‘I lied to my daughters on Yom Kippur’

I lied to my daughters on Yom Kippur.

On Tuesday, I will be taking them to synagogue, or shul as anyone I have ever known has called it, for Sukkot.

It is possibly the bizarrest Jewish festival in a crowded field. We shake miscellaneous agricultural products in various directions to evoke a temple service not conducted in thousands of years.

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It is a ceremony grounded in an almost entirely agricultural society. As Jews go, I’m as urban as Sigmund Freud or an Aaron Sorkin character.

And the odd thing is I don’t believe in God.

The Jewish theologian Moses Maimonides said you cannot describe what God is, just what God is not. As brilliant as Maimonides was, I cannot help but wonder why he did not take the final leap to conclude the concept was incoherent.

But I will take the girls the shul. Why? Because I am a Jew. Because if I stop being Jewish, who am I?

Yet I told them I would never put them in danger. What level of danger is it worth putting my daughters in to walk in circles shaking fruit for?

I was not directly affected by this week’s killing of two Jews going to shul on Yom Kippur. I grew up in Manchester, but did not know the victims – I think.

Although I am sure it will come out in the days to come that one of them coached my football team, or gave my uncle a lift to the station once, or some innocuous cross-pathing.

My parents were locked down in their shul but were let out because my mum needed to go home for her medication.

An argument ensued about whether someone would drive her home but my mum did not want someone to break their Yom Kippur observance for her.

I found out just as I got home for the afternoon break in services. I had just taken part in the martyrs part of our shul’s prayers, where you remember various episodes of Jew-killing throughout the centuries. The Roman expulsion, the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust. We added October 7th this year. 

Mid-prayer someone pushed a piece of paper onto my prayer book and mouths silently ‘You’ll do that’?.

Something about Rabbi Akiva, who was killed by a Roman Governor for teaching Jewish law.

I smiled as a way of saying yes, not really thinking what it is I’d been asked to do.

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When I got home for the mid-afternoon break, my wife told me what’s happened. I’m not strictly observant but stay off electronics on Yom Kippur. I called my parents though. 

We realise we will have to tell the girls, so we do it while Facetiming my parents so they do not panic. 

The Jewish Shabbat and Yom Tov spell – the way you feel in a completely different place while not moving, because you have withdrawn from your phone, the TV, driving – is broken. In it’s place there’s just confusion and fear and anger.

That’s when I lie to my daughters. Later that night I watch the BBC 10 O’Clock News report. It’s establishing shot zooms over the street where I grew up. I cry.

There will be arguments about what needs to happen. I have my list, others will have theirs.

But the one thing that Labour representatives must do, from the Prime Minister to parish councillor, is respond to this as a Jewish tragedy.

It is not a signal that we need to tackle racism in all its forms. You do not have to mention the struggles other communities face in the same breath.

When a community is hurting, that moment needs to be about them. This moment is about the Jewish community. 

If you want to address the problems other communities face, give them the respect of doing so in an act that recognises them without dilution as well. 

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This is, in the first instance, a tragedy for the families of those who have been killed and those who knew them.

Beyond that, British Jews live in a completely different place today, without moving. 

Last week, they lived in a world where a British Jew could go to shul on Yom Kippur, shake the security guard’s hand on the way in, having not thought twice about their safety.

Now they cannot, nor ever will.

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