Lighting the Chanukah candles at the site of the bloodiest antisemitic attack in British history was a poignant event for the York Jewish community.

Rabbi Dr Elisheva Salamo, who is the first permanent rabbi to live within the city walls in over 800 years, said the community had “wanted to bring light to the darkness”.

In 1190, the Jews of York were trapped in Clifford’s Tower by a baying mob, and some chose to commit suicide rather than be forcibly converted or murdered. 

Over 800 years later, the tower hosted a chanukiah lighting for the first night of the festival. The rabbi, who leads York Liberal Jewish Community, said the first Chanukah candle was “symbolic of hope and despair”.

The connection between the violence that Jews suffered in medieval England and that perpetrated by Hamas on October 7 makes the marking of Chanukah even more powerful, she said.

Rabbi Salamo described October 7 as “traumatic”. She lost students in the terrorist attack and has family serving in the IDF.

She said: “How do we connect when we don’t have light in this moment of uncertainty? We don’t entirely know what happened to [the Jews massacred at York Tower] and we don’t know completely what is going to happen to us. We are in a time of hopelessness and also hopefulness.”

Rabbi Elisheva said Chanukah at Clifford’s Tower showed “we can be who we are in places that have not been historically welcoming”.

She said that the festival had given the community a “great opportunity to reconnect” through an event for under 45s and another one for the local Israeli community, as well as the candle-lighting ceremony. “This feels like a very exciting time. From a city where horrible things happened to Jews, York has become a city where good things can happen.”

On the final night of Chanukah, the community will commemorate the victims of the York Massacre at Jewbury Cemetery, York’s medieval Jewish burial ground. They will say Kaddish and light 150 memorial candles, nine of which will then be used to form a chanukiah.

Rabbi Elisheva said this transition from one candle in Clifford’s Tower to a full candelabra in the cemetery signified “a new lease of Jewish life in York”.

The Archbishop of York, the Dean of York Minster and several other faith partners are expected to attend.