As a British Jew living in Manchester, I’m here to ask you to step into my shoes. During the past two years we’ve seen our basic right to safety eroded.
It’s Saturday morning; you’re on your way to see your family and friends at the Synagogue where you’ll read from a book and sing traditional songs. Only you’re spat at in the street by two men wearing tunics and trousers. You lift your head and keep walking. You’ve been refused service in a main high street shop and told outright that there was ‘nothing’ for you, when you enquired about a product this year. In 2025 Britain, when you look Jewish, race-hate is a norm.
On Yom Kippur, Thursday October 2nd you’re texting a friend, laughing and running fifteen minutes late. You’re leaving for that same Synagogue to spend the day being peaceful, when you receive a phone call telling you not to go.
As reality unfolds, you’ve no idea who is alive or dead. The media calls you all ‘worshippers.’ You’re at a loss as to how that word applies. Diversity is cultural celebration, but this label feels like segregation. There’s little nuance between religion and extremism; the terms are often linked but the narratives are worlds apart.
You’re shaking, cold, and stunned. Silence is broken by police helicopters overhead. On every T.V news channel there are familiar faces full of grief and shock. Getty images show the same well-loved friends. Someone sends you a reel of your uncle being interviewed, he’s on the News in Toronto. The roof is ripped off your life. You’re numb, the week blurs in a surreal haze. You’re devastated. Your friends have been stabbed, shot and murdered. You attend funerals under armed guard.
Until now, you’ve lived a dual identity, as a British person and a Jew. Your faith and spirituality support your inner world. But the external experience of being Jewish, not British, feels singular and overriding.
Days later, a writer / editor friend is on social media chatting about a T.V show, and you ask why she hasn’t been in contact. She ‘shouts’ at you on WhatsApp privately, for ‘calling her out’ on X, and says she’s had nasty DM’s: ‘This is why I don’t post politically on X.’ and she takes the post down which links to you.
Being a Jew is a political act.
The Rt Hon Sir Grant Schapps, described ‘being Jewish’ in a positive way, as ‘a club you can’t leave.’ No one wants to leave. But we’d all like to feel safe.
The week the King came to Manchester to visit those directly affected by the Heaton Park Synagogue attack, another Jew, Professor Michael Ben-Gad was threatened with beheading whilst in the middle of delivering a lecture at the University of London. Beheading. In Britain.
The dismissal of the human rights of Jews has been steadily increasing during the past two years. Labelling hate speech and verbal acts of intimidation as ‘freedom of expression’ is false. A person’s view on the actions of a foreign Government cannot be allowed to deny other human beings their right to safety in this country. The simple truth is that hate speech in and of itself is a mobilising force. It’s a call for action, which has resulted in physical violence towards, and the death of, British Jews.
Negative views on Israel are used to unite people in mob-politics and to legitimise acts of hate towards Jews living in Britain. Online, antisemitism spews from memes and comments. Reports of abuse aren’t upheld by social media platforms.
The NHS Doctor I don’t care to name, who previously called the Holocaust a ‘fabricated victim narrative’, wears a gold number ‘7’ around her neck glorifying Hamas’s slaughter of innocents at a music festival on October 7th 2023. Despite her making signs to slit the throats of Jewish patients, she was suspended, not sacked. A British hospital is meant to be an impartial refuge for the sick, and for those at their most vulnerable. This doctor and many others are incapable of offering care to all patients equally.
Lord Mann’s review in July 2025 outlined ten key recommendations to tackle the vile antisemitism in the NHS. Since the attack on our synagogue another report has been commissioned, and a statement made regarding urgent staff training. Yet there is a blatant lack of accountability or valid repercussions for perpetrators.
When the Prime Minister said the marches due to go ahead on October 7th this year were ‘UnBritish’ SKY news declared that word was undemocratic.
Where is the media’s responsibility in supporting peace on British streets and the safety of all British citizens? The hate marches went ahead, despite the terrorist attack murdering Jews in Manchester just days earlier. Nothing changed, so how can we feel safe weeks later, when the only way of attending our synagogue is under a tight security presence? We sit behind iron doors, this isn’t safety. It’s an expression of resilience under duress.
In 1854, the Manchester writer and wife of a unitarian minister, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote:
‘We have all of us one human heart.’
Please unite with us, heart to heart, to turn this tide of hate directed at Jews. There is no division here, just a call for safety for all British people.
