I have a little story to tell. One day recently whilst I was at a Campaign against Antisemitism march in Central London, my 9 year old son spoke to me about a Christian lady who was holding a poster saying “I love Jews”. He said to me, why does she love Jews? Me and this nice Christian lady just looked at each other, didn’t really know what to say, I shrugged and said “Why not?” in a light tone of voice. Then she said “Bless him” and we laughed it off. What else could we do…

I still don’t have the words to explain to a young child why we are hated so much. With the older ones, we at least know they have a better understanding of antisemitism and what happened on October 7th as they’ve been taught about it at school. However, there is simply no justification for it all.

It’s all very difficult especially as we are doing our very best as parents to show our kids love and affection as much as we can, and always encouraging them to be their best self. At the same time, we do our best to teach them to behave in a kind, respectful way, around friends, family, strangers, and all others around us. The expression “treat people how you want to be treated” is always a great reminder and message to give kids (and adults too) and helps to give them a better perspective and insight on how perhaps they could be kinder to others, especially when they want to be treated better. We teach the Jewish (and British) values that we were taught by our parents and teachers that still hold true.

It’s hard for young people to process, I find it hard to process all of this as an adult and still feel unable to comprehend how I can possibly be living in a time like this. I shudder to think about what my mum or grandparents would make of all of this, especially since we’ve had the Holocaust. Isn’t that more than enough already… I never thought I would ever see a repeat of it at any scale and this ancient hate resurface as it has done all over the world over the past two years.

Key Jewish values that we are taught from a young age by our parents, in school, centre around justice, repairing the world (Tikkun Olam), the importance of community, learning to be better human beings, and gratitude – all of which derive from the Ten Commandments. We believe in having compassion and dignity for all people, and we use these values as a guide, otherwise known as a moral compass, to help us make good choices and and improve society as a whole. No matter how religious we are, these values are woven into daily life and tradition, some more than others of course, and this determines how we treat people. We aren’t all perfect, none of us are, but this is the same for every human being – no-one is perfect.

There are people out there who are so quick to want to destroy lives – however, this only serves as a positive lesson to all of us to make living life even more precious. The darkness out there drives us to want to live life to the full even more and the light feels even brighter when we experience this. This is possibly what our enemies don’t realise – their efforts to bring us down only serve a bigger purpose, and all we can possibly do is rise above them.

In the face of the rising antisemitism towards Jewish people, all we can do in response is continue building on our own resilience; good habits, self-care and daily actions that bring us peace and joy, and enhance whenever we can the warmth of being part of a spiritually close-knit community, which is even more precious than ever. Not forgetting to simply fill our hearts with gratitude with all that is beautiful and loving in this world, and all that is dear to us, including our friends, families and non-Jewish allies who are standing with us in the light and who embrace the truth of who we are. The best we can do is to focus on the things we can control and all the people that do care about us. We need to fill up our own cups with light and joy as much as possible, and shine our lights brighter greater than ever before.

Light the way for others to follow suit.

Love has to win. It has to. I have hope and faith in what I believe in, in the good of mankind, and more importantly, I choose to be on the right side of history.