By Lianne Kolirin
Britain’s Jewish community has been “bruised” by the impact of the Hamas attacks of 7 October last year, and many feel unsettled about the future.
As the world prepares to commemorate the first anniversary of the invasion, which triggered the war in Gaza, Jewish communities around the globe are taking stock and contemplating the way ahead.
Last year, in the early hours of Simchat Torah, the festival celebrating the yearly cycle of reading the Torah, Hamas fighters stormed Israel’s borders from Gaza, killing more than 1,100 people and taking another 200 hostage, about half of whom are still in captivity.
The onslaught sparked a massive Israeli retaliation which has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza.
The horrors of the bloody conflict have made global headlines. So, too, have the regular anti-Israel demonstrations and the massive rise in antisemitism since then.
Britain has not been exempt. The most recent report from the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity protecting Britain’s Jews, revealed that antisemitic incidents more than doubled in the first half of this year when compared with the same period in 2023. While not quite as high as the incidents in the immediate aftermath of 7 October, it was the highest total ever reported to the CST for the January to June period.
The rise in anti-Jewish hatred has not surprised many in the community, according to Dave Rich, director of policy at the CST.
“Every time Israel has a war, we see big rises in antisemitism in the UK and this time is not different in that respect. But where it was different is that the increase has been much bigger, more sustained and has spilt over into many different areas of society, where we didn’t really see it previously,” he told the Religion Media Centre.
Incidents have occurred in “parts of society we didn’t really think this was a problem”, he said, giving examples of schools, hospitals and workplaces.
The result, he believes, has been profound. “I think the Jewish community is feeling quite bruised by the past year, quite shaken by a sense of wondering whether and how much this country has actually changed for Jewish people.”
While some within the community “have reacted by being more nervous about being Jewish in public, by taking steps like removing their mezuzahs [parchment inscribed with Hebrew verses] from their doors and kippot from their heads, others are being more bullish” about expressing their identity, Mr Rich said.
“Everyone’s having to think about it,” he added. “We can count the hate crimes and we can see the rise in extremism online and all the measurables, but the real legacy is that it’s left a lot of British Jews just wondering, ‘Is this the country we thought it was?’”
One group who may be asking this question more than most is the country’s dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.
Daniel Carmel-Brown, chief executive of Jewish Care, said it had been particularly devastating for the 300 Holocaust survivors it supports. He told the RMC: “Never again did they think they would witness some of what we are witnessing. As Holocaust survivor Manfred Goldberg, who is a member of Jewish Care’s Holocaust Survivors’ Centre, says, ‘Never has it been more important to have a place to be proudly Jewish’.”
Mr Carmel-Brown said Jewish Care’s community centres and retirement apartments had provided a haven, “especially for those living in areas where they don’t feel safe to show their Jewishness”.
The heavy emotional toll is being felt across the board, according to Jami, the community’s mental health service, which is now part of Jewish Care. “Many will have struggled with complex and strong feelings and may not know how or where to find support should they need it,” Mr Carmel-Brown added.
In response, Jami has delivered a series of psycho-educational workshops for communities and organisations that have now been developed into a series of short videos and guide.
Jewish students have found themselves at the sharp end of community tensions. Sami Berkoff, president of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS), said its reach expanded by about 2,000 more students over the past year — taking its membership to about 9,000.
This is, in part, likely to be a response to the rise in antisemitism on campus. CST’s recent report revealed that the first half of this year witnessed a 465 per cent increase in anti-Jewish hate incidents in higher education settings, when compared with the same period in 2023.
Ms Berkoff said reported incidents have included intimidation, harassment, death threats, vandalism and physical assault. She gives the example of a student in Bristol who was punched for questioning some rhetoric heard at a pro-Palestinian demonstration, while another in St Andrews had their Star of David ripped off.
“These incidents of physical threat are very minimal compared with words, slogans and the graffiti,” she said. “But a Jewish student who hears that their friend in Bristol got punched is then scared in Edinburgh or wherever to go out because you see it, you hear it and you think, ‘That could have been me’.”
She added: “Even if an incident didn’t directly impact you, it’s got a knock-on effect with other students.”
Ms Berkoff is hopeful, however, as she and her peers at UJS and at Jewish societies across the country have been working closely with university vice-chancellors, student unions and politicians to ensure the safety of Jewish students. “I’m confident we will see changes,” she said, adding that UJS was delivering antisemitism awareness training to thousands of students, societies and university staff.
“We’re never going to get rid of antisemitism, but we can make it socially expensive and treat it like any other form of hate or racism, because frankly we’ve seen this lack of willingness this past year and that needs to change. People need to educate themselves to know what’s right and what’s wrong and what crosses the line and that’s what our training provides.”
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, convenor of the Rabbinical Court of Great Britain who recently retired from the helm of Maidenhead Synagogue, said of the last year’s legacy: “We’re OK but we’re less OK than before. In other words, there’s a mixture of positive and problems.”
Schools have “been the most sensitive area”, he said. “A lot of parents complained to me about their children having problems, both from teachers and from fellow pupils — not being beaten up or physical but getting the blame, being ostracised, finding swastika notes on their desk and that hurts the parents even more than it hurts the children very often.
“I had a session at my own synagogue in Maidenhead on antisemitism in schools. I thought I’d get 10 or 12 people and I got 52. These are parents, some of whom are stiff upper lip and they were crying in public. It’s really horrible to see how badly affected they felt.”
Overall, the past year has “affected us in two psychological ways,” he said. The first, he said, is that people have felt less secure about their identity.
“There’s always been a wariness of what I call an underlying level of antisemitism but it got brought to the fore,” Rabbi Romain said. “I think people expected a little bit of backlash, but not so deep and not so ongoing.”
Second, he believes, has been the impact on relationships beyond the community. “A few people have said they’ve lost friends over it but a lot of people said they have been limiting their conversations,” he said. “For the last year, they’ve not been talking about Israel, because they didn’t want the other person to say something unpleasant that they would have to be embarrassed about or even break off the friendship.
“They didn’t want an unwanted response and therefore had been self-editing their conversation, which is really quite remarkable.”
On the positive side, Rabbi Romain says that the community has grown stronger. “It has made Jews, as a generalisation, feel more Jewish. Not necessarily on a religious level but on an ethnic level,” he said. “After October 7 we had a lot of unaffiliated Jews just pop out of nowhere and want to join the synagogue. In addition, we had a lot of members who suddenly started to come more often.”
It was not a sudden surge in religious feeling. “They said ‘We’re not suddenly religious — I’m still an atheist Jew, but I’m Jewish and I just want to be with people I feel at home with’.”
The intensity of synagogue attendance did drop off, but is likely to ramp up again next month. “It’s going to be a much more powerful high holy days than ever before,” Rabbi Romain added.
