A short guide to understanding how Jews view security

Last weekend, a family member of mine sang in a Christmas concert which took place in a local Methodist church. It had been advertised several months in advance, and my relatives and I went along, walked through the open doors and that was it – we were in.

I recently went to my local synagogue. There were three security guards outside – one an employee of the shul, two members of the congregation whose turn on the rota it was to stand watch that day. They let me through the outer gate. Then a different member of the synagogue, watching the CCTV camera based just inside the synagogue, opened the inner door for me.

I’m not sure whether non-Jewish people entirely understand the high levels of security that so many Jewish communities operate with as a matter of course. Perhaps one reason for that lack of understanding is that we don’t speak about it a great deal. It’s just there – a part of life. Many synagogues have this sort of set up – which is why the terror attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester didn’t cost more lives. Synagogues around the country have been trained by the Community Security Trust for exactly this sort of attack. As many people said in October, it was not seen as a case of if such an attack would happen, but when.

Another example, if I may.

Many Jewish events – in the UK and elsewhere – are organised as follows. You sign up, but aren’t told where the event will take place until 24 hours before. The reason is simple, but simultaneously horrifying. It is to provide as little time as possible for would-be terrorists to scope out the venue and plan an attack.

Of course, not all such events are pre-planned in such a fashion – partly, I think, because people would possibly go mad if they had to operate that way every minute of every day of their lives. And, of course, some events are held annually at the same place, meaning the location is impossible to hide anyway. The Chanukah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach fits into the latter category – there was no hiding it, nor would the organisers have wanted it to be hidden, nor should they ever have been forced to have been faced with any such decision.

“Come celebrate the light of Chanukah together with the community, the advert for the event said. “Bring your friends, bring the family. Let’s fill Bondi with joy and light.”

And for a little while, Bondi was filled with joy and light. And then it was filled with terror and darkness.

There is yet another aspect of Jewish life that I think sometimes is very difficult for others to understand. We are horrendously accustomed to acknowledging the sites of our murdered dead, something we can experience during a visit to any of a hundred different cities in mainland Europe. Galleries and museums as you go north, tourist shopping towards the south, eateries heading east and the site of a horrendous medieval massacre of our co-religionists to the west. But this is different. Because now 21st-century antisemitic murders are laying down new mourning sites in Western cities.

The following is an incomplete list of some of the targeted attacks that have killed Jews in the Diaspora over the last decade and a half.

19 March 2012 outside a Jewish school in Toulouse.
18 July 2012 on a bus at Burgas in Bulgaria.
9 January 2015 at a kosher supermarket in Paris.
17 October 2018 at the Tree of Life in Pittsburgh.
10 December 2019 at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City.
2 October this year at Heaton Park Synagogue.

And now, Bondi Beach on 14 December 2025.

That’s all before we mention the 7 October 2023 mass terror attacks in Israel, as well as the scores of shootings, stabbings and car rammings aimed at Jews in Israel on a regular basis.

New attacks, new deaths, new pain – and growing anger. Anger at those who incite violence yet plead ignorance at the inevitable consequences of that incitement. Anger at a succession of facile governments in Western countries, who seem to prefer to focus on crafting condolence messages rather than acting to prevent the need for such messages in the first place. Anger at those who have the nerve to try to tell us we shouldn’t be angry.

When something like this happens, I’m often reminded of 2016 comments made by a (non-Jewish) Scottish comedienne, who had been invited to JW3, the key Jewish community centre in north London, to review a stand-up night. On her podcast, she subsequently said “Talk about over-reaction. It’s an art centre built like a fucking fortress. It’s all ‘dear oh dear, we’re terrible victims and everything and everybody’s having a go at us’. When was the last time a Jew was shot in London? They’re banging on like ‘we live in fear, we live in fear’, for fuck’s sake.”

I’ve often wondered whether that’s an attitude she still holds, and how many others feel that way. And I hope, if you’re read this far and you’re not Jewish, you might understand a little more about why we care so much about security. Because for us it’s not if. It’s when.