A comedian, DJ and journalist walk into a Bar(Mitzvah)
Amid troubling antisemitism in London, Benjamin Bell writes a call to action for allies to stand up against anti-Jewish racism
The feedback was shock when I wrote in these pages after the 7 October massacre that we wear stab vests to enable fellow Jews to visit synagogue and our kids to attend Sunday school.
Not a new phenomenon born of today’s normalised antisemitism. It’s all I’ve known.
The fact it appeared unknown beyond the community struck me how removed certain aspects of the Jewish experience are from the wider world we inhabit.
We walk among you. We work among you. We wear armour alone.
The silence of too many decent people amid the threat to Jews at times feels harder than the danger itself.
We treasure the friends and strangers who have stood tall and spoken true.
Certain examples give me goosebumps to recall.
The solidarity of a traditional Friday night dinner in our honour. Hosted and attended by non-Jews who cared. The challah and chopped liver they had never served nourished stomach and soul.
The box of doughnuts delivered on Chanukah by a Christian couple. Our hearts made whole by the treat with a hole.
The colleague offering to forgo his lie-in and stand by me keeping guard in the cold. The midnight message added ‘You’ve got me. Sleep tight, mate’.
Sorry to say the headline isn’t the start of a joke. More tragicomic backdrop to a harsh reality.
On my last security shift I took over from a mainstream journalist. I was then replaced by an international DJ. A TV comedian helped too.
All doing our regular stint of eyes and ears alongside the professionals. We were protecting a Bar Mitzvah. Yes, even a coming-of-age ceremony for innocent youth can be a target.
That I felt uninteresting by comparison was beside the point. What registered was the random, fascinating mix who after their various duties will melt back into busy London lives.
Each has an audience to their craft. Those audiences learn from the journalist, listen to the DJ and laugh with the comedian.
At the same time they are oblivious to the anxieties facing those Jewish mothers and fathers as their families feel the breath of antisemitism on their necks.
The warning signs had been evident for too long before congregants of Heaton Park synagogue were killed in Manchester last year. Heroic volunteers at the gates had prevented greater tragedy.
Even since the recent atrocities on Bondi Beach, another murderous plot has been foiled in the UK, an American synagogue has been burnt down and the idyll of Canada is disturbed daily by horrors against Jews.
Yet all are drops in a polluted ocean the world over. The global count of 15m Jews may hold 30m opinions but the problem is we face a much larger number of haters.
In the UK, effective policing, education that values history over hate, action against the bile online and building interfaith connections are essential if we want to turn the growing tide of British Jews assessing their future here.
Yet the most basic step to take is at a human, individual level. Staring up at the mountain of antisemitism, we need our neighbours and co-workers to climb with us.
Allies willing to call out anti-Jewish racism and end the tolerance of intolerance.
Advocates who will repel the extremes and reject division.
We walk among you. We work among you. We wear armour alone.
With your words and actions, please help us take it off.
Benjamin Bell is a London-based corporate affairs leader