“They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat,” Andrew Walters said.
It is an old Jewish joke that’s as relevant as ever in Greater Manchester in the face of today’s threats.
For Walters, the independent councillor for Kersal and Broughton Park, Salford, the joke encapsulates the good-humoured resilience that is a defining feature of his Orthodox Jewish community.
This vibrant neighbourhood was identified as a target by an Islamic State sleeper cell, whose plot to “kill as many Jews as possible” in a marauding firearms attack was thwarted. Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein were both been found guilty on Tuesday of terrorism offences.
The plot had not shaken the community’s desire to get on with its neighbours, Walters said. “My business partner is a religious Muslim and we get on great,” said the tax adviser and father of nine, who in his spare time campaigns for medical cannabis and psilocybin to be made widely available on the NHS. “There’s good and bad in any community. Most just want to live in peace.”
Saadaoui and Hussein, in common with other extremists who have targeted Jews in Greater Manchester, saw the community only through the warped, reductive lens of antisemitism.
They were not interested in how lifestyles, incomes, religious practice and political views vary in Greater Manchester’s Jewish communities, as in any other, and how social concerns typical of many British communities, such as poverty, are pressing.
Michelle Ciffer Klein runs the Hershel Weiss children and families centre, which supports 650 families – including large ultra-Orthodox families who do not use smartphones, internet or television – and some Muslim women. Ciffer Klein built up the service from one room in a synagogue to a buzzing, council-funded facility offering mother and baby groups, clinics, a Citizens Advice bureau, summer trips, adult education, Hanukah gift drives, food and debt support.
Michelle Ciffer Klein and community leaders meeting at the Hershel Weiss centre. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
In December, it launched the Spread a Little Light project to support community cohesion through Hanukah festivities.
“People outside think the biggest issue is security – that’s rubbish,” Ciffer Klein said. “Of course we’re sad and we pray, but women I work with are struggling to cope with day-to-day lives, stress from festivals and lots of babies. We don’t judge.
“The cost of living – kosher food is very expensive – energy bills and people who can’t afford to buy milk and nappies, housing, families that miss benefits and can’t put food on the table – that’s what I’m dealing with.”
Nonetheless, two unifying themes have strengthened under pressure. One is a clear shift “towards community solidarity and involvement”, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR); the other is a culture of vigilance on a scale unseen in most UK suburbs.
Sara Radivan, the Board of Deputies’ community engagement officer: ‘I’m proud to be British, proud to be Jewish.’ Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
“We can get to an incident in two minutes,” said MD Factor, the executive director of the Jewish civilian patrol Salford Shomrim, which shares intelligence with police, acting as a bridge between Yiddish and Hebrew speakers and agencies.
“The mood is definitely tense,” Factor added. “We’ve seen a massive increase in calls to our 24-hour hotline about suspicious activities.”
Nonetheless, Walters, one of a handful of Orthodox Jewish local politicians in the UK emphasised that Greater Manchester’s Orthodox communities, the fastest-growing in Europe, did not live in fear. “We love life,” he said. “And we believe that if we die, we’re going to a better place. We refuse to be afraid.”
Jeremy Michelson, the vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, worked for many years at Manchester’s historic Jewish Museum.
He recalled heightened security in north London’s Jewish communities in the 1960s, when “the threat was [neo-Nazi] arson attacks” – but he said he was grateful for the “good life” in Britain. “All we ever wanted from Britain was to give us a chance to live here, practise our faith and contribute – and we’ve done that,” he said.
Women and children at the Hershel Weiss centre. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
His colleague Sara Radivan, the Board of Deputies’ community engagement officer, added: “I’m proud to be British, proud to be Jewish and can’t say which comes first.”
Other prominent British Jews say much more must be done to confront the threat of Islamist extremism.
While the Community Security Trust (CST) recorded more cases of anti-Jewish hate (175) that demonstrated explicit far-right ideological motivation than Islamist extremism (65) in 2024, and there were more far-right referrals to Prevent, the most violent plots in recent years have involved Islamist extremists.
“A big part of our work on the security side is trying to identify and disrupt hostile reconnaissance of Jewish targets that would precede an attack,” Dave Rich, the CST’s head of policy, said.
He added: “The thing about Manchester is, you’ve had the Heaton Park attack and the [Saadaoui and Hussein case]. You had the guy who flew from Blackburn to Texas to hold people hostage at a synagogue. You had the guy who went into Marks & Spencer in Burnley and stabbed two people because he said Marks & Spencer support Israel.
“And you can go back to … the Oldham couple who were building bombs. So you’ve got a pattern now of Islamist terrorism and antisemitism coming out of towns and suburbs north of the city. I think there’s a genuine question to be asking: ‘what is going on there specifically?”
The Heaton Park synagogue attack came days before the second anniversary of the 7 October attacks in Israel and days before Saadaoui and Hussein’s trial began.
Then, not long before the judge was due to begin summing up, two attackers opened fire on Bondi Beach, targeting Sydney’s Jewish community and killing 15 people.
News of that attack broke as families across the Jewish diaspora were celebrating Hanukah, observance of which appears to be growing, according to the JPR.
While rituals and relationships have been strengthened by tough times, others say a postwar paradigm has shifted.
Families attending the Hershel Weiss hub. Photograph: Joel Goodman/The Guardian
Russell Langer, the Jewish Leadership Council’s director of public affairs, said: “From a British perspective, there was sort of a view there was a golden age in terms of post-Holocaust understanding of what antisemitism is, an idea the world saw the evil of the Holocaust and won’t let that be repeated.
“I think that viewpoint is starting to be seen as far too optimistic. It’s not that we think this time is any more dangerous than any of those times before, but that there’s no complacency that dangerous times won’t return.”
Rich said: “There are people, imams and others, doing the hard work of pulling apart extremist narratives and showing why they’re wrong.”
But he said extremists were using “authentic” texts to justify themselves, and moderate Muslim voices faced being “drowned out” and intimidated by hardliners on social media.
Langer urged the government to bring forward a new extremism strategy, saying too many people were more comfortable talking about the far right than Islamist extremism.
He said: “We have to be careful of the language we use because we are talking about an ideology here; we’re not talking about the religion, we’re not talking about the people. We are talking about a distinct threat.”
However, Langer says, against the backdrop of security threats a note of joyful defiance runs through even the most sombre occasions.
“In London there were massive gatherings to mark the two-year anniversary of 7 October,” Langer said. “The Manchester [synagogue] attack formed a big part of the conversation in a way that wasn’t planned, but the event itself was to mark the hostages, the people who died on the day.
“Unplanned at the end, a musician started playing Jewish tunes as people were leaving and, spontaneously, people started dancing. That’s the positive spin. But I would be lying if I said those serious conversations about the future of Jewish life in this country haven’t been continuing.”
