message to you as a Muslim. I share with you the celebration of spiritual light that opposes the darkness of religious hatred.

Each concludes ‘Your Muslim neighbour’ and carries a personal signature.

The Joseph Interfaith Foundation, established by Mehri Niknam, describes the project as giving ‘the chance to individual Muslims who want to extend a hand of friendship towards the Jewish community through a safe forum’.

The adjective ‘safe’ stands in sorry contrast to the noun ‘friendship’; it’s a sad world where we need ‘safe’ ways to show friendship. But few would deny that such is the case. I just received an email from a friend which closed not with our customary ‘see you soon,’ but with ‘frightening world’. It’s true.

The less safe the world, the more it matters to work at the relationships between faiths. The Council of Christians and Jews (CCJ) began amidst the worst persecution of Jews in history. Its terms were agreed in March 1942 under the chairmanship of William Temple, then nominee for Archbishop of Canterbury. Its key objectives were ‘To check and combat religious and racial intolerance’ and ‘To promote mutual understanding and goodwill between Christians and Jews in all sections of the community’. This Shabbat we are welcoming Bishop Michael Ipgrave, the current Chairman of the CCJ, to our community.

Later in the war Archbishop Temple addressed the Hungarian people via the BBC World Service: ‘Do your utmost to save from persecution, it may be from massacre, those who are now threatened as a result of German occupation…Help them to hide from their tormentors, help them, if possible, to escape’. If only his words had been more widely hearkened! Are we today doing as much to support the victims of religious hatred, stop persecutors, and challenge bystanders, as he did then?

Is religion part of the problem of collective hatred, or part of its solution? Unsurprisingly, Richard Dawkins expressed strong view on the matter.

One of the voices in my head agrees with him. Religion, with its ready-made pulpits, communities, preachers, and its ancient appeal to obedience, is an easy way to peddle identity. One’s onto a popular brand when one can tell people what they’re for, whom they’re against, what’s right, what’s wrong, and, with the aid of a convenient quote from Scripture, that God says so. No tool is so useful in identity creation than an enemy other.

The other voice disagrees. For all its flaws and susceptibility to abuse, religion is ultimately the moral and spiritual commitment to the deepest, most embracing reality. My God is never a different God from your God, though I may express my devotion in different ways. To realize God’s presence on earth, my humanity needs your humanity, just as yours needs mine.

It therefore matters to extend the hand of friendship and open the heart to understanding, especially in a time of a danger.

Shabbat Shalom

Jonathan Wittenberg

Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg is Rabbi of the New North London Synagogue and Senior Rabbi of the Masorti Movement. He’s authored three books: The Three Pillars of Judaism, The Eternal Journey: Meditations on the Jewish Year, and The Silence of Dark Water. Rabbi Wittenberg has written for various publications including the Jewish Chronicle. His own blog explores a variety of topics that include the Jewish faith, nature, moral issues, and the transience of human life.