When the ground feels like it’s shifting beneath our feet, we know our job as mothers. Remain calm. Be steady. Stay solid. For us Jewish mums that’s been no easy feat in the past few weeks. So much is happening so fast.
My last column, which was about the “where would you go” chat and my own conviction to stay in Britain, went to press a day before the arson attack on Finchley Reform Synagogue, around the corner from me. As the issue hit the shelves, there were two more arson attacks – in Hendon and Kenton – and an attempted car ramming also in Hendon. Since then there’s been the stabbing in Golders Green.
The momentum of these events has pushed me over some of my own thresholds. Last Friday night, I told my son to take his kippah off before walking home from his friends’ Friday night dinner. Previously, I might have thought it, but wouldn’t have said it. It may seem small, but it was a boundary crossed – I always try to avoid passing on fear.
Generally I’m of the “Keep calm and carry on” state of mind, although recently keeping calm has started to feel like burying my head in the sand so I’ve had a subtle shift in mindset. “Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst” – whether in relation to walking home with a kippah on a Friday night or planning for the future.
The “hope” I’m generally pretty good at. If you need some optimism it looks like this: we are now at peak fear. There’s been a spate of attacks, but the British people are on our side. You can’t hear many of them? They’re being British.
No one knows what to say. People are scared to get it wrong. But they don’t want antisemitism in this country any more than we do.
We now have more police protecting us. When it all calms down in the Middle East, it will all just go back to the way it was. Yes, there will always be antisemitism, but we can largely ignore it – just like we used to!
If we’re looking on the bright side we can also be grateful for allies outside the Jewish community. We should all be playing Karma Chameleon on repeat right now after Boy George has shown his true colours – not only “red, gold and green” but blue and white too. He’s spoken up about antisemitism not only on social media – but on the actual old-fashioned telly too.
‘‘I know lots of amazing Jewish people,” he told The Late Late Show host Patrick Kielty. “If you don’t know Jewish people maybe that’s the problem.” It’s so very true – and something we need to bear in mind.
A consequence of feeling under attack is that we feel safer together, but more suspicious of people around us. As a community we are looking to each other for support. Of course, in many ways it means British Jewry is thriving – synagogues are fuller, local kosher restaurants buzzing, university Friday night dinners heaving and Jewish summer camps oversubscribed.
Plus, Jewish schools are at their peak. JFS has a waiting list, Yavneh is going from strength to strength and Immanuel College has had a miraculous intervention. But what we don’t see are the friendships and connections outside of our community that are decreasing. Fewer Jewish kids are at mainstream schools making lifelong friendships with people who may one day be our Boy Georges.
There’s a fine line between a community that is flourishing and one that is self ghetto-ising. For me, having hope in Britain means both a flourishing Jewish life and an integrated one. I don’t have the answer of how to get that balance right – I have sent my kids to a mix of Jewish and mainstream schools, so I am in no way criticising that decision. But I know it’s something we have to be attuned to.
Part of that is also having better connections with moderate Muslim communities too. In that spirit, I recently found myself at JW3 watching an interfaith conversation between Rabbi Dovid Lewis and Imam Nasser Kurdy. I can’t say, in all honesty, it made me feel positive. I am full of admiration for both of them, but we were warned the evening might be triggering, and it was. But the most heartwarming moment came from a Muslim woman in the audience. She asked the imam what moderate Muslims can do to ensure people understand that they are not antisemitic and that they are not associated with extremism. The imam didn’t really answer the question – but it was the fact that she asked it and even the fact that she’d come to a Jewish venue to watch this conversation that made me feel hopeful.
I didn’t find her at the end of the night and I guess she’ll never read this but I wanted to thank her and tell her I understood that feeling. We’ve all experienced it to some extent – the sinking in the stomach shame of being associated with something we don’t want to be. Epstein pictured in his IDF T-shirt springs to mind. I’m not equating the scenarios, only that unique strain of minority embarrassment.
Her question made me take another step, which I’ve been meaning to do for some time, and get in touch with the Jewish Muslim Women’s Network Nisa-Nashim. I chair the Jewish Women’s Professional Forum on behalf of Wizo, but these connections outside of the community are vital too. Because I guess it’s not only about finding hope, it’s about creating it too. So I’ve been in touch with Laura Marks, co-founder of the network, and I’m interested to find out more.
Women are often the ones at the coalface – we’re the ones who need to be calm and solid at home. That’s our job whatever our religion – and perhaps we can help to steady each other. As always, I’m hoping for the best.
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