Antisemitism Rally Tomorrow - will you join me?

Tomorrow we will speak at the rally against antisemitism.

I know that for some people this decision feels uncomfortable. I understand why. The invitation to certain politicians changed the feeling of the event for many. It raised serious questions about who feels able to stand in that space and about the kind of coalition being formed there. I have wrestled with those questions too.

But over these past months I have also sat with Jewish communities carrying a fear and weariness that feels unfamiliar in modern British Jewish life. I have spoken to parents wondering what their children absorb from the sight of police outside Jewish schools every day. Young Jews tucking a Magen David beneath a jumper before stepping onto the Tube. Friends becoming quieter in public spaces because they no longer trust how they will be heard. People becoming watchful in a country where they once moved easily.

And beneath all of that sits something harder to name: the fear that Jewish life in Britain could slowly become narrower, more guarded, more alone. Defined by walls and security barriers rather than by encounter, contribution and belonging.

I cannot accept that as our future. There is a line from the poet Yehuda Amichai that stays with me continuously:

“From the place where we are right flowers will never grow in the spring.”

So much of public life feels trapped there now. Everyone shouting certainties across barricades. Everyone convinced they alone can see clearly. Everyone becoming harder. And when societies harden, minorities feel it first.

Judaism has never been at its best when it closes in on itself. The Talmud is built out of disagreement held in relationship. Voices arguing across generations because complexity is not weakness in Jewish tradition. It is part of what it means to search honestly for truth.

That feels fragile in Britain right now. Which is part of why I will be there tomorrow. Not because the event is uncomplicated. It is not.

Not because every person speaking reflects my politics or values. They do not. But because absence has consequences too. If Progressive Jews are not present in moments like this, then the public voice of British Jewry narrows. Fear becomes the loudest language in the room. And those of us who believe Jewish life must remain open, democratic and deeply connected to wider society slowly disappear from view. I refuse that disappearance.

I also refuse the idea that Jews should face this moment alone. So this is an invitation, especially to friends and allies beyond the Jewish community.

Please come. Come even if the space feels imperfect. Come even if there are people there you profoundly disagree with. Come because antisemitism grows when Jews become isolated from the society around us. Come because none of us should accept a future where minorities retreat behind ever higher walls, living more separately from one another and more fearfully within ourselves.

Marge Piercy once wrote that “attention is love.” I think about that often.

To really pay attention to one another. To refuse indifference. To stay present to one another’s fear and humanity even when it is uncomfortable or complicated. That too feels deeply Jewish to me. The prophets imagined a world where each person could sit beneath their vine and fig tree and none would make them afraid. Not only Jews. Everyone. That vision still matters.

And tomorrow, however imperfectly, I want us to take a step towards it together.