At Heaton Park, I saw what true resilience is

A few months ago, I made a video on my instagram (@akivamw) where I asked people within the Jewish community to describe Jews in one word. Out of 40 responses, 8 of them, a fifth of all responses, gave the same word – resilient.

Of course, the reason for this needs little explanation. Jews have been persecuted in every generation, from Haman to the Romans to the Inquisition to the Nazis to Hamas. But the Jews have remained strong and survived throughout it all, not willing to be broken, and always persevering.

I have seen this resilience exhibited numerous times. After October 7th, the response of the community in Israel wasn’t to cower away, but to come out and volunteer in waves. I remember my shaliach, who was in Israel at the time, sending a photo of the line for a Magen David Adom blood drive, where people were queuing up and down the street just to be able to donate blood and contribute in some way.
But it was not just the community in Israel which showed incredible strength from this all.
October 7th brought with it a tsunami of Jew hatred, spreading across the World. The CST reported 4,298 antisemitic incidents in 2023 – their highest year on record. However, despite this, I believe that I have never seen a Jewish community more willing and eager to stand up for themselves. Numerous organisations were set up in response to this fresh bout of Jew hatred, including some (such as OurFightUK) by non-Jewish allies of the community.
I personally set up one of these organisations as well. After seeing anti-Israel rallies run flagrant on the streets of Liverpool, and having been attacked after countering them by myself, I founded the organisation ‘Liverpool Israel Action’, and brought together a group of almost 100 people to counter-protest which, to the best of my knowledge, was the largest ever recorded public pro-Israel gathering in Liverpool.
Even the Jewish Stand was set up in a show of resilience, as a direct response to constant aggression and antisemitism plaguing the University of Leeds (of which I currently study at).

The point I am making should be clear. When the Jewish people are attacked, and when hate rises against us, we respond with strength and pride, and refuse to cower and be scared away.
But, in some cases, I could truly not blame parts of a community if they did cower away. There are some things which can happen which are surely just too much for even the strongest of us to handle.

On Yom Kippur 2025 (which I was in Israel for), I came back from Neila to be told by my friend that there had been a terror attack in my home city of Manchester. The shock and dread I felt that night was nothing compared to what my community back home was experiencing. A terror attack at Heaton Park Shul, a cornerstone of the community, which had resulted in the deaths of two innocent men.
How can we respond to something like this? In Israel, there is unfortunately a precedent for these types of attacks. But in the diaspora, in the UK, there was nothing of such.
As I said before, I would have found no blame if the Jews of Manchester became scared and prideless. I would have had complete understanding if Heaton Park decided to hide away, or even shut down entirely. And I certainly would have been nothing but sympathetic if those very people who had witnessed, or had been directly injured in the attack, became fearful of being Jewish and became distant from their identity.
But not only did this not happen, exactly the opposite did.

Immediately after the attack, the Jews of Manchester stood next to Heaton Park Shul on a rainy Wednesday for a vigil. At this vigil, Rabbi Daniel Walker, of Heaton Park, made something incredibly clear; the attacker “shut down the synagogue building, but he did not shut down our prayers”.
And this exemplary ideology of resilience was also seen in Yoni Finlay, who was shot during the attack. Despite what happened to him, Yoni went on to become a prominent voice about antisemitism, and the dangers of where it could lead.

However, in my opinion, true resilience isn’t just taking strength in dealing with trauma, but is instead becoming stronger as a result.

Soon after the attack, Heaton Park decided that they were going to get a new Sefer Torah in the memory of Adrian Daulby Z”L and Melvin Cravitz Z”L – the victims of the terror attack.
The name of this Torah was to be called the Unity Sefer Torah because, in Rabbi Walker’s own words, “we stand together in memory, resilience and unity”.
On October the 11th, I went back from Leeds to Manchester to attend the Hachnosos Sefer Torah (inauguration of the Sefer Torah) of this. And the resilience, the strength, and the passion which I saw that day in the Jewish community of Manchester was indescribable. A community together, dancing and singing and filling the streets with our joy, light, and life. We did not hide away, we did not just carry on, we did not just overcome our trauma, but we instead rose up and became even stronger, and even more united.
As Yoni Finlay said at the memorial service for the attack, in August, “An evil person tried to destroy us on Yom Kippur, and together we have not let that evil win. Evil will never succeed because of who we are and what we do.”