JERUSALEM – Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger yesterday held an unprecedented meeting with Christian clergy in Jerusalem to try to ease tensions after an Orthodox Jew spat at an Armenian bishop near a holy site in the Old City.
Metzger sat at the head of a table surrounded by clerics with gold crosses, black robes and silver staffs and denounced attacks on any religious clergy in Israel. “As sons of Abraham, we are brothers,” he said. “We denounce any act that is meant to degrade religious people.”
The meeting was called after the Oct. 10 incident in which a yeshiva student spat on an Armenian archbishop carrying a cross in Jerusalem, sparking a fist fight that damaged the cleric’s ancient medallion.
Many of the 14 church representatives at the meeting complained that the incident was just one of dozens of similar attacks every year.
“Unfortunately this incident was not an isolated incident,” Armenian Bishop Aris Shirvanian said. “Quite frequently we suffer some kind of indignity … at least once a week.”
Shirvanian said Israeli rabbis needed to do a better job of educating their followers not to participate in such attacks.
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