1/ Just last week, as Jews gathered around their #Passover tables to recount the story of our Exodus from Egypt, we read the passage of V’hi She’amda in which we recall how in each generation there have been those who have risen up against us and sought to deny the #Jewish…

2/ …people’s right to exist. Tragically, this threat remains very real in our generation today.

3/

The murder of Lori Gilbert Kaye z”l in the #Chabad of #Poway synagogue in #SanDiego, California is but the latest in too long a list of recent antisemitic attacks on #Jews and #Jewish communities around the world.

4/ I am heartbroken at the loss of another Jewish soul and wish all those in mourning strength and comfort, and a complete and speedy recovery to those who were injured in this horrendous shooting.

5/

#Antisemitism has returned in part because of the rise of political extremism on the right and left, and because of populist politics that plays on people’s fears, seeking scapegoats to blame for social ills.

6/ For a thousand years Jews have been targeted as scapegoats, because they were a minority and because they were different. But difference is what makes us human. And a society that has no room for difference has no room for humanity.

7/

The appearance of antisemitism is always an early warning sign of a dangerous dysfunction within a culture. This manifests itself in physical attacks or in other forms of attacks, for example in the media through the use of classic antisemitism images or rhetoric - the…

8/ …most recent example being the appalling cartoon which appeared in the international edition of the New York Times on Thursday and would not have looked out of place in 1930s Europe.

All of us - and especially the world’s leaders and those in positions of authority and…

9/ …leadership - need to make it clear why these physical or other kinds of attacks on Jews or people of any faith are utterly unacceptable.

10/ Not just because attacks on a particular group within society is morally wrong, but because of a fundamental and inescapable truth: that the hate that begins with Jews never ends with Jews. And where there is hate, freedom dies.