‘A cruel and painful year’: how 7 October tore apart UK Jewish families and friends

The young couple getting on the 310 bus at Golders Green were unquestionably Jewish. He wore a black hat over his peyot, or sidelocks, and a heavy black coat despite the warmth of the day. Her hair was covered, her clothes modest, her shoes plain. On the 45-minute journey to Stamford Hill, they conversed quietly in Yiddish.

Until a few weeks ago, the journey on public transport between two areas of north London with significant Jewish populations required a change of bus midway. Jewish passengers had reported antisemitic abuse while waiting for the connection.

The new 310 direct route between Golders Green and Stamford Hill would help Jewish Londoners to feel safe while travelling on public transport, said the city’s mayor Sadiq Khan. “We’ve got to recognise the tremors of hate that are felt by Jewish people across the country,” he told the BBC.

The bus is a fragment in a complicated mosaic of life for British Jews over the past year. Since Hamas’s murderous attack on Jews in Israel on 7 October triggered a massive onslaught of death and destruction in Gaza, British Jews have felt overwhelming shock and grief for the victims of that fateful day. Many have also felt growing unease at the ongoing war and humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza; some feel revulsion and shame. Almost all have felt more vulnerable as antisemitic abuse and attacks have rocketed.

“It’s been an extraordinarily cruel and painful year, and it’s still very raw,” said Jonathan Wittenberg, the senior rabbi of Masorti Judaism, a traditional branch of the Jewish faith. “The trauma of 7 October and what has followed is very present in the UK Jewish community.”

Rabbi Charley Baginsky, who co-leads Progressive Judaism, said: “In many ways, we still haven’t processed what happened on 7 October because everything has been in constant motion. Every day is shaped by those events.”

Raymond Simonson, chief executive of JW3, a Jewish community and cultural centre in north London, said 7 October was a “punch in the stomach. Everyone was shocked, scared and confused. And then we were plunged into a war that has gone on and on. The feeling is one of exhaustion”.

In the days following the Hamas attack, the response of British Jews was overwhelmingly one of solidarity and shared trauma. The visceral connection that most have to the only Jewish state is powerful. Nine in 10 have visited Israel and eight in 10 ​​have close friends or family living there.

But a new study has also found a growing distrust of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the actions of the Israeli government. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) will soon publish the results of a survey of 4,600 British Jews, ranging from ultra-orthodox to secular, conducted earlier this summer. “We found high levels of concern about Netanyahu and his motives,” said Jonathan Boyd, the JPR’s executive director.

“About three-quarters of those we questioned think he is serving his own interests over and above those of the state of Israel as a whole. There’s also a sense that the Israeli government could have done more towards the release of the hostages, and to provide humanitarian aid [to Gaza] – not overwhelmingly so, but leaning in those directions. “People are more forgiving of the Israeli army. Most Jews are likely to think that the army has operated within the bounds of international law than think they haven’t. There’s more criticism of the government than there is of the military.”

While events of the past year have reinforced a sense of Jewish identity for many, the shockwaves from 7 October have often strained relations within families and communities. “Many of us have got different thoughts in our heads which come to the fore at different times. The hostages, the grief and anguish in Israel, the fear for the future, the terrible suffering of ordinary Palestinians – it’s an internal war in one’s mind,” said Wittenberg.

“It’s also very strong in families. Some people feel they can’t talk about this at home because of the way other members of their family have reacted. It doesn’t follow entirely on generational lines, but some of it does. There are powerful arguments within the Jewish community: ‘Why don’t you have more solidarity with Israel when its people need it so badly?’ ‘How can I, when I look at what Israel’s government is doing?’ These are explicit or implicit arguments and debates, and it’s extremely painful. But we have to listen to each other.”

Baginsky said: “To not recognise that level of internal turmoil – within individuals, families and congregations – is to do injustice to the Jewish community. But trying to give voice to the complexities is challenging. We don’t have the language. We’re not a society that deals well with nuance.”

The past year has brought to the fore differences in the UK Jewish community – which has never been monolithic but comprises multiple communities from ultra-orthodox to secular, from far left to far right. Major institutions once thought to speak on behalf of British Jews – the Board of Deputies, the Chief Rabbi, the Jewish Chronicle – have come under fire from within the community.

Some disagreements have played out in public. Simonson said that for the first time in 30 years of working in and for the community: “I’ve had people say publicly I should be sacked or cancelled”. When he suggested a show of solidarity with an immigrant law centre during the far-right riots over the summer, “there were people in the Jewish community saying, ‘these are the people that go to the [pro-Palestinian] marches – why are you there standing with them? You’re a traitor’”. He was called a Kapo, referring to Jewish prisoners in Nazi concentration camps who worked for the SS – “the most disgusting thing a Jew can call another Jew”.

He said: “I think those that were already quite far on the left within the community and those that were quite far right have been pushed further into their positions. They’ve become more entrenched, and the gap between those two ends of the community feels more bitter and hostile than it was before. And sometimes, if you’re in the middle, you can get caught up in that.”

The tensions were undeniable, said Simonson. “The saying is that where there are two Jews there are three opinions. Now where there are two Jews there are five opinions. Yet there’s a need to have more togetherness and more unity than ever before.”

From outside the community, there has been a shocking surge in antisemitism. The Community Security Trust (CTS), a charity that monitors antisemitism and provides security for Jewish people in the UK, said incidents more than doubled in the first half of 2024, a spike attributed to the war in Gaza. “The scale of it is completely new, and the way it has spread into parts of society – schools, workplaces – where we hadn’t seen problems before,” said Dave Rich of the CST. “The worry is that this has created a new reality for Jewish people in the UK. This has been going on for a year now, and this is now normal.”

Members of the community were “almost withdrawing inwards”, he said. “People are having to think seriously about what it means to be Jewish in Britain today. There’s almost a psychological retrenchment in terms of who you can trust.”

Antisemitism in the workplace had emerged as a new issue over the past year. “Lots of workplaces and employment sectors now have Jewish WhatsApp networks that didn’t exist before 7 October – safe spaces where people can discuss issues, share their feelings.”

Before 7 October, many Jewish people “blithely sailed along through life”, never asking fundamental questions about what it means to be Jewish, he said. But “someone said to me the other night that the golden age is over. Now we’re having to look over our shoulders all the time”.

The JPR research also presents a bleak picture. It found that approximately one in three British Jews said they had personally experienced an incident of antisemitism since 7 October. “When we asked people if they feel less safe as Jews living in the UK post-October 7, only about 25% said it hasn’t really changed,” said Boyd.

“But of the remaining 75%, almost everyone said they felt less secure. “The pattern is similar when looking at people’s confidence about being open about their Jewishness – most feel wary about doing so.”

The survey picked up a “sense of loss of hope and trust in the future”, he added. Wider society felt “more hostile” and Jews’ “sense of place in Britain has been shaken”.

Without doubt, the anniversary will be a painful experience for British Jews. “It will be a time of prayer, grief, solidarity – and reflection about what’s been done to us, what we have been drawn into, the antisemitism and hatred released in the world, the longing for hope,” said Wittenberg.

“We are caught in a perpetual liminal space,” said Baginsky. “There’s a huge amount of guilt within the community for all sorts of reasons – guilt for not being there [in Israel], guilt for not doing whatever is the right thing in this situation, guilt for what is happening in Gaza. And there is no sense this is ending soon.”