We Will Not Hide Our Light

Confronting Antisemitism in the UK

Two days ago, a man with a knife walked into the streets of Golders Green and attacked two members of our community. Moshe Shine, 76. Shloime Rand, 34. Names we say out loud, because they matter. Because they are not statistics. Because it could have been any one of us who shops at Kosher Kingdom, who walks those familiar streets, who knows exactly what that neighbourhood smells like on a Friday afternoon before Shabbat.

I have been trying all day yesterday and today to find the right words. The ones I wrote to our community, to Fleur, to Susan at St Paul's, they all circled the same painful truth: the surprise is fading. And the fading of surprise may be more frightening than the attacks themselves.

So tonight I want to speak honestly with you. Not to comfort too quickly. Not to wrap this in reassurance before we have sat with what is real.

We are being targeted. Systematically. The attack in Golders Green did not happen in a vacuum. It follows Finchley Reform. It follows Heaton Park in Manchester. It follows the long, grinding accumulation of incidents, the marches, the online harassment, the defacement, the slurs, the "globalise the intifada" chants that have been allowed to echo, unchallenged, through the streets of our cities. Each incident alone might be explained away. Together, they tell a story. And the story is this: someone, or some movement, is trying to raise the cost of being Jewish in Britain, until the cost becomes too high and we disappear from public life entirely.

We must name that logic, because once named, it loses some of its power.

But I also want to say something else tonight, something I believe with every fibre of who I am. The feeling of helplessness many of us have felt this week, that tightening in the chest, that "again?" that catches in the throat, it is real. It is legitimate. 

There is a word that stood out for me when I read the statement from the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood, broadcast on Radio 4. She called what is happening to our community an emergency. She said, as a British Muslim, she would never hesitate to stand with her Jewish brothers and sisters.

 She spoke about the new Crime and Policing bill, about the £25 million in new security funding, and about the fact that the existing public order legislation is no longer fit for purpose and must change. Now, politicians say things. We know that. But when the Home Secretary of the United Kingdom uses the word "emergency" on national radio, that is not nothing. That is a signal, and partly our signal, sent back to us. 

Because we sent that signal. We have been saying it for weeks and months now.

Some of you wrote to our MPs. I wrote to Fleur. My colleagues all wrote letters. Some were on the radio. The BOD issued statements. CST did too. Across the country, people have been speaking, meeting, and demanding. And slowly, the response is forming. Not fast enough. But it is forming.

Here is the image I keep returning to. We are not the wolves crying “fire” when there is none, as we have been accused of doing. We are much more the canary. When the canary stops singing in the mine, it is not making a scene. It is telling everyone else that the oxygen is running out. That is what we are doing. We are not raising alarms out of fear alone. We are in pain, we are under attack, and we do not feel safe. Our vulnerability is an alarming signal to all communities in the UK.  To be clear: We are raising our voices because we can feel, precisely, what is happening to the social oxygen in this country. The air of shared civic life, of neighbours who look out for one another, of a Britain that holds its plural identity as a source of strength, that air is thinning. And our distress is the warning.

Our Torah portion this week, Emor, contains a verse that I quoted in my letter to you yesterday, and I want to bring it here too. "You shall have one standard for stranger and citizen alike." One law. One standard. Applied without exception. That is not a quaint ancient principle. That is exactly what we are demanding: We do not just need more concrete and cameras. We need the full force of the law applied to those who seek to terrorise Jews on the streets of the UK. We need a serious national plan to educate young people before hatred takes root. 

A society that takes antisemitism seriously must make the cost of any form of hate far higher than it currently is. Society achieves that goal through education, law, political will, and the moral clarity of a country that says: not here, and not to our neighbours. Politicians must demand accountability from digital platforms. Companies must face consequences when they fail to remove hate speech or maintain policies that damage the cohesion of our local communities. Letting these platforms go unchecked allows a toxic environment to flourish at the expense of our shared peace.

We have strength, and we have friends. We can be loud and noisy. As mentioned before, I have spoken with our local MP, Fleur, and with our dear friend Susan from St Paul's Church Parkside, and so many more. Their kindness provides genuine comfort. Knowing that we are part of a wider community that refuses to remain silent gives us the strength to face the darkness that has touched our society. We are far more numerous than those who wish to divide us.

Our leaders must ensure we no longer tolerate hate speech or marches that threaten the safety of our neighbours. The attack in Golders Green is a direct result of the horrific calls to globalise the intifada that have been allowed to go unchallenged. Freedom of speech does not include the freedom to dehumanise.

We are not alone in that demand. Shabana Mahmood is saying it. Fleur is saying it. Susan is saying it from her church. The voices are there. Our task is to make sure they keep saying it, loudly, until saying it is no longer enough and doing it becomes the measure.

This Shabbat, in Wimbledon, far from Golders Green in distance but not in feeling, we have lit our candles. As we do every week. And every week those candles say the same thing: we are here.

We were here last week, and the week before, and we will be here next week. 

So we do not hide. We do not shrink. We light our candles, we open our doors, and we let everyone see that we are still here, still singing.

Shabbat Shalom.

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