Ewan Gawne & Katherine BainbridgeNorth West
A Jewish woman and a Catholic woman who held hands as they lit a candle for peace after the deadly attack at a Manchester synagogue have said the majority of people “want to live side by side in peace”.
They visited St Anne’s Catholic Church in Crumpsall the morning after the incident at a nearby Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue that left two dead and three people seriously injured.
Two Jewish men, Adrian Daulby, 53, and 66-year-old Melvin Cravitz, died in the attack.
Esther Seymour, a Jewish woman, who went to the church with her friend Celeste Cavanagh, a Catholic, said seeing so many people of different faiths attend “warmed her heart”.
They held hands as they walked to the church to light a candle. Esther’s son has been dating Celeste’s daughter, who is a member of the church congregation.
Esther told Radio Manchester: “It feels like a lot of people are against Jewish people, and it just felt really nice coming here and seeing so many people of other faiths.
“I’ve seen Muslim people here which is so nice, I feel so bad for how they must be feeling as well, I really do, because we all want peace, we’re cousins according to the religion.”
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Esther said she had been several times to the synagogue, which was close to the school that her children went to, and they had met Rabbi Walker at school many times.
“He is such a lovely guy, and it was really sad to see pictures of him with blood on him.
“The majority of people want to be together, we want to be in peace, we want to live side by side.”
Celeste said: “We turn to faith when things like this happen, and I wanted to obviously meet Esther here to light candles and show that we are standing side by side.
“54 years this has been my church, 54 years I have lived in Crumpsall, and we have lived side by side with other cultures for all them years, and we can’t allow this to be destroyed.
Esther said she cried after seeing people of all faiths turn up at the church.
“Most people care, we don’t always hear it, some people are sometimes scared to say it that we care, because nobody knows what’s the right thing to do our say, but just coming here shows people do.”
Since the attack, members of the Jewish community say they noticed a rise in antisemitism, especially in the past couple of years, and no longer feel welcome in the area.
Nathan Kedem, who lives in the area, said he and his family moved to the UK from Israel 20 years ago for security reasons.
“I am really confused now – where is safe?” he said. “It was a difficult night last night, I barely managed to sleep. It brought it all to the doorstep.”
He said he used to volunteer for the Community Security Trust, doing security for his children’s school when they were younger.
“When you stand on the corner of the street it does come to your mind, it’s only a matter of someone deciding to take action in a fraction of a second and there’s nothing you can do.”
He added that he was “not exactly surprised” by the attack.
“Even 20 years ago there were hints here and there of antisemitism, and especially in the last couple of years.
“Just two months ago taking a taxi to the airport the driver made quite a few anti-Jewish comments which quite shocked us, not realising we were Jewish.”
Sam, an Orthodox Jewish man living behind the synagogue, said he felt “shock and horror but not surprise”.
“The way things have been going recently, we have been targeted just for looking Jewish,” he said.
“We have had people shouting at us from their cars, things like ‘Jew’ or ‘Free Palestine’, or just shouting to make us jump.
“At the moment we are scared.”
He said he recognised Melvin Cravitz when he saw the news reported.
“We used to see him around the neighbourhood and he would stop and chat, he was a very gentle, nice man.”
Sam said he personally attended the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation Synagogue most Saturdays, although he was elsewhere for Yom Kippur, and was unsure whether he could face going back.
Zippi, who lives near to the synagogue on Middleton Road, told Radio 5 Live she and her children regularly walk down the road nearby to visit family on Friday nights.
She said they “don’t feel welcome” in the area, and that she will now “rethink whether there’s a future for us as a family”.
“My five-year-old asked me yesterday, when we had four helicopters above our heads all day, he said ‘is this what happens every Yom Kippur?’ I said no, this isn’t normal,” she said.
“You have to try and explain to them that this isn’t the norm and this isn’t the way we should be living.”
Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis told the “right now, our hearts are shattered”.
This is a very dark time, not just for Jews of Britain but for all of our society because this wasn’t merely an attack against Jews, it was an attack against the values of our society,” he said.
