How do we think outside the box if all the information is apparently available?

Being in crisis mode is stressful. Since, two weeks ago tomorrow, I had to carry my daughter on her first day at her new nursery past forensics officers investigating an attempted firebombing on the premises, the world has seemed smaller and more restricted. Security is a way of life for Jewish communities, but since Heaton Park last October, there has been even more emphasis. The recent attacks have raised that still further.

Thankfully the incident with my daughter is as close as these events have come – but that was quite close enough. Once the cold fear of the initial sighting of police and CST had passed, concern for my daughter was the priority. She fell asleep that night saying how much she liked the new nursery: we clearly managed the situation sufficiently well for her not to be overtly harmed.

At times like these, the response to events from outside the affected group is personal. I’ve appreciated messages of support from friends and family, and the statements by public figures have helped to convince me that the situation is being taken somewhat seriously. The repetitive chorus of voices attempting to pre-empt any expression of fear or anxiety with the admonition that (as one particularly uncalled-for comment put it last week) if I was worried about threats and attacks, I should be more concerned with the Palestinian right to existence is a fact of life. Large numbers of people in this country are unable to express sympathy with Jews without either qualifying it with a reference to solidarity with Palestinians (on the left) or to dark allusions to a common enemy in the ill-defined concept of “Islamism” (on the right). As others more eloquent than I have said, it would be nice to be able to worry about a legitimate concern and a genuine threat on my own terms. These buildings and these people on the news are familiar to me. I had to carry my daughter past a crime scene which was also her nursery. If you’re not able to understand that these are important things in their own right, you perhaps aren’t properly equipped to see the bigger picture either.

For whatever it may be worth, I want to reiterate something I have said over and over again. This is not about whichever cause you want to make it about. It’s about the right of British citizens to live their lives without fear. It’s about the decisions by the perpetrators to break the law to threaten and intimidate us in the peaceful practice of our own lives. The only way you can make it something more is by instrumentalising the situation to score cheap political points. Sometimes it is appropriate to take a broader view, but the specific human consequences should never be out of focus.

Right now, UK Jews are very scared and feeling very lonely. Part of that is due to the events themselves and the responses I’ve already described. But part of it is also the sense that many voices which are quick to talk very loudly on other occasions are missing in action. As Sarah Sackman, MP for Golders Green and the Solicitor-General, wrote in last Saturday’s Guardian: “Where are the marches in solidarity and support of our Jewish community? Where is the response of the liberal-left? Where are the anti-racists, the trade unions, civil society, our friends and neighbours?”

This sentiment has clearly struck a chord. I was perusing a social-media platform last night and noticed someone taking up her theme, identifying that as well as silence from “Muslims”, neither Sadiq Khan, the Mayor of London, nor the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dame Sarah Mullaly, had made statements. The author was indignant.

This caused me to pause. Because Sadiq Khan has not only made statements, including an article in the Guardian yesterday, he visited Finchley Reform Synagogue. In fact he visited the same day as Sarah Sackman and Dan Jarvis (the Security Minister) did. Nor was this, as some cynics might claim, opportunism. He has a long history of friendship with the synagogue and its clergy: he did not need his staffers to tell him where it was.

A few hours after the attack in Golders Green last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury made a statement. It was released on a social media platform I no longer use, as well as on the website of the Anglican Communion:

The appalling attack in Golders Green today is another example of the violence, hatred and intimidation that Jewish people in Britain have had to live with for far too long.

The victims are in my prayers, as are all those affected and the Jewish community across the country.

As we discussed at Lambeth Palace last week with @metpoliceuk Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley, the @ChiefRabbi and other faith leaders, there must be zero tolerance for antisemitism or any other form of hatred – and faith communities must work together urgently to counter violent extremism.

We must stand together as a country. An attack on one community is an attack on us all.

We have all got very good at parsing such statements, but I don’t think I need to. Her sympathies and her good intentions are clear, as are the clear and living links with the Jewish people.

Going back to the social media platform on which a user’s displeasure prompted this train of thought, I can also access clear statements of solidarity and support from Muslim community leaders. The Muslim Council of Britain, for example, said:

The Muslim Council of Britain shares our deepest concerns and prayers with the Jewish community following the horrific stabbing attack on two Jewish men in Golders Green this morning taking place in front of a shop and a synagogue.

Dr Wajid Akhter, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain says: “This spike of hate related incidents targeted at people of faith especially in places of worship must be met with stronger security for faith communities and the full force of the law to tackle all forms of hatred in society. Everyone must be allowed to live safely and practice their faith in public in Britain.”

Once again, we can parse the statement. But it exists. The sense of isolation that Jews feel is honestly come by – just take a look at the efforts to diminish and relativise a clear and tangible threat – but it is made worse by relying on algorithms to collate and serve us reality.

What is frightening is that we are so secure in our channels of communication, and so out of practice in stretching our attention beyond them, that we are at the mercy of the media’s decisions, which this week have focused on highlighting the idiotic intervention by Zack Polanski of the Green Party and the response by Sir Mark Rowley of the Met. In this case, as with so many issues concerning the media, it’s hard to know for sure whether supply or demand is to blame. The media produces dross in the expectation that it will generate consumption. This is as true today as it was in 1997, when the Great British Public demanded to know why intrusive pictures of Diana, Princess of Wales were so highly valued, apparently not noticing its own role in buying them.

We must remember that the medium and the message are harder and harder to separate, and that at times of crisis we would in any case be well advised to seek information from where it comes best, not where it is easiest. Moreover, if we are not receiving messages of support and solidarity, what else might we be missing?

Though founded to keep Jews safe from the far-right in the 1950s, the Community Security Trust (UK Charity 1042391) works with people and institutions of many faiths to keep them safe and secure, including many mosques. If you feel like donating, the page is here: https://cst.org.uk/donate-now

Finchley Reform Synagogue (UK Charity 1137557) is a thriving and important Progressive Jewish community in North London: like all communities, it is reliant on donations to keep doing the work it does, which will now include security changes. The link to donate is here: https://www.frs.org.uk/donate-to-frs.html