We refuse to hide as Jews in Britain
On Yom Kippur morning, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, my husband and I were at different synagogues. I was with our two younger boys, while he was with our eldest at another shul down the road. When he didn’t arrive to meet us as planned, my anxiety grew.
Later I learned why: midway through his service, the rabbi had announced that there had been a terror attack in Manchester around 9:30 a.m., and the synagogue was going into lockdown. In that moment, as I held the hands of my younger sons, I felt the dread that has become a quiet companion of Jewish life in Britain today.
As an American Jew raising a family here, these moments feel all too real. My husband and I often make the painful choice to separate on Shabbat, attending different synagogues with different children. It is a grim calculation — if, God forbid, something were to happen, we wouldn’t all be in the same place.
Our children attend a Jewish school and ride public buses each day wearing kippot and tzitzit. I am deeply proud of their Jewish identity, yet each morning I carry the quiet fear that it could make them a target.
This latest attack has left me with troubling questions. Will it generate greater sympathy for Jews in Britain, or will it only harden the hostility of those who already see us as the enemy?
In recent years, Jewish life here has been shadowed by rising antisemitism, too often cloaked in “Free Palestine” slogans that spill over into calls for the erasure of Israel and, by extension, hostility toward Jews. It is hard to believe that a terror attack will soften those voices. More likely, it risks emboldening them.
And then there are the contradictions. Just weeks ago, the prime minister declared recognition of a Palestinian state. Now, after a terror attack on British soil that coincided with Yom Kippur, he is speaking out in support of the Jewish community. His own wife and children are Jewish. The tension between symbolic solidarity and political choices that many of us feel undermine our security is hard to reconcile.
But one truth is clear to me: retreat is not an option. Fear cannot be allowed to lock us in our homes. Jewish life will not shrink back into the shadows. If anything, this moment strengthens our resolve to live openly and proudly, to send our children to Jewish schools, to attend synagogue, to walk the streets with our heads held high.
Our history teaches us that every generation has faced threats. Every generation has found the courage not only to endure, but to flourish. This moment is no different. We refuse to hide.
