Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-11-19-Speech-3-079"
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"en.20081119.10.3-079"2
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"Chief Rabbi Sacks, Lady Sacks, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, it is a great honour and pleasure to welcome the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, and his wife, to the European Parliament in Strasbourg at this formal session as part of the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008. A very warm welcome to the European Parliament, Sir Jonathan!
As our first guest in this year of intercultural dialogue, the Grand Mufti of Syria, Sheikh Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, made a speech in our plenary session. As the year went on, we also had the opportunity to listen to an address by the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Bartholomew I. With your speech today, Chief Rabbi, we will have heard from representatives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Each of these religions has produced its own special contribution to shaping what today’s European society has become and what distinguishes it. The same is true of humanism and enlightenment. Even if we live in secular societies in which there is a clear separation of church and state, it is fitting to duly recognise the positive role that organised religion plays in our societies.
This relates not only to the physical contribution to areas such as training, health and social services, but also to the same extent to the development of our ethical consciousness and to the shaping of our values. The European Union is a community of values and the most fundamental of these is the inherent dignity of every human being.
Chief Rabbi, you are well known as a great author and professor, an unsurpassable man of learning and one of the world’s leading representatives of the Jewish faith. You have often written and spoken about the danger that a rejuvenation of anti-Semitism poses to our societies.
Last week, at the European Parliament in Brussels, we held a very special commemoration, which we arranged jointly with the European Jewish Congress, in order to remember the 70
anniversary of the Night of Broken Glass. On that occasion, I pointed out that we in the European Union bear a responsibility and a duty to resist, absolutely without exception and without appeasement, all forms of extremism, racism, xenophobia and anti-Semitism and to defend democracy, the protection of human rights and human dignity across the globe.
Chief Rabbi, in your book
and on this point I will close – which was written a year after the terrible events of 11 September 2001, you tackled one of the most fundamental questions of our day, namely: can we all live together in peace and, if so, how? It is now with great pleasure and honour that I ask the Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth to address us."@en1
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