Yesterday morning, Shilome Rand, 34, walked out of his synagogue in Golders Green. He had been studying Torah. It was a Wednesday. 11:15. And a man ran at him with a knife and stabbed him in the chest because he wanted to kill a Jew. Moshe Shine, 76, was stabbed moments later. They are alive. We keep saying that word, alive, because we need to hear it. But we cannot stop seeing it: a young father leaving shul on a quiet morning, and a blade in his chest on Golders Green Road. This is not something that is supposed to happen here. This is not something that is supposed to happen anywhere. And yet it has happened, and we are sitting with the shock of it, and we do not think it has fully landed yet.

We are scared. We need to say that plainly, because we owe it to you and we owe it to ourselves. Five weeks ago they burned our ambulances. Then they firebombed our synagogues. They set a shop alight. They beat a man on camera for being visibly Jewish. They told us we are not safe on our own trains. And now they have put a knife in a man outside his own shul. Each week we have sat down and written it up. Documented it. Sourced it. Published it. This week we sat down and cried first. Shilome Rand spoke from his hospital bed and said people are afraid to walk in the street. He is right. We are those people. Our parents are those people. Our families are those people. We worry for their future here in the UK.