Manchester’s Rabbi Daniel Walker remembers those murdered on the holiest day of the year — and is determined to rebuild

Photos: Chayim Stanton, AP Images

Almost a month after he blocked a marauding terrorist from entering his shul on Yom Kippur morning in Manchester, a shaken Rabbi Daniel Walker remembers those murdered on the holiest day of the year — and is determined to rebuild. But for the wider community, the hate unleashed in a shul raises questions about the future that no one can answer

F

or Rabbi Daniel Walker, Yom Kippur morning began exactly as it had every year since he assumed the pulpit of north Manchester’s Heaton Park shul nearly two decades ago. First came pre-Shacharis preparations, then toward nine o’clock he strode through the crisp autumn weather with his thoughts focused on the day ahead.

There would be a sermon, davening, and aliyos to manage. There would be the regulars — including older members of the historic community — as well as young families with children. It would be a chance to greet newcomers among the hundreds who would pack the imposing red-brick shul with its large glass entrance.

In short, all the pulpit rabbi’s familiar duties awaited Rabbi Walker as he approached the security gates that fateful morning.

What he didn’t yet know was that on that fateful Yom Kippur, those duties would include barring the shul door to prevent a terrorist entering; attempting to administer aid to badly wounded shulgoers; seeing a congregant shot dead in front of him; and holding together a semblance of Yom Kippur normalcy even as anti-terror police evacuated his devastated shul members.

“In the middle of Pesukei D’zimrah, I suddenly found myself looking into the face of evil,” is how he describes the dissonance of the sudden change from a day of elevation to survival mode.

The pictures of a white-bearded rabbi wearing a kittel and surrounded by armed police shook Jews all over the world.

But to the Jewish community of Manchester, and Britain in general, “shocked but not surprised” was the consensus. Two years of anti-Semitic hate marches unchecked by the authorities have made city centers across the country virtual no-go zones for Jews.

The BBC’s steadfast refusal to label Hamas as terrorists was just one part of a media assault on Israel. There was a widespread sense that the Labour government’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state had added fuel to the pro-Hamas pyromania.

Almost a month after the Yom Kippur carnage in his shul, Rabbi Walker struggles with the horror that he and his congregants endured. He pauses to collect himself every so often as he recalls those minutes. The memory of losing Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz — beloved regulars who were killed that day — has traumatized the community and its spiritual leader.

Manchester native Rabbi Walker is determined to rebuild, to ensure that his congregants don’t give the terrorists and haters a victory by avoiding shul and Jewish life. “I’m determined that, as well as supporting the victims, the kehillah will recover,” he says.

But even as the Manchester community rallies around, and the government beefs up security and promises action against anti-Semitism, pessimism runs deep. A visit to the shul by King Charles to show support was warmly received, but doesn’t change the underlying sentiments.

The very ordinariness of the attack scene — a regular shul, a seemingly-regular local Muslim man — only serve to emphasize the scale of the threat. What happened at Heaton Park could happen anywhere.

For the first time in the modern era, the deadly hate that exploded in a Manchester shul raises questions about a Jewish future in Britain that no one can answer.

Best Defense

For those already inside the large, oak-paneled and blue-carpeted shul at nine-thirty on Yom Kippur morning, the first sign that something was amiss was a loud bang.

It was the terrorist, the aptly-named Jihad al-Shamie, who had driven his car into the entrance in a bid to break through the security gate. Having mowed down one of two guards on duty, the 35-year-old naturalized immigrant from Syria jumped from his car and fatally stabbed Melvin Cravitz, a man in his 60s who was arriving at the shul.

It was the second time that morning that the killer had returned to the synagogue. Having called the police to announce his allegiance to ISIS, he repeatedly attempted to enter his target — a synagogue a mile away from his childhood home.

“When I arrived at around 9:00 a.m., I was told that a man had come to the gates and behaved suspiciously,” says Rabbi Walker. “But since I heard that the paid guards and the Jewish volunteers had dealt with it, I thought nothing of it and walked into shul.”

There were about 35 people on the shul premises — including a few women in the ezras nashim and children playing outside in the shul’s parking lot to the front — when al-Shamie returned.

“The first thing I knew, two men ran in to the shul shouting ‘Close the doors!’” recalls Rabbi Walker. “That was the security protocol, to prevent anyone entering from the beis medrash at the back. It was Adrian Daulby — who lost his life a few minutes later at the front door — who ran to close the back door.”

That prompt action saved many lives. Had the attacker succeeded in entering the shul building either through the front or the back as he tried to do, the death toll among the defenseless shulgoers would likely have been far higher.

“Had he come two hours later, things would have been much worse as well,” says Rabbi Walker. “Think of the hundreds of people standing outside during Yizkor — in a strange sense given the tragedy of what happened, it’s not hard to see the siyata d’Shmaya.”

The call to close the doors became the focus of the struggle against the terrorist that morning. But the ability of those inside to do so, led by shul chairman Alan Levy, was thanks to the bravery of one man who stayed outside. Andrew Franks was a shul member on voluntary security duty when the attack happened.

As Alan Levy rushed to close the doors, taking the children who were playing outside in with him, al-Shamie rushed to prevent him locking the shul doors. Franks — totally unarmed — remained behind to confront the attacker. “He was repeatedly stabbed and very badly injured,” says Rabbi Walker. “He showed bravery beyond belief in running out to confront the attacker.”

At that point, though, the rabbi didn’t know what had happened. The first thing that he saw when running into the shul’s foyer was that a badly-injured man was inside the atrium and that a terrorist was trying to batter his way in. He was body-charging the doors and throwing heavy plant pots at it, using his knife to try and break the lock.

Rabbi Walker and a number of others rushed to hold the doors — actually a row of three — that were visibly buckling.

“My first, instinctive question was: Where are the children?” recalls Rabbi Walker. “I’d seen them outside before Shacharis. Then their father said that they were okay. I could see through the window that no one was there — but I couldn’t see that Melvin Cravitz was still out there.”

It was only at the end of the day that the Heaton Park rabbi found out that one of his congregants had been killed at the very beginning of the onslaught. In the heat of things, the focus was on resisting the furious assault of a murderer on the loose.

Jihad al-Shamie was horribly clear to those inside through the windows in the shul doors.

“Through the small window I found myself looking at him. He was quite tall, over six feet and strongly built. What I saw when looking at his face was evil. I saw hate.”

As the terrorist tried to bludgeon his way into the shul, those inside holding the doors heard him yell “Allahu Akbar.” As if any clarification was needed, al-Shamie made it abundantly clear that he was attacking Jews in Manchester that morning because of unconnected events thousands of miles away.

“These are killing our kids,” he screamed, in a distinctly Mancunian sentence structure.

Firing Zone

For those holding the line inside the shul, time had warped by that point. What took minutes felt like half an hour. Almost as soon as the terrorist attacked, the guards on the gate called the CST (Communist Security Trust, a Jewish organization that provides security advice and training) and the police.

Within minutes, an armed response unit was on site. While British police are famously unarmed, each police force has armed officers on call. Seven minutes after being called, the attacker was shot dead. But he left a trail of destruction in his wake.

Video footage filmed by non-Jewish pedestrians on the main road outside the shul shows armed police aiming their weapons at the prone terrorist who has clearly already been shot. Strewn all over the shul’s steps are the plant pots that he’d used to try and force an entry.

“Get back — he’s got a bomb!” one officer yells hoarsely at the crowd of gawkers gathered at the shul gates, against which al-Shamie’s car is stopped. The bomb scare was realistic; the terrorist was wearing something that looked like a suicide vest. The ongoing police investigation means that authorities haven’t shared further details about whether there was a working device or not. But the suspicion of one meant further disaster for the Jews onsite.

As the footage shows, even as the police officers yelled hoarsely at him to lie still, al-Shamie raised himself and attempted to advance across the car park to the police.

“Shoot him!” shouts a passerby, and shots rang out, ending the jihadist’s life.

Those shots proved deadly for the shulgoers still holding their door from inside. One penetrated the shul’s front door and hit Adrian Daulby, the man who’d raced to secure the back door. Within a short time, he passed away. “He was killed al kiddush Hashem trying to keep the door closed,” says Rabbi Walker. “That mesirus nefesh to save other Jews is beyond words.”

Inside the shul, the shots triggered a fresh crisis. Andrew Franks, who’d confronted the attacker and had then run into the shul once the terrorist ran around the side of the shul to try a different entrance, was in a very bad state by then. Now, two others were hit.

One was Yoni Finlay, a Manchester native in his late 30s. “I was due to daven Shacharis on Yom Kippur, and I was on the bimah during Pesukei D’zimrah when I heard a loud bang,” he says. “We all looked at each other — what was that?”

Joining the group rushing to secure the doors, he saw a security guard lying on the floor, with the attacker running up to the shul doors. Around his waist he had something that looked like bottles covered in silver foil.

“In real time, I wasn’t scared — for some reason, it didn’t register that he might have a bomb,” says Yoni. “He went from door to door, and as we were holding each one shut it felt like a long time. I kept asking, ‘Where are the police?’ ”

When the police shot the terrorist, the group inside let go of the doors but stayed nearby as he obviously wasn’t dead. Then a bullet came through — cutting first through Adrian Daulby, and then ricocheting into Yoni Finlay.

“It felt like a hard punch,” says Yoni. “I said something like, ‘I’ve been hit,’ and sank to the floor.” Yoni was hit in the chest. The bullet collapsed his left lung and damaged the left kidney.

There was a doctor in the house — Dr. Finlay, Yoni’s father.

“I came into the foyer and I was helpless,” he says. “I’d never experienced anything like this. Adrian was lying near the door — he looked as though he was dead. Andrew, who had been stabbed, was covered in blood. And there was my son, also wounded.”

Rushed to the hospital where he underwent a four-hour surgery, Yoni’s life was saved. For hours, his parents were left in the dark as to where he’d been taken.

Rallying Cry

Part of the confusion was that police kept everyone from the shul together in order to interview them about the events of the day. At first, shulgoers were evacuated from one part of the building to another, and then into the street. With the bomb scare still relevant, police then evacuated surrounding buildings. Shuls across North Manchester were placed in lockdown because of fear of multiple attacks.

Helicopters clattered overhead, a bomb squad arrived on scene and police in tactical gear stood guard as camera crews roamed the crowd in their talleisim broadcasting pictures to the rest of the country.

Amid the chaos, Rabbi Walker tried to forge on. “We were in Pesukei D’zimrah when it happened, and so when we were evacuated, we continued davening.”

“Personally, I asked myself: What is being demanded of us right now? I decided that davening on Yom Kippur has to go on. I asked my congregants: ‘Should we continue davening?’ They said yes.”

Shorn of the tallis that he’d removed to help treat one of the injured, Rabbi Walker, along with most of his flock, had no machzorim either. People from the houses around the shul brought the group siddurim which enabled them to continue. Later, the group were evacuated to a nearby police college where they were interviewed one-by-one.

“It wasn’t the time for speeches,” says Rabbi Walker. “It was the time for individual words of encouragement, as people remained unsure if their loved ones and friends were safe.”

Nowhere in the rabbi’s manual that he’d absorbed over the course of 17 years at Heaton Park shul did it say how to respond to terrorism. Brought up in Manchester, where he studied at local schools before heading to Chabad yeshivos in Israel and New Jersey, Rabbi Walker had succeeded in reviving a fading shul, with dedication and approachability.

Those were key qualities as the trauma of the morning’s events sunk in.

Debriefing went on through the rest of Shacharis, then Mussaf and Minchah. Along the way, police displayed sensitivity in assisting the evacuated through their religious service, heading across the road to a nearby shul to procure machzorim.

Finally, the shul members were allowed to return home, but most reassembled later at a different location for Ne’ilah.

As details of the attack spread across the city, the Manchester community rallied around the beleaguered shul. The following day — a Friday — Shacharis took place in Rabbi Walker’s house.

By Shabbos, a local girl’s seminary had arranged for Heaton Park to use their space. Local shuls lent a sefer Torah and siddurim. The room was packed — it was a beautiful davening, full of unity, says Rabbi Walker.

Once police allowed access a few days later, the return to the bullet-scarred shul was an eerie experience. Talleisim were strewn around. Adrian Daulby’s siddur was open to Ranenu Tzaddikim, where his davening had been interrupted by the terror attack. The deadly struggle that had taken place had left its mark in bullet holes and damage to the entranceway.

“Local avreichim came together to fix the damage with astonishing speed,” says Rabbi Walker. “The kindness of the community was outstanding.”

But so was the feeling of fear surrounding the community’s shul. “I knew that we had to overcome the trauma of what happened by returning as soon as possible. So, I came back straight away with one person who was there that day — and he said, in surprise, ‘It’s still shul.’ ”

Survival Instinct

During the first couple of days in the hospital, Yoni Finlay, who was badly injured in the attack, was worried about going back to shul. He was fearful even thinking of walking down Manchester’s familiar streets.

He was also gripped by the thought of why he’d been spared, whereas Adrian Daulby standing in front of him, and Melvin Cravitz in the street outside, weren’t. “For whatever reason, Hashem decided to save me,” Yoni Finlay says. “I grapple with that every day. You can’t go forward the same as before.”

When he returned to the shul for the first time on Simchas Torah, it was a very emotional event. Shul members didn’t want what had happened on Yom Kippur to stop them celebrating Yom Tov.

On Friday night of parshas Bereishis, the Manchester community staged a unity tefillah at Heaton Park.

Dating to the 1930s, the kehillah was founded by families moving from former Jewish strongholds like the working-class Strangeways and Cheetham Hill areas near Manchester’s city center.

When it was founded, the area around Middleton Road where the shul is located was a central one for Jews. From the 1980s on, as that neighborhood itself deteriorated, the Jewish community once again moved out, concentrating down the road in the Broughton Park area.

But from around 15 years ago, a long boom in Manchester’s Jewish population that drove families to brave rougher areas once again brought Heaton Park back into the fold and the shul filled with new members.

That was a on display on that Friday night, as a thousand people came from different shuls across the communal spectrum, headed by their rabbanim. There was singing and dancing. “The message of unity was incredible,” says Yoni Finlay. “You wouldn’t have been surprised if Mashiach had walked through the door.”

Royal Response

The wider non-Jewish community also spoke up on an individual level. Rabbi Walker and the shuls were inundated with many hundreds of emails and letters from official bodies, politicians, and private individuals who expressed shock and identification with the Jewish community.

The capstone of that outpouring was the visit paid to the shul last week by King Charles to express his support for the traumatized community. The event drew a large crowd among the fervently monarchist Jewish community.

“That visit was extremely comforting for the community,” says Rabbi Walker. “People felt extremely isolated before — that no one cared about the Jewish community. We’d been talking about anti-Semitism for years, but the responses hadn’t given that message. I didn’t think it would get to this point in England.

“When the King came, it felt like the country was saying, ‘We are with you.’ He said, ‘I want to show my support and do what little I can do.’

“Yes, there’s definitely a problem of anti-Semitism — but there’s also a huge amount of support.”

Other government representatives, though, didn’t receive such a warm reception from the Jewish community. When Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy visited shortly after the attack, he was loudly booed. Coming from a Jewish community that is notably patriotic and respectful of politicians of all parties, the response was a mark of the anger felt toward a Labour government that has bent over backward to appease the Israel haters.

Under pressure from a far-left group of “Gaza MPs” — politicians who’ve been elected solely on a pro-Hamas ticket — Prime Minister Keir Starmer has become steadily more hostile toward Israel.

Three weeks before Yom Kippur, Starmer handed the extremists the ultimate prize — a British recognition of a Palestinian state that was heavy with symbolism for its mirroring of the Balfour Declaration.

Yoni Finlay is among those worried about the government’s response, which has amounted so far to increased funding for Jewish security and an increased presence, as well as a pledge to tackle anti-Semitism.

“Until Yom Kippur I’d never experienced anti-Semitism directly,” he says. “The problem is that anti-Semitism has been allowed to fester — the media and government don’t help. They ‘report the facts,’ but when someone attacks Jews and says he’s doing it ‘because of Gaza,’ that’s not out of the blue. That’s been fed into the culture for the last two years.”

“By their actions on Israel, the government is stoking the fires — they think they’re doing the right thing, but they’re not.”

Still Home

Weeks after evil swooped on his shul on the holiest day of the year, Rabbi Daniel Walker struggles for perspective on what took place on Yom Kippur.

“I keep telling myself it’s only a few weeks — it feels like yesterday and also a long time ago. I’m not able yet to reflect properly.”

“But I’m determined that, as well as supporting the victims, the kehillah will recover. When tragedy happens, things can go in different directions. I felt we had to go in the direction of resilience — and that’s what’s happened.”

By that he means the elementary functioning of Jewish life. “There’s a realistic fear that people will react by not going to shul, and cut down on visible Yiddishkeit. They might not send their kids to Jewish schools, or stop looking publicly Jewish. That’s where I’m focusing.”

A pulpit rabbi to the core, Heaton Park’s Rabbi Walker is back on the job at the community that still feels like home.

“If someone tried to destroy davening on Yom Kippur, our response has to be to daven more,” he says. “And when I go back every morning, it occurs to me that shul is just as much home as it always was.”

Time To Speak Up

F

or Marc Levy, whose father Alan raced to close the doors on Yom Kippur morning, the tragedy struck home both personally and professionally. Heaton Park is the shul that he grew up in and still attends. But as Chief Executive of the Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester, he was the address for local and national politicians in the aftermath of the attack.

“These things always seem like something that happens to other people until it happens to you,” he says of the attack. “I work in Westminster liaising with government three days a week, and I tell politicians that people don’t wake up one morning and decide to stab others — there’s a background story.

“The level of anti-Semitism we’re seeing now is something we thought we’d never see in the UK. It’s in schools, universities, workplaces, the NHS… some of it almost neo-Nazi in tone.

“It hits home, especially when your family in Israel who are facing ballistic missile attacks ask us, ‘Why are you still there?’ ”

“We’ve had two harmonious identities for generations — Jewish and British — and until recently that worked. But our children won’t be as secure or live in a country as tolerant as the last five generations that lived here. If we don’t act, our kids won’t have the same future in this country.

“We’ve always been told there’s a ‘silent majority’ who oppose hate. They need to speak up now.”

Jewish community leaders in contact with the government are calling for action to fight the record levels of Jew-hatred, not just security funding supplemented by words.

They want changes made to policing around the weekly pro-Hamas hate marches. They want a real counter-extremism strategy to tackle mosques and Islamist organizations that overtly promote anti-Semitism.

The bottom line, says Marc Levy, is that in the wake of the Heaton Park attack, there’s a window of opportunity while the government is listening.

“The ball is in their court. We’re three weeks on from the attack and we’ve told them what we need. We will have to see whether they follow through.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1084)