For Jewish News October 5 2025
To stand in Trafalgar Square on a blustery October Sunday afternoon was to remove any doubt about how much British Jews are hurting.
This was a rally, planned months ago, to mark the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks against southern Israel on 7 October 2023. But there was universal pain etched on the faces of the crowd and the speakers as people fought to explain — to themselves — the most recent horror of the Yom Kippur Heaton Park Synagogue deaths in Manchester.
The Square holds a maximum of 5,000 people and while there may not have been quite that number, the place felt full. But this event, chaired with great dignity by Henry Grunwald KC, was not about numbers: it was about bearing witness, giving testimony, and also about resilience.
Board of Deputies president Phil Rosenberg underlined that message, telling the crowd that he had spent Shabbat in Manchester with the Heaton Park congregation. Amid the weeping and the prayers, he said, “we even danced together”, displaying “Jewish joy, Jewish pride. We, the Jewish people, refuse to be cowed”.
The Manchester attacks threaded like a bloodied ribbon through the presentations of every speaker, from “proud but deeply anguished Jewish Mancunian” Keith Black, who is chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, to the chief executive of UJIA, Mandy Winston, who read out a heartbreaking list of 17 British citizens who were murdered on 7 October 2023.
In his defiant address, Black said that the community had feared that the murders of 2023 would “spill over into this country.” Manchester, he said, had only proved that fear to have been justified, and he declared — to cheers from the crowd — that “antisemitism in this country is out of control.” That would have been no surprise to at least one member of the Trafalgar Square crowd — antisemitism czar Lord Mann.
But Black understood the spirit of the day by also declaring: “This is our home and we will not be driven out. We will stand firm, resilient, well-organised and brave. The leadership of this community is determined to fight back and protect our way of life”.
By every light it was a day of heightened emotion and heartbreak; not least in a video address from former British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari, who urged the community: “Use your voice — this is not the time to be quiet.” In this, she was echoed by the Israeli embassy consul, Sima Doovdevani, who said that “silence in the face of terror is not an option”.
Perhaps the most moving contribution came from Shaun Lemel, a survivor of the Nova Festival massacre. Still just 26 years old, he had been living and working in Connecticut and had come back to Israel for a family visit when he was persuaded by friends to buy a ticket to the music festival — in which more than 300 people lost their lives to Hamas terrorists.
At times seeming on the edge of tears, he recalled: “At 6.18 am I was dancing and having the time of my life. At 6.29 am the music stopped”. The terrified young man realised he was close to being either murdered of kidnapped — and passed out. He was saved by friends who rescued him — and he in turn helped to save three complete strangers — “who are now family.”
There was powerful testimony, too, from Sharone Lifschitz, a BritishIsraeli filmmaker whose parents, Oded and Yocheved, were kidnapped by Hamas. Her mother survived, but her father was murdered. Nevertheless, she told the crowd: “Today we choose to feel the pain and not to turn our fear into hate — so that the memory [of the dead] will be a blessing”.
Adam Ma’anit, communications manager at the Board of Deputies, spoke with anguish of the deaths of his cousin, Tsachi Idan, taken hostage after his daughter Ma’ayan was murdered. Tsachi was later murdered in captivity.
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis gave a powerful rendition of the prayer “El Maale Rachamim”, while Reform movement rabbis Charley Baginsky and Josh Levy recited Psalm 121.
The rally concluded with the lighting of 23 candles to represent the 23 communities where the Hamas attacks took place. Fittingly, the 23rd candle was lit by Holocaust survivor Mala Tribich.
There was a powerful police and CST presence in Trafalgar Square. Most attending echoed Henry Grunwald’s hope that it would be the last such rally — and that the call to “Bring Them Home” would shortly be realised for the remaining hostages.