When They Tell Us Not to Come

Last week, British police banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a football (soccer) match “for their own safety.” To some, that might sound abundantly cautious, but to me, it sounds like history clearing its throat. Every Jewish generation has heard some version of that sentence, and each time, it begins with protection and ends with exclusion.

I grew up in London, where every synagogue already had guards and gates long before it was common in the United States, where I’ve lived for the past 15 years. It was normal, almost invisible. Community Security Trust (CST) volunteers with earpieces stood outside shuls; self-defense sessions with former Israeli soldiers were a teenage rite of passage; buses were swept before the school gates opened each morning. Far from paranoia, it was basic muscle memory.

When I moved to America, Jewish life felt wonderfully open. Synagogues with unlocked doors, JCCs that looked just like YMCAs (from the outside), an assumption that “it can’t happen here.” Then came Pittsburgh and Tree of Life, and then of course, October 7, 2023.

Now American Jews are living what British Jews have lived for decades: that quiet tension of wanting to gather while knowing that it carries risk.

The ban on Israeli fans didn’t come from nowhere. There was a terrorist attack at a synagogue in Manchester, UK only a few weeks ago. The Community Security Trust logged over 1,500 antisemitic incidents in the first half of this year, marking it among the highest totals on record. And the rhetoric around Israel on British streets is louder, angrier, and less contained than I can ever remember.

Something else has changed. When I was a child, antisemitism came from the fringes of the far right, an occasional shout in the street. Today, it’s woven into institutions. A football club, a student union, a city council, each deciding, in the name of safety, that Jewish visibility is too volatile.

That’s what worries me most: the subtle shift from protecting Jews to protecting others from Jewish presence.

I understand the instinct to protect. I work as the Chief Operating Officer of NJY Camps, a collection of Jewish summer camps that serve and care for thousands of children and staff each summer. I’m responsible to their families who put their trust in us. We invest in training, drills, equipment, coordination, all the same things my community in London has done for decades.

But safety cannot become our highest value. Because once safety is the only goal, presence starts to look expendable. Sure, we can keep Jews physically safe by keeping them home, but that’s not Jewish life. That’s managed existence. And it’s exactly what our grandparents fought to escape.

Here’s what I believe works instead, and what every Jewish community and institution can do to balance both courage and caution at the same time:

• Gather smart, not small: Work with security partners and keep showing up. If you have to add protocols, add them. Unless it’s completely necessary, don’t cancel the event; adjust it.
• Stand with allies: Invite local leaders, clergy, and elected officials to Jewish events. Visibility strengthened by solidarity combats isolation.
• Frame the story before others do: When something like the Aston Villa/Maccabi Tel Aviv ban happens, don’t wait for someone else to explain it. Speak publicly and calmly about what it means. Publish op-eds, statements, and social media. Turn the crowd ban into a public campaign before it becomes an afterthought.
• Teach courage as a community skill: Educate young people about fear without glorifying it. Show them that courage isn’t pretending nothing can happen, it’s choosing to live fully anyway.
• Celebrate in public: Every Chanukah candle lighting, every Shabbat at camp, every Jewish milestone celebrated in community is an act against invisibility. Jewish joy still unsettles antisemites more than Jewish fear ever will.

None of these are novel ideas, they’re tried and tested.

Last winter, London’s Chanukah on the Square drew thousands in the heart of Trafalgar Square for a Jewish ritual. The event was carefully coordinated with the Mayor’s office and the CST, and ran without incident, proving that public Jewish celebration can succeed when vigilance and civic partnership work hand in hand.

In New York, the 2025 Israel Day Parade brought tens of thousands down Fifth Avenue, backed by months of coordination between Jewish community organizations and city police. It resulted in one of the largest, most peaceful demonstrations of Jewish pride anywhere in the world this year.

And even in Manchester, UK, just a week after the attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, the synagogue reopened its doors and the shul was full. People came to remind one another that Jewish life doesn’t retreat after violence.

British Jews learned long ago how to live with their eyes open, while American Jews learned to live with their heads high. Each can borrow from the other: a bit more vigilance from Britain, a bit more vitality from America.

And when we’re told not to come to the stadium, to the square, or to the conversation, we have to come anyway. But we should come prepared, safely, and with allies. We should show up with pastors and police, with lawyers and public servants, with neighbors and friends. Because the real test of a democracy isn’t whether it can hide its Jews to avoid trouble. It’s whether it can protect them when they show up in the open.