Observant Jews generally do not use their phones on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. But on Thursday, after a man killed two people and injured four outside a synagogue in Manchester, England, some residents of the area pulled their phones out and saw a video of an older neighbor laying in a pool of blood as the police shot the attacker.
“It’s a crazy moment,” said Osher Luftag, 18, who lives near the synagogue. He was awakened by his sister, who was in panic as the police stormed the neighborhood shortly after 9:30 a.m. in response to the attack. “Nothing like this has ever happened here.”
The attack, carried out on the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, sowed shock and terror.
“It’s this new feeling among the community that this place is no longer safe,” said Chen Bass, 27, a Jewish mother of two who lives in the area. She added that she felt increasingly surrounded by “people who hate us.”
“We will see more and more of this,” she predicted.
In the area, which contains a mix of cultures and identities, children wearing skullcaps mixed with women in saris or hijabs and men in turbans. Shops there sell fried chicken, shawarma, Kurdish and Polish dishes.
Maureen Harding, a resident of the area of 58 of her 78 years, said the neighborhood was generally peaceful.
But now, she said, “I feel terrible,” adding, “It is really frightening.”
Older residents sat on chairs by the area where the police had cordoned off Middleton Road, where the attack took place. Some said they lived in the immediate vicinity of the synagogue and were evacuated from their homes. Residents walked to other synagogues in the area so they could say afternoon prayers.
Police officers in yellow jackets were still guarding the many Jewish cultural and worship sites in the neighborhood on Thursday evening.
Some members of the local community mixed bereavement with anger at what they called a lack of sufficient security at the synagogue, which is described as Orthodox on its Facebook page.
“I am not surprised” about the attack, said Alex Rind, 31, as a helicopter flew overhead and police cars drove by. “This was expected.”
Mr. Rind blamed the attack on what he said was a conflation of anger at Israel’s actions in Gaza mixed with general hatred of Jews.
“The security of every single person in this neighborhood is under a greater threat after Oct. 7,” he said, referring to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that spurred Israel’s war in Gaza. “It doesn’t matter if Jews agree or not.”
Some members of the Jewish community in the area immediately surrounding the synagogue refrained from looking at their phones on Yom Kippur, and on Thursday afternoon, many still did not know what had happened.
Emma Bubola is a Times reporter based in Rome.
The post ‘A Crazy Moment’: Shock and Terror Spreads in Manchester Synagogue’s Community appeared first on New York Times.
