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| Home » Writings, Speeches, Broadcasts » Thought for the Day » 2005 |
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| Chanukah |
| 23/12/2005 |
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Thought For The Day - 23 December 2005
This is one of those years in which the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, and Christmas, more or less coincide. And as we get ready for those celebrations it is worth thinking about the history of the relations between these two great faiths: Judaism and Christianity.
For all too long it was tense and sometimes tragic. Starting with the first crusade in 1096, Europe witnessed a long period in which Jews were accused by their Christian neighbours of... |
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| Holocaust |
| 16/12/2005 |
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Thought For The Day - 16 December 2005
Two days ago the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahma-dinejad declared that the holocaust never happened. Jews he said have invented a "myth" that they were massacred. This was dangerous speech of a high order, because it was made not by a fringe group of extremists, nor behind closed doors but broadcast live on Iranian television.
Nor, sadly, is it an isolated incident. There are parts of the world where, in recent decades and with ever-growing int... |
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| John Lennon |
| 9/12/2005 |
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Thought For The Day - 9 December 2005
Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the death of John Lennon, and by coincidence earlier this week, in New York, I found myself staying in the hotel where the Beatles used to stay on their American trips. In London almost every day I pass Abbey Road where they recorded most of their music, and you can still see the tourists coming to walk across what must be the world's most famous zebra crossing.
It's hard to recapture those Beatles days of ... |
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| Sukkot |
| 17/10/2005 |
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Thought For The Day - 17 October 2005
This evening the Jewish community will be celebrating the festival of Succot, or Tabernacles. And it seems to me that the ancient idea of a Tabernacle contains an answer to one of the prickliest problems facing Britain today. How do you create, in a society as diverse as ours, a sense of shared identity, collective belonging?
In recent British history, there have been two models of society. The first I call the country house model. Imagine a gro... |
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