British Jews mark first Shabbat since Golders Green stabbing with hidden kippot and stab-vested guards

Across north London this weekend, many Jews were preparing for Shabbat behind a routine the community had not previously needed in public. Derek, who lives in Edgware and did not give his full name, bought a baseball cap to cover his kippah for the first time in his life. “I went shopping yesterday and bought a baseball cap. I never wear a baseball cap,” he told the BBC. “I felt that to go on the underground, as a religious Jew, was just too problematic.” He still planned to attend his small synagogue, which he said now feels “like a prison,” adding that what disturbed him most was “the deafening silence of a community, of a country in the wake of such virulent antisemitism.”

Adam Wagner, a prominent human rights lawyer, agonised over whether to wear a kippah on the walk to synagogue, and said his child had asked him to promise not to. Going to buy challah from a kosher bakery in Golders Green now triggers fear: “In the back of my mind, I'm thinking how to keep myself from being stabbed in the queue.” His Shabbat will pass, he said, “at my synagogue, behind high walls, volunteers wearing stab vests, specially installed car-ramming prevention barriers and professional security guards.”

Jonathan Romain, the former rabbi of Maidenhead synagogue in Berkshire, now spends Shabbat mornings on guard duty outside, paying back, he said, the volunteer hours others gave him over decades. “I shall be worrying about copycat attacks to the one in Golders Green. I hope these new random street attacks will not suddenly multiply,” he said. He framed the threat as triangulated — coming “from several different directions at once — extreme right, extreme left and Islamists” — and called on the government to regulate anti-Jewish hate at protests and on social media.

The stabbing on 29 April left two Jewish men with serious injuries; police designated it a terrorist incident. On 1 May, Essa Suleiman, 45, appeared in court charged with the attempted murder of the two men and of a third, Ishmail Hussein. The attack came amid rising antisemitism and a string of incidents at Jewish sites, including an earlier arson attack on ambulances in Golders Green and recent arson attempts at Finchley Reform Synagogue, where cantor Zoë Jacobs leads prayer. The two injured men, she said, “will be in our hearts and minds as we pray for their healing,” adding that the message of Shabbat would be “one of continued resilience.”

For some, fear has tipped into a decision to leave. Ben, a lawyer in north London who has stayed away from synagogue with his baby since last year's Yom Kippur attack at Manchester's Heaton Park synagogue, said the Golders Green stabbing pushed him and his wife to plan a move to Israel: “It was this week's attack that has made us decide to move to Israel.” Others said they would not go anywhere. Judith Nemeth, who hid behind a fence as the attack unfolded on Golders Green Road, was preparing to walk the same road to visit family on Shabbat. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “You will find across the community that we will carry on business as usual.”

Sir Keir Starmer, who has spoken publicly about regular Friday-night dinners with his Jewish wife and father-in-law, visited the scene and announced a stronger “visible police presence,” increased investment in Jewish security services, powers to shut down charities that promote antisemitic extremism, and stricter rules to bar “hate preachers” from entering Britain. As the prime minister arrived, he was met with shouts of “traitor” and “Keir Starmer, Jew harmer” from some Jewish protesters. The attorney general, Lord Richard Hermer, one of the country's most senior Jewish politicians, told the BBC that “the fear in my community is palpable, and understandable,” and described the small comfort of family Shabbat ritual at a moment of fear.

Pressure is mounting on the government to proscribe Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps; ministers are understood to be planning new anti-terror powers in the next parliamentary session that would let them ban state threats including the IRGC. Iran's embassy in the UK “categorically rejects any allegations” of involvement in “violent activities or incidents in the United Kingdom.” The Shabbat falls in the week Britain raised its terror threat level to severe, on 30 April, and during a separate 1 May political row over ministers linking the stabbing to pro-Palestine protests.