Like a lot of Jewish people, I found out about Thursday’s horrific attack outside a Manchester synagogue as I was leaving synagogue.
It was the end of the Yom Kippur holiday — only a few hours prior, I had chanted the medieval poem about how only God knows who will live and who will die, who by fire and who by water. The irony was obvious and painful.
The scene was also grimly familiar: the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacres happened on the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, which meant many observant Jews only learned about it when they, too, turned on their phones after the holiday was over. (Traditionally, religious Jews don’t use electricity on the Sabbath and holidays; even many less traditional ones unplug from phones and devices.)
It seems this is our new normal. Celebrate a holiday, then check the news to see if anyone was just murdered.
So, it seems, this is our new normal. Celebrate a holiday, then check the news to see if anyone was just murdered.
Let’s be clear: This attack was 100% antisemitic. Not partly, not somewhat.
While we are still learning some details about it, some things are confirmed. The attacker was a British citizen of Syrian descent; British police has declared this a terrorist incident; the attack was carried out amidst a highly fraught and politicized environment during Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza. But even if this attack was politically motivated, it’s important to remember that synagogues are not military targets, and British Jews reflecting on the year just passed are not soldiers nor politicians. Nor, as far as I’m aware, did the terrorist ask his victims what they thought of Zionism or the Netanyahu government.
He ran into the crowd with his car and stabbed people because they were Jews.
Progressives, especially those who, like me, have been publicly critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza, need to speak clearly about this. We need to say that it is never acceptable to target random Jews at a synagogue because of something the state of Israel does. Or random Israeli citizens in a kibbutz or at a rave. Or, for that matter, Muslims or Christians or Palestinians in Gaza or the West Bank. And we need to refrain from providing what we think is “context.”
The case against Israel’s actions in Gaza is stronger, not weaker, when Israel’s critics speak with moral clarity. I sincerely believe that it helps Palestine when those in solidarity with it condemn antisemitic violence without qualification. As, let’s be honest, many did not in October 2023. I lost friends and allies that month, and I will never forget their silence or equivocation.
I have gone to the journalistic mat insisting that anti-Zionism is not the same as antisemitism, whatever the Anti-Defamation League or the Trump regime might insist. But when Jews are attacked because they are Jews, then it is. It’s really that simple.
As for the right, I admit that I was, sadly, relieved that this terrorism happened in Manchester, England, and not Manchester, New Hampshire. Because had it happened here, a lot would be different.
For one thing, the killer would’ve likely had an AR-15 instead of a knife, and a lot more Jews would’ve died on that sidewalk. For another, I’d be afraid of what the Trump regime would do in response. I would worry that legitimate pro-Palestinian activists would be targeted, or that there’d be executive orders claiming that they’re part of some vast, left-wing conspiracy that must be forcibly dismantled by the FBI and the military. I’d be personally afraid, even as a rabbi and progressive Zionist, of how far this crackdown would go. As, of course, I already am. I have a little more faith that British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government will respond firmly (as they, and the conservative opposition, already have) but appropriately, rather than fan the flames of Islamophobia, paranoia and demonization of political opponents, as the Trump administration has done every time it’s had the chance. Had this attack happened here, American Jews like me would endure that strange, liminal period when we wouldn’t yet know if we’d been attacked from the right or from the left. And of course, had this attack happened here, American Jews like me would endure that strange, liminal period when we wouldn’t yet know if we’d been attacked from the right or from the left; for being complicit in Israeli genocide or for organizing the Great Replacement of white Americans by nonwhite immigrants; for whatever conspiracy theory someone happened to read about on the internet; or simply for being Jews. Because that’s the thing about antisemitic violence. Contrary to what the right loves to say, it comes from all political directions (although much more, statistically speaking, from the right). And contrary to what some on the far left have said, no political or military “context” justifies killing innocent people at a mosque, synagogue or church, even if that context is real and terrible and deserving of protest. My soul thirsts to hear those words from the people I once loved as my friends.
Jay Michaelson
Jay Michaelson will be a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in 2025. He clerked for Judge Merrick Garland on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, was the Supreme Court columnist for the Daily Beast for eight years, and is the author of the bestselling book God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. He holds a JD from Yale, a PhD in religion from Hebrew University, and nondenominational rabbinic ordination. 
