Synagogue Attack Community 'In Harder Position' a Year On
A memorial service takes place today at Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation, where the rabbi says the community is “almost in a harder position than we were even immediately after the attack” that killed two men last October — “the sense of vulnerability has grown”. Freedom of information data shows violent hate crimes against Jewish people have risen by nearly two-thirds since 2022. “Antisemitism is a poison,” said cabinet minister Angela Rayner, “and we won’t stop fighting it.”
The rabbi’s claim is counterintuitive and worth sitting with: a year after an attack, with security funding increased and sympathy expressed, his congregation feels less safe — because guards at the door treat the symptom while the two-thirds rise in violent incidents measures the disease, and because “no evidence of anyone dealing with the core problems” is a verdict on a society, not a policing budget. This week’s Golders Green guilty pleas — four young men who burned a Jewish ambulance service — sit in the same ledger. The anniversary arrives with the community marking it behind the very barriers that prove the point. Watch what today’s service asks of the country beyond remembrance — and whether the hate-crime curve bends before the next anniversary.