The importance of being able to welcome His Majesty to Golders Green today
The King visited the Jewish Care campus in the heart of Golders Green this afternoon. The charity's chief executive, Daniel Carmel-Brown, describes the experience
There have been many moments across my thirty years at Jewish Care that I have felt privileged to witness.
Moments of extraordinary humanity. Moments of resilience. Moments of celebration. Moments where, despite everything life can bring, people chose dignity, compassion and one another.
I have stood beside Holocaust survivors as they told stories that this country must never stop hearing. I have watched families rebuild after grief. I have seen colleagues from every faith and background dedicate themselves to caring for people they had never met, simply because they believed it mattered. I have seen volunteers become lifelines, and communities come together in ways that quietly restore your faith in humanity.
Today will remain with me as one of those moments.
This afternoon, we welcomed His Majesty The King to Jewish Care, where he met representatives from across the Jewish community, including the two victims of the recent stabbing in Golders Green, alongside colleagues from CST, the Board of Deputies, JLC, Hatzola, Shomrim, UJS, and rabbonim representing the breadth and diversity of Jewish religious life in this country. Representing Shomrim were CEO Gary Ost and volunteer trustees Sheldon Bodner and Steven Bak. Also present to meet the King were the two emergency response volunteers who first responded to the Golders Green stabbing, Yonathan Elkouby and Yitzi Lipszyc.
I found myself reflecting throughout the day on how much I wished the circumstances leading to this visit had been different.
I wish this moment had not emerged from pain, fear, violence and the growing sense of vulnerability felt by so many British Jews. I wish it had not taken attacks so close to the heart of our community to bring us here.
And yet, standing within the heart of Jewish Care today, it was impossible not to recognise the significance of what we were witnessing.
In my recent writing, I spoke about solidarity. About the importance not simply of sympathy, but of people choosing to stand visibly alongside the Jewish community at a time when doing so genuinely matters. I wrote that what we were beginning to witness must not become merely a moment, but a movement.
Today felt like the clearest possible expression of that sentiment.
Because what His Majesty offered today was not politics, nor performance.
It was presence.
The simple but enormously meaningful act of coming personally into the heart of Jewish communal life and standing alongside a community that has felt wounded, anxious and, at times, isolated.
That matters.
It matters because leadership is often communicated not only through words, but through where people choose to stand. And today, the monarch of our country chose to stand with the Jewish community.
For those of us at Jewish Care, there was something especially moving about hosting this visit within our walls.
Jewish Care reflects the Britain I still believe in deeply. Every day, people from different faiths, backgrounds and nationalities come together with a shared purpose: to care for others. Within our homes and centres are Holocaust survivors, older people, people living with mental illness, disability and dementia, families navigating hardship and loss, all surrounded by extraordinary staff and volunteers whose humanity transcends difference.
To see The King walk through that environment today, meeting survivors, carers, volunteers and community representatives, carried a significance that extended far beyond ceremony.
There was also something deeply reassuring about seeing so many parts of Jewish communal life represented together. Security organisations and student leaders. Emergency responders and rabbinic leaders. Survivors and carers. Different traditions, perspectives and experiences united by something larger than all of us: the determination that Jewish life in Britain should not merely endure, but continue to flourish openly, proudly and safely.
In difficult times, symbols matter.
Not because symbols alone solve problems. They do not. The challenges facing our community remain serious and unresolved.
But symbols can remind people that they are seen. They can reassure frightened communities that they have not been abandoned. They help define the moral character of a nation at moments when that character feels under strain.
And for many British Jews, I believe today will have carried exactly that meaning.
So yes, across three decades at Jewish Care, today stands as one of the proudest moments of my professional life.
Not because of ceremony or occasion.
But because, at a time when many in our community have felt vulnerable and uncertain, His Majesty chose to come to us. To the very heart of Jewish life. To listen. To meet. To stand alongside.
And that will stay with many of us for a very long time.
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