On 9 November Meretz UK is hosting an evening with Rabbi Herschel Gluck, OBE, founder and chair of the Muslim-Jewish Forum. He will give an illustrated talk about Jews and Muslims in London 2014 – Co-operation that works.
Here follows some more information about this remarkable figure!
Born in London and a well known presence in the Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood of Stamford Hill, Herschel Gluck founded the Muslim-Jewish Forum in 2000 together with partners from the local Muslim community.
In the succeeding decade and a half the MJF has promoted intercommunal understanding and has helped make the London suburb a haven of peace, despite the impact of outside tensions.
The Forum has been very active nationally and inter-nationally, with government(s) and international bodies. Stamford Hill’s communities cooperate and even advocate for each other before the council. Rabbi Gluck believes this model of harmony could inform a British polity confronted by the dangers of nihilistic-inspired extremism, such as the Woolwich atrocity.
Fostering respect and breaking down the walls of ignorance, he has said, counters racism, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. In 2013 Rabbi Gluck was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours.
He is also involved in education, participates in the Next Century Foundation and is co-chair of the Arab-Jewish Forum. Rabbi Gluck has lectured to a multitude of diverse audiences, and has been profoundly involved in Jewish community development in countries throughout Europe.
In addition he engages in numerous discreet ventures in Israel, Sudan, former Yugoslavia, Asia, North Africa and the Middle East. His mediation has helped Jews and non-Jews alike, and kept open avenues of discussion that have often resolved conflict situations – in ways we may never know!
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