On Monday, barely 48 hours before the start of the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, the UK’s chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis issued a message to British Jews.
“I am mindful of the fact that we are currently in the era of the unpredictable,” he said.
Few could have predicted what happened on Thursday at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester, where Jihad Al-Shamie, a Syrian-British man, launched an attack that left two Jewish worshippers dead. Al-Shamie was also shot dead by police.
While this specific attack could hardly have been foreseen, many British Jews have been warning for two years – ever since war broke out in Gaza – that they were experiencing greater levels of anti-Semitism and feared an attack on British soil.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a volunteer group that provides security to UK synagogues, reported 1,521 anti-Semitic incidents in the first six months
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