On Sunday afternoon, five young people in hoodies walked up to Lauderdale Road Synagogue in Maida Vale. One kept lookout. Two fired rocket fireworks at the building, and in the smoke and the bangs all five ran off. It was the second day of Rosh Hashanah. The building was empty as the service had finished. Nobody was hurt. No damage, as the community’s message put it, ‘beyond the incident itself’.

That is my synagogue. I had my bar mitzvah there. I sang in its choir as a boy. I go there to pray, and I go there to be with my community. I go there to celebrate a friend’s new baby, an acquaintance’s wedding, or to mark the passing of a year since a familiar stranger’s mother’s death. But this year, for the first time, I was not there for Rosh Hashanah.

Something got out on 7 October, and it has not gone back in

Something got out on 7 October, and it has not gone back in

It was the first New Year I have ever spent away from my community: I was in Israel. It was the first I have spent away from my family, and I heard the news from afar and phoned home to check everyone was all right. It was the year my own government chose the run-up to the high holy days to announce sanctions on Israel, promising us it would have no negative effect on our safety. It was almost exactly a year since Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz were murdered outside their synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. And this year, the Jewish new year began on 11 September, 25 years to the day since I watched the twin towers come down in fire and smoke, and much of my world around them too. I thought about that a lot as historic video clips, answerphone........

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