Muslim and Jewish Families Save Each Other, 50 Years Apart
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In Manchester on Yom Kippur, a mother races her children home under lockdown—praying, remembering, and asking: how do we wake up to a world that keeps changing around us?
Today I woke up to a different world. The Manchester I live in feels different this morning.
It’s not the first time this has happened to me. I was on the last airplane allowed into Israeli airspace on September 11th - the next day I awoke to a different world. I lived in Jerusalem during the second intifada - I awoke to a different world many times. Like the rest of the world, I too woke up October 8th to a different world.
And so today, as I look out my kitchen window at the typical Manchester drizzle, the world is different once again.
Yesterday, Yom Kippur, I set out mid-morning with my three little boys. I had seen the helicopters in the air and my boys asked about them. I wasn’t sure but we headed out anyway. Then we saw more police cars and were told we had to turn around and go home; there had been a stabbing at a nearby shul and all the shuls were going into lockdown.
I told my boys they had to stay close and walk very quickly. With my heart racing I set back towards home. I remembered my Bubbie saying that when she walked home late at night in Lodz before the war, if she was scared she said the Shema over and over. So I recited the Shema to myself as we raced back.
My boys had thought the policeman said “knocked down” instead of “locked down” and kept asking why all the shuls had to be knocked down. We got home and watched all the helicopters that stayed in the sky all day. Slowly the news trickled in. Slowly the streets were more populated and we ventured out. And slowly I’m trying to make sense of what this means for us here, in Manchester, in the UK and for our world.
Slovie Jungreis Wolff quotes her mother, the Hungarian Holocaust survivor Esther Jungreis z”l as saying in her later years: “I know what I’ve seen. I know where I’ve been. We are sleeping.”
The call of the shofar over the past 40 days has been meant to serve as an existential alarm clock. And yet, there was nothing like the wakeup call yesterday. The world feels different today but I’m not sure it actually is. Our mission was and is to understand that this is not the first time we have been under threat as Jews. And it is not the first time the Almighty has tried to get our attention.
I tried to reassure my kids. I stayed in the back garden with them when they were frightened and let them know there would be extra police at school today. “Good news!” my 6-year-old told his dad. “There will be policemen at school today!” But if we leave it at that, the focus on antisemitism, the questions about communicating to children and processing trauma, I believe we are missing the call.
The Talmud says that when there is a tragedy it is incumbent on each individual to examine their own deeds - how they are behaving and showing up in life. What each of us do in the private quarters of our lives, what we choose to change and grow, matters.
My world is feeling wobbly and I believe the way forward and out of this darkness is not merely a political path; it’s taking to heart the personal wakeup call that I just received.
I pray we stop waking up to different worlds, that we need not say Shema under our breath or ask how to talk to our kids about such terror. Until then I will do my best to ask myself: Where can I change and do better? To do my part in helping to bring the world out of this darkness.
Dedicated to the refuah shelaima of Yehonasan Zalman ben Shaina Gittel and Anshel Yitzchak ben Malka
Cont the people that went through the Holocaust was afraid this would happen and told their descendants about this, I guess the Holocaust Survivors ( obm) were on point. it is unfolding like this in this day and age, my mother( obm) a Holocaust Survivor ( obm) would be horrified and upset this is happening after going through the Holocaust, Jews have protect themselves and also pray and believe in Heshem to make miracles to protect the Jewish people
Around 80 years ago there was a Holocaust( before that big anti semitism), and before October 7, 2923 Jews were not united so the enemies attacked us, and there is a lot of intermarriage and assimilation like it was before the Holocaust, there is a Jewish saying" when Jews don't make Kiddush non Jews make Havdalah"( meaning when Jews want to act like non Jews the non Jews remind them they are Jews), I am saying what a Holocaust Survivor from a kibbutz where there was a mini Holocaust Muslim Arab terrorists are Nazis( may their name be erased) that speak Arabic( and not German), also the Nazi( Y"S) attacked Jews on their holidays and/ or Shabbat, the world is very anti Semitic( anti Jewish and now Israel) like before the Holocaust in 1930s/ 1940s,
Reminded me of 7th. October, and after the Israeli reaction, most of my friends in the Middle East immediately disconnected their relationship with me. Some of them were friends for many years. I asked one of them Why do you hate the Jews? His answers were funny and in contradiction to the history, when I faced him with the truth, he kept silent. From that point, I felt the World had changed.
Don't be upset it happened before during the Holocaust, you thought someone was your friend and then they turned out to really a Jew hater, in reality you did not lose anything it means their so called mask fell off, and the truth about them come out, they weren't your real friend to began with, if they were they would not change if you are a Jewish person, it happened to others in colleges and universities so they ended up going to places where Jews gather for praying, socializing etc , find Jewish friends from the middle east
Valid point.
Am Yisrael Chai!
Amen
Am Yisrael Chai!!!!!!!
So come to Israel, HOME! Here there is no antisemitism. Yes, we live surrounded by hostile nations, but our army protects us, not a David Lammy!
Also G _ d as to protect us besides the Israeli soldiers with miracles , like it happened many times recently
With great respect to the author, I’m tired of HaShem trying to get our attention. The world always does this to Jews. No matter how hard we all try to keep the Torah.
There are 290,000 Jews in the Uk out of a population of 70,000,000. And all British Jews, indeed all Jews, want is to be left alone to live peacefully and worship HaShem.
How about HaShem stops allowing the world to do this to us????????
So, talk to the Creator about it.