It’s been a bad fortnight for the Jewish community in Britain. First a rabbi in Manchester was beaten up. Then there was an arson attack on a synagogue in South Tottenham. The next day a Jewish community centre and synagogue in Hendon suffered one of the worst arson attacks in recent years. Then a Jewish cemetery in Middlesbrough was desecrated.

Luckily, three of these attacks were on property not people; but they hurt because they were deliberate assaults on things we hold holy. In Hendon Torah scrolls – our most sacred objects – were thrown on the floor and ripped apart. In Tottenham among the books destroyed were several that had been rescued from Kristallnacht, the night in 1938 when synagogues throughout Germany were set on fire. How ironic that they survived the flames of Hitler only to be burned here in London.

Usually I don’t like talking about anti-Semitism because it’s not what Jews and Judaism are about. We’re about love, not hate; trust, not fear. Besides which, despite attacks on blacks, Muslims, Jews and other minorities, Britain remains one of the most tolerant societies on earth, more so than most European countries. But actually what struck me about these incidents was how people responded. In Tottenham, they just kept going. Services, as usual, attended by more than usual numbers. In Hendon where we held a special service of solidarity one of the rabbis took as his text that lovely line from Psalms, "Those who sow in tears will reap in joy."

And while this was going on we had a visit from a man who had more reason than most to feel angry at the world – Judea Pearl, father of Daniel Pearl, the American journalist brutally murdered two years ago in Pakistan. Since then Judea has dedicated his life to turning Daniel’s death into a blessing, and one of the ways he’s done so has been to engage in public dialogue to show that Jews and Muslims can learn to respect one another. I asked him why, and he replied: if our response to tragedy is anger and the desire for revenge, then we’ve allowed our enemies to make us a little like them. I refuse, he said, to grant them that victory. That’s why you have to repay evil with good.

I was deeply humbled by these responses. It takes enormous strength not to want to retaliate, and religion at its best gives us that strength. What I learned last week is that the courage of faith is far more powerful than the cowardice of hate.

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