Hundreds remember synagogue attack victims
Manchester Congregation Gathers to Honor Two Lives Lost Defending Their Synagogue
Ninoda.com – Approximately 800 mourners, survivors, and public figures filled the sanctuary of Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester on Monday for a service of remembrance marking the anniversary of the October 2025 attack that claimed two lives and left three others wounded. The gathering stood as a collective act of defiance against the hatred that drove attacker Jihad al-Shamie to storm the doors of the synagogue on Yom Kippur — the holiest day in the Jewish calendar — and attempt to slaughter its worshippers.
Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz died that day while physically interposing themselves between the assailant and congregants inside the building. Andrew Franks, Bernard Agyemang, and Yoni Finlay sustained injuries as they too moved to protect fellow worshippers. Their actions, taken in seconds of terror, became the defining image of an event that shook Britain's Jewish community and prompted a national reckoning over rising antisemitism.
An Empty Seat, a Living Grief
Two chairs sat vacant in the front row of the memorial service, each bearing the name of one of the slain. The absence was deliberate and pointed: a physical reminder that the congregation's loss remains unhealed, that the world reshaped by that October morning has no easy return to normalcy.
Sherelle Dresner, speaking on behalf of the Cravitz family, described the aftermath as entering what survivors of other terrorist acts have called "a club that no-one wants to be a part of; a club that no-one would ever choose to belong to." She characterized the new existence as "lonely" and "overwhelming," and disclosed that her family has received antisemitic abuse since the killing.
"These messages should worry us all, that there are people out there justifying his murder and blaming this on his religion."
Dresner singled out a woman who ran "towards danger" to assist Melvin Cravitz in the moments after the shooting, praising those who "put your own lives at risk" to save strangers.
The Chief Rabbi's Warning
Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis addressed the congregation with a blunt assessment of the social climate that made such an attack possible. He traced a direct line from ambient bigotry to physical violence:
"The attacker came here feeling positive, comfortable in his ways, encouraged and inspired by a tone of deep antisemitism within our society. We know so well how hateful thoughts can be translated into hate speech which, in turn, is only one step away from hate crime."
Rabbi Daniel Walker, who leads the Heaton Park congregation, added that the community feels less secure now than in the immediate weeks following the shooting. He attributed the growing sense of vulnerability to a combination of escalating antisemitic incidents and what he described as a failure to "deal with core problems" at a systemic level. For members of the congregation — and for British Jews more broadly — the gap between rhetoric and action has widened the fear.
A Royal Message of Solidarity
King Charles, who visited Heaton Park on 20 October 2025 in the weeks after the attack, sent a written message read aloud at the opening of the service. He named each of the five victims individually — Adrian Daulby, Melvin Cravitz, Andrew Franks, Bernard Agyemang, and Yoni Finlay — and stated that the "sense of shock and sorrow remains undiminished" despite the passage of months.
"Hatred can never prevail over our shared humanity."
Survivor Testimony and the Cost of Resistance
Yoni Finlay, who was struck by a stray police bullet while helping to barricade the synagogue's doors during the attack, spoke from the floor of the building where he had lain with four organs badly damaged. He framed the congregation's response as a collective refusal to be erased:
"An evil person tried to destroy us on Yom Kippur and together we have not let that evil win."
Finlay also noted that Jewish people in Britain are now "having to hide their identity" in everyday settings — a quiet, daily cost of living under the shadow of that October day.
Political Response and the Call for Systemic Change
Communities Secretary Angela Rayner addressed the congregation, situating the Manchester attack within a global pattern of what she called "sickening terrorist attacks" against Jewish communities. She declared that "any attack on Jews is an attack on all of us" and committed the government to a "whole of society approach" to dismantling antisemitism.
"Together we can overcome and defeat antisemitism – and we will never rest, until every Jewish person is safe."
Rayner emphasized that rooting out the hatred required confronting extremists directly and pressuring those who "seek to divide our communities," framing the task as one that demands sustained institutional effort rather than symbolic gestures.
Resilience as a Political Act
Raphi Bloom, chair of the Yom Kippur Commemoration, closed the speakers' remarks by reframing the service's purpose. It was, he insisted, "not only about remembrance" but about ensuring that Jewish life in Manchester — a community with roots in the city stretching back more than two centuries — continues to flourish.
"The wounds remain, but so does our spirit."
Bloom told the hundreds in attendance that the congregation was sending a message of refusal: they would not be intimidated, would not be defined by hatred, and would not be "driven from the place we have called home for more than two centuries." His closing words — "As Jews we will stand tall, united, proud and strong" — landed in a silence that held for several seconds before the congregation rose.
The memorial underscored a broader national question: whether Britain's institutions, from policing to education to media, have moved decisably enough to close the gap between the rhetoric of tolerance and the lived experience of communities targeted by organized hatred. For the families of Daulby and Cravitz, and for the survivors still recovering both physically and psychologically, the answer so far has been insufficient. The empty seats in the front row remain the most honest measure of that shortfall.
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