The way we were: (left to right) a baby Angela Epstein, the writer aged seven, and on her wedding day at Heaton Park synagogue in 1990[Missing Credit]
Little wonder, then, that 12 months on from that harrowing day, it remains almost dizzying to reconcile Heaton Park, where children once collected conkers, with the place where Jihad Al-Shamie committed murder shouting “Allahu Akbar!’ as he tried to bludgeon his way into Heaton Park shul.
So how to mark the Day of Atonement knowing it also marks the yahrzeit of those who were slain?
Well, with a sense of trepidation, particularly now that our new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, and Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband have announced policies to block Israeli settlement products from entering British shops. I believe this self-serving move, designed to appease sections of the Muslim community and the hard-Left vote, has made Britain’s minnow Jewish community more vulnerable than ever. As Tory leader Kemi Badenoch put it: you can’t claim to fight antisemitism while helping to create the political climate in which hatred of the Jewish state is used to win votes at elections.
But what is also true is that the community, led by the Heaton Park’s peerless Rabbi Daniel Walker, has shown extraordinary resilience in the 12 months since the atrocity. As the rabbi put it when I interviewed him last December: “Evil makes noise, but good is what makes the difference.” For my part, as the fast approaches, my mind is furiously replaying how Yom Kippur began in 2025.
I woke up rather late, for I was in no rush to get to shul, to the sound of helicopters circling overhead. I assumed they had been scrambled by police to catch a criminal on the run, but on the way to synagogue I sensed something more sinister was unfolding. I passed a group of police officers and members of CST and saw faces creased with concern. Being a nosy journalist, I stopped to ask what was going on. (I don’t use my phone on Yom Kippur, so I had no way of checking for myself what was happening.)
All I was told was that there had been an incident at the Heaton Park, and I scratched my head. Although it can seat 850 people, its congregation is far smaller than it was in my youth which, in the moment, told me it wasn’t an obvious target. Since Heaton Park’s heyday, a plethora of shuls and minyanim has sprouted up and I was on my way to one of them. After we married at Heaton Park, Martin and I joined another, smaller shul, drawn by its younger, more vibrant congregation. It was at this synagogue that I intended to spend the day reflecting on the year gone by, taking stock, and atoning for my sins.
By the time I arrived at shul, word had got out about Heaton Park and our rabbi was telling people to head home. I was in shock. What? The synagogue where I used to sit upstairs with my mum on Yom Kippur (conkers held little appeal once I hit my teens) and listen to the late, much-missed Reverend Leslie Olsberg booming his sermon from the pulpit? I can still hear him reminding us that the gates of repentance would soon be closing. One memorable year, he lyrically described Yom Kippur as the last petrol station before hitting the motorway.
I knew about the hate marches that had passed unchecked through our cities, turning some areas into virtual no-go zones for Jews. But while others would later insist they had foreseen a fatal terrorist attack I simply couldn’t imagine this hatred might turn to bloodshed.
Inside Heaton Park shul[Missing Credit]
It was only when Yom Kippur was over, and we switched on our electronic devices, that the enormity of what had taken place at the Heaton Park became properly real. Our children, none of whom now live in Manchester, were immediately on the line. “What the hell had happened?” they wanted to know.
Non-Jewish friends and colleagues, unaware that my phone had been switched off for hours, had also left a stream of panicked messages asking if I was all right.
In the days that followed incredulity morphed into grim reality. But it also became clear too that the Jewish community of Manchester was bowed but not broken. A Friday-night service held a couple of weeks after the attack, and attended by more than a thousand people from across the community to mark the reopening of the synagogue, became a snapshot of the community’s determination to rise above the horror.
But at the same time it became clear from talking to friends who have lived in Manchester for all, or most, of their lives that some were considering making aliyah in the wake of the attack. Last year, 742 British Jews emigrated to Israel, the highest number since the mid-1980s, and some of my close friends were among them. I can’t exaggerate the significance of this. Manchester, and especially north Manchester, is a small and friendly place. You know that when you call into the butcher to pick up a chicken or walk down Leicester Road with its strip of kosher shops that you will likely arrive home half an hour later than you planned because you will bump into someone you know and chat. So when people leave the city we feel it, deeply.
And although I can’t absolutely promise that over Yom Kippur, during the long reflective hours in shul, my thoughts won’t also turn to Israel and whether Martin and I should spend our retirement years there, I also know that I won’t. My grandfather escaped pogroms in Ukraine to find sanctuary in the UK. A hugely talented musician he, ironically enough, became the choirmaster at the Heaton Park shul. How could it be that this fine synagogue should be both the start of my grandfather’s journey and the end of my own in this country and this city in particular? I love Manchester: its people, both within and beyond the Jewish community, its humour, its irreverence; and its proximity to five counties of beautiful countryside. Were I ever to leave, it will be on my own terms.
For now, I am looking forward to going to shul on Yom Kippur, to taking part in the rituals and prayers that have sustained our people for thousands of years.
En route, I will, I am sure, pass countless police officers and dedicated CST volunteers, a visible reminder of the fragility of our security. And it will be hard not to think of those who set out for shul on that fateful Yom Kippur and never came home.
Yet, in that remembered sorrow, there will also be, for me, a gritty resolve. Just as horse chestnut trees shed their conkers year after year, we too will keep on keeping on.
