Four hundred Jews from all over the north of England attended a ceremony on the site where, 800 years ago, the Jews of York committed mass suicide rather than accept Christianity. In the first public commemoration of the incident which shook medieval Europe, the Archbishop of York, Dr. Stuart Blanch, and the chief Rabbi of the Commonwealth, Dr. Immanuel Jakobovits, helped to unveil a tablet below the walls of Clifford’s Tower, where the events of March 16, 1190 took place.
The Chief Rabbi, offering the hand of friendship to the Archbishop, said that Judaism and Christianity should in future be allies, and not antagonists. “Never again must the frenzy of fanaticism soil our land with innocent blood.”
The Archbishop said he looked back with shame on the history of Christian-Jewish relations but with faith to its future. Britain should make greater use of the spiritual resources of Judaism and Anglo-Jewry should play a fuller role on the national scene. The cost of the tablet was subscribed privately through the Jewish Historical Society of England, whose president, Dr. Aubrey Newman, and vice-president Dr. Raphael Loewe, also took part in the ceremony.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
