‘Interfaith has never been harder’ say Birmingham community leaders

Describing her experiences in interfaith settings, Jacobs said that when Israel comes up in conversation she “can feel the sinews stiffening up and prepares to launch into some sort of defensiveness.”

“I have had a lot of trouble trying to convince people that I’m a Zionist and that doesn’t mean I want to kill all Muslims,” she added.

She said the city’s Nisa-Nashim initiative, which brings together Muslim and Jewish women, had been one of the “casualties of October 7” and no longer meets.

Also on the panel was Andrew Smith, director of interfaith relations for the Bishop of Birmingham, who said that “Interfaith has been as bad as it has ever been” over the past two years.

“People are willing to talk to each other as long as we don’t talk about anything about the Middle East,” he said.

Smith added that in his church one of the “biggest challenges” has been “very pro-Israel and very pro-Palestinian people sitting next to each other”.

“How long will it be until we can discuss what has happened,” he asked the room.

Jacobs, who has worked with Smith for several years, noted that despite their professional relationship they had never spoken directly about his views on the conflict.

Wegier highlighted efforts led by the Board of Deputies to bring together different faith groups through an “Optimistic Alliance” aimed at enabling “difficult conversations,” something critics say interfaith work has often avoided.

He added that some religious leaders willing to engage in interfaith work were only willing to do so behind closed doors and not, for example, have their photograph published.

“At the moment, it's the moderates who are underground, and it's the extremists who are setting the tone,” Wegier said.

Smith suggested that effective interfaith work often begins with informal connections. “Tea and samosas is usually where you need to start,” he said. “And then we really need to be invested in this friendship to keep it going.”

Interfaith strain also emerged in a separate session on Holocaust education, which explored Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD) events.

The conversation asked, “how can we bridge to a past that is more than 80 years ago and how can we convey the lessons of the Holocaust to future generations?”

Following moving testimony from Dawn Waterman and Helen Stone, who each shared part of their family story, the discussion opened to the audience.

Dawn Waterman, Olivia Marks-Woldman, Helen Stone and Eli Sassoon[Missing Credit]

One attendee, who helps to organise an HMD event in her hometown, said the local Muslim community would not engage with the day.

In response, HMD chief executive Olivia Marks-Woldman recognised that “October 7 and everything that has followed has had a big impact on HMD.

“When I say that, I mean the attacks by Hamas on Israel on October 7, the subsequent war in Gaza, the increase in antisemitism in the UK, and the increase in anti Muslim hatred in the UK, which has come through the far right exploiting community tensions largely. All of those have had an impact on HMD and there has been disengagement and it's not easy.”

She pointed to advice published by the charity to assist event organisers in dealing with conversations about the Middle East and HMD.

“One of the key things we say to people is marking the Holocaust should not be conditional on anything. There is a broad range of views on any conflict in the world in any situation, but none of that should stop people learning about and commemorating the Holocaust,” Marks-Woldman said.

Asked about the inclusion of other genocides within Holocaust Memorial Day, Marks-Woldman said it was a “perennial question”.

"The debate is to do with the challenge with making sure the Holocaust remains central to HMD and is not diluted by marking other genocides and those that say marking other genocides helps them recognise some of the lessons that we have learnt from the Holocaust.

“The fact that HMD does include other genocides has helped make HMD as effective as it has been,” Marks-Woldman went on.

She cited last year’s commemorations, which marked both the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the 30th anniversary of the Bosnian genocide.

The inclusion of the Bosnian genocide meant some Muslim community groups also engaged in Holocaust memorial, Marks-Woldman said, and gave the example of the Jewish and Muslim staff groups at British Airways, which worked together for the first time in 2025 for the event.

“This is in the context of quite high tensions between communities,” she said.