\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThey tried to kill us. They failed. Let\u2019s eat,\u201d Andrew Walters said.<\/p>\n
It is an old Jewish joke that\u2019s as relevant as ever in Greater Manchester in the face of today\u2019s threats.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
This vibrant neighbourhood was identified as a target by an Islamic State sleeper cell, whose plot to \u201ckill as many Jews as possible\u201d in a marauding firearms attack was thwarted. Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein were both been found guilty on Tuesday of terrorism offences.<\/p>\n
The plot had not shaken the community\u2019s desire to get on with its neighbours, Walters said. \u201cMy business partner is a religious Muslim and we get on great,\u201d 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. \u201cThere\u2019s good and bad in any community. Most just want to live in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
They were not interested in how lifestyles, incomes, religious practice and political views vary in Greater Manchester\u2019s Jewish communities, as in any other, and how social concerns typical of many British communities, such as poverty, are pressing.<\/p>\n
Michelle Ciffer Klein runs the Hershel Weiss children and families centre, which supports 650 families \u2013 including large ultra-Orthodox families who do not use smartphones, internet or television \u2013 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.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Michelle Ciffer Klein and community leaders meeting at the Hershel Weiss centre.<\/span> Photograph: Joel Goodman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n In December, it launched the Spread a Little Light project to support community cohesion through Hanukah festivities.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople outside think the biggest issue is security \u2013 that\u2019s rubbish,\u201d Ciffer Klein said. \u201cOf course we\u2019re 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\u2019t judge.<\/p>\n \u201cThe cost of living \u2013 kosher food is very expensive \u2013 energy bills and people who can\u2019t afford to buy milk and nappies, housing, families that miss benefits and can\u2019t put food on the table \u2013 that\u2019s what I\u2019m dealing with.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, two unifying themes have strengthened under pressure. One is a clear shift \u201ctowards community solidarity and involvement\u201d, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR); the other is a culture of vigilance on a scale unseen in most UK suburbs.<\/p>\n <\/span>Sara Radivan, the Board of Deputies\u2019 community engagement officer: \u2018I\u2019m proud to be British, proud to be Jewish.\u2019<\/span> Photograph: Joel Goodman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cWe can get to an incident in two minutes,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cThe mood is definitely tense,\u201d Factor added. \u201cWe\u2019ve seen a massive increase in calls to our 24-hour hotline about suspicious activities.\u201d<\/p>\n Nonetheless, Walters, one of a handful of Orthodox Jewish local politicians in the UK emphasised that Greater Manchester\u2019s Orthodox communities, the fastest-growing in Europe, did not live in fear. \u201cWe love life,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd we believe that if we die, we\u2019re going to a better place. We refuse to be afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n Jeremy Michelson, the vice-president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, worked for many years at Manchester\u2019s historic Jewish Museum.<\/p>\n He recalled heightened security in north London\u2019s Jewish communities in the 1960s, when \u201cthe threat was [neo-Nazi] arson attacks\u201d \u2013 but he said he was grateful for the \u201cgood life\u201d in Britain. \u201cAll we ever wanted from Britain was to give us a chance to live here, practise our faith and contribute \u2013 and we\u2019ve done that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n <\/span>Women and children at the Hershel Weiss centre.<\/span> Photograph: Joel Goodman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n His colleague Sara Radivan, the Board of Deputies\u2019 community engagement officer, added: \u201cI\u2019m proud to be British, proud to be Jewish and can\u2019t say which comes first.\u201d<\/p>\n Other prominent British Jews say much more must be done to confront the threat of Islamist extremism.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cA 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,\u201d Dave Rich, the CST\u2019s head of policy, said.<\/p>\n He added: \u201cThe thing about Manchester is, you\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you can go back to \u2026 the Oldham couple who were building bombs. So you\u2019ve got a pattern now of Islamist terrorism and antisemitism coming out of towns and suburbs north of the city. I think there\u2019s a genuine question to be asking: \u2018what is going on there specifically?\u201d<\/p>\n The Heaton Park synagogue attack came days before the second anniversary of the 7 October attacks in Israel and days before Saadaoui and Hussein\u2019s trial began.<\/p>\n Then, not long before the judge was due to begin summing up, two attackers opened fire on Bondi Beach, targeting Sydney\u2019s Jewish community and killing 15 people.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n While rituals and relationships have been strengthened by tough times, others say a postwar paradigm has shifted.<\/p>\n <\/span>Families attending the Hershel Weiss hub.<\/span> Photograph: Joel Goodman\/The Guardian<\/p>\n Russell Langer, the Jewish Leadership Council\u2019s director of public affairs, said: \u201cFrom 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\u2019t let that be repeated.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that viewpoint is starting to be seen as far too optimistic. It\u2019s not that we think this time is any more dangerous than any of those times before, but that there\u2019s no complacency that dangerous times won\u2019t return.\u201d<\/p>\n Rich said: \u201cThere are people, imams and others, doing the hard work of pulling apart extremist narratives and showing why they\u2019re wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n But he said extremists were using \u201cauthentic\u201d texts to justify themselves, and moderate Muslim voices faced being \u201cdrowned out\u201d and intimidated by hardliners on social media.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n He said: \u201cWe have to be careful of the language we use because we are talking about an ideology here; we\u2019re not talking about the religion, we\u2019re not talking about the people. We are talking about a distinct threat.\u201d<\/p>\n However, Langer says, against the backdrop of security threats a note of joyful defiance runs through even the most sombre occasions.<\/p>\n \u201cIn London there were massive gatherings to mark the two-year anniversary of 7 October,\u201d Langer said. \u201cThe Manchester [synagogue] attack formed a big part of the conversation in a way that wasn\u2019t planned, but the event itself was to mark the hostages, the people who died on the day.<\/p>\n \u201cUnplanned at the end, a musician started playing Jewish tunes as people were leaving and, spontaneously, people started dancing. That\u2019s the positive spin. But I would be lying if I said those serious conversations about the future of Jewish life in this country haven\u2019t been continuing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThey tried to kill us. They failed. Let\u2019s eat,\u201d Andrew Walters said. It is an old Jewish joke that\u2019s as relevant as ever in Greater Manchester in the face of today\u2019s 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[7511,2200,336,534,2199,1593,13843,7990,2464,21279],"class_list":{"0":"post-39114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics","8":"tag-afraid","9":"tag-antisemitism","10":"tag-british","11":"tag-community","12":"tag-jewish","13":"tag-plot","14":"tag-refuse","15":"tag-solidarity","16":"tag-targeted","17":"tag-vigilance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}