All around me are memories. The station’s flat-roofed suburban banality; the grubby cafe where I once bought cans of coke for 30p and which – in a sign of the times – is now a vape shop. The McDonald’s (now a Sainsbury’s Local) where I would meet friends before we went off to smoke, try to buy alcohol and hang around pretending to be streetwise.
It was here, every Tuesday and Thursday, that I lugged my oversized games bag, stuffed with mouldy rugby kit, mud-encrusted boots poking out of the top, as I transited through the station from school up the road in Hampstead to its playing fields down the road in Cricklewood.
North London’s Golders Green looms large in the story of my life.
But, following a spate of anti-Semitic attacks in recent months, Golders Green now plays an outsize role in our national story. The area that has long been regarded as perhaps the safest centre of Jewish life in Britain might now be turning into its greatest vulnerability.
I am here, a Jewish Londoner, to find out just how bad it is.
Britain’s Jewish community numbers roughly 290,000 to 300,000 people, making it the fifth-largest Jewish population in the world. Most British Jews live in London and Greater Manchester.
Golders Green is one of Europe’s main centres of Jewish life. In the 2021 Census, about 50 per cent of the ward’s residents, around 7,300 people, identified as Jewish. The wider surrounding area – which includes Hendon, Finchley and Hampstead Garden Suburb, all within Barnet – contains roughly 55,000 Jews, the largest number in any UK borough.
Walking down Golders Green Road, the area’s de facto high street, the truth of this is evident. Orthodox Jews walk past, many belonging to Haredi or Hasidic communities, identifiable by their traditional dress: black coats and hats, their long beards and, occasionally, curled sidelocks known as payot.
Juston Cohen, the editor of Jewish News says ‘it seems that every time I do an interview, the situation has got worse’
All around are Jewish shops, supermarkets and restaurants: Kosher Kingdom Restaurant, Royal Judaica and Carmelli Bakery (long famous for its bagels) are just a few of the names that I pass.
All this speaks of a British Jewish community that has been safe and secure for decades. But no longer.
Just before dawn on March 23, 2026, ambulances belonging to Hatzola – from the Hebrew word for “rescue” – a Jewish volunteer emergency medical service, were set ablaze outside a synagogue in Golders Green. Oxygen canisters exploded as residents woke to scenes more reminiscent of sectarian conflict in the Middle East than suburban London. By sunrise, three emergency vehicles had been reduced to charred wrecks.
Chillingly, responsibility for the attack was claimed online by Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (’Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand’), a pro-Iranian Islamist group linked to attacks against Jewish schools, synagogues and charities across Europe.
A month later, on April 29, a 45-year-old British national born in Somalia was arrested by police and charged with attempted murder after two Jewish men, including a 76-year-old pensioner, were stabbed in the street.
On May 18, a young Israeli man overheard speaking Hebrew outside his flat was allegedly dragged to the ground and beaten ’like an animal’ by a masked gang shouting anti-Semitic abuse.
If Jewish life is still visible in Golders Green now too, sadly, is the increased security presence. Police cars patrol the area’s central grid of streets. Alongside them are foot patrols from the Community Security Trust (CST), the body responsible for providing safety, security, and advice to the Jewish community. Cars from Shomrim (Hebrew for ’guards’ or ’watchers’), the volunteer civilian neighbourhood watch, are also in operation.
Everywhere people are on high alert. Each time my photographer and I stop to take photos, passers-by stare suspiciously.
I duck into Grodz Bakery where, among soy sausage rolls and other Kosher pastries, I meet with its manager Gemma Migdal.
The 52-year-old tells me about the atmosphere of fear and hyper-vigilance that now characterises Golders Green.
If Jewish life is still visible in Golders Green now too, sadly, is the increased security presence after waves of attacks
Golders Green may have brought home the problem of violent antisemitism in the UK but for British Jews, the wave of violence began months earlier on October 2, 2025
Migdal was working when the April 29 attack took place just yards from the bakery. ’We were petrified,’ she says. ’Everybody was panicking.’
She explains that the Community Security Trust has a WhatsApp group for locals where two things happen: CST warns of possible security threats and locals feed in anything suspicious they see.
’Just earlier today, for example, there was an incident when people noticed a man sitting in a car taking photos of Jewish buildings and a police car,’ she says. ’People immediately took notice and reported it to the group.’
I look over at the Mail photographer, Brad.
’What did the car look like?’ he enquires lightly. Migdal goes into her phone, goes into the WhatsApp chat and pulls up a photo. ’Look, someone took a photo and posted it in the group!’ she says triumphantly.
’Er… that’s my car,’ he replies, sheepishly.
’Ah, right,’ she replies. ’OK, I’ll let the group know so we can de-escalate the incident.
’But this is the point,’ she adds. ’There’s a general atmosphere of fear now. Everybody’s constantly on alert.
’Everything has changed. Years ago, if somebody left a bag in the shop, you’d just open it to find out whose it was and give it back. Now you immediately call CST or the police.’
She sighs. ’It just doesn’t feel like the same country any more.’
Outside Brad tests the light in his camera, pointing it toward the street. A woman walking past stops to ask him what he’s doing.
We explain and are walking away when a car screeches up beside us.
’What media are you from?’ asks the driver, a bearded man in traditional religious attire. I tell him we’re Daily Mail and he grins. ’We like the Mail! I’ll happily talk to you – and I’ve got a lot to say.’ He pulls over and we amble across the road.
The man’s name is David Berger. He’s 48 years old and garrulously true to his word. Britain is in the midst of an anti-Semitism crisis, he tells me – and it’s not recent.
’It’s something that’s been going on for the last three or four years. There’s been constant low-level attacks on the Jewish community. There is no end to it. It’s a drip, drip, drip.’
Berger is clear on who’s to blame. ‘First is the Mayor Sadiq Khan,’ he says. ’We’ve had politicians from all parties coming here to show solidarity. The mayor hasn’t shown his face.
‘All those far-Left people are so quick to speak about Islamophobia and other forms of racism, but when it comes to Jews: not a word.’
David Patrikarakos says the fun and easy Golders Green of his youth is very different to today with the endless marches and the growing Islamist extremism
Newspaper distributer David Berger says the Mayor Sadiq Khan hasn’t shown his face and is to blame
He leans forward, clearly exercised. ’Then there are these demonstrations in central London that we had on a weekly basis,’ he says, talking about the pro-Palestine marches that have infested London and other UK cities. ’They are nothing more than marches glorifying attacks against Jews. No one would tolerate this sort of abuse against any other community. But against us it’s OK.’
Golders Green may have brought home the problem of violent anti-Semitism in the UK but for British Jews, the wave of violence began months earlier on October 2, 2025. It was Yom Kippur, (the Day of Atonement), the holiest day in the Jewish calendar and thus the day most worshippers are likely to be in synagogue, when 45-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie, a British citizen of Syrian descent, drove a car at pedestrians and stabbed a security guard before attempting to force entry into Manchester’s Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation.
Keir Starmer promised he would do ’everything in his power’ to protect the Jewish community after Heaton Park. The attack proved to be merely the beginning.
I walk on through the streets. Men in long black coats dart by huddled together, talking on their phones or chain smoking (a habit beloved by Orthodox Jews). Women pushing prams and wearing sheitels, wigs worn by some married Orthodox Jewish women to cover their hair for modesty, throng the pavement.
I bump into Chaim, a 40-year-old Hasidic Jew, who tells me how sad it is that just walking on the street he feels he must be wary of potential danger.
Every few yards, British flags fly from lampposts: a legacy of King Charles’s recent visit to show his support for the Jewish community in the wake of the attacks.
Patriotism is strong in Golders Green. It reminds me that weekly Shabbat services always include a prayer for the country’s monarch.
I cross the road and walk to Menachems Kosher Butcher and Delicatessen, a white building on a corner of Golders Green Road. A Union flag flies from a lamppost near its entrance. On the pavement outside I speak to Ben Dahan, its 21-year-old owner. Wearing jeans, a sleeveless fleece over a T-shirt and a kippa, the small round Jewish head covering, he combines religiosity and urban cool.
On the streets men in long black coats dart by huddled together, talking on their phones or chain smoking
Ben Dahan, owner of Menachans Kosher Butcher and Deli, says Jews are looking to move out of Britain
His first words shock me. ’It’s too late,’ he says. Jews, he tells me, are looking to move out of Britain – himself included. Anti-Semitism is now too bad.
Why? I ask. Once again, he points to the Gaza marches. ’The Government let the hate grow and grow,’ he says. ’They should have cracked down from the beginning. But they didn’t and now the wrong people are emboldened.’
Dahan asks why the people on these marches fly foreign flags all the time, be it Palestinian, Iranian or Pakistani. ’If I’m in Britain, I want to wave the British flag,’ he says. ’Not any other – and that includes the Israeli flag. Look around you: all you see are British flags.
’The only thing you can do to relieve some of the pressure is to get a hold of immigration. I’m not against it. My parents were migrants. But my dad came here, opened a business and worked his socks off to make a contribution.
’If you want to let people in, they need to contribute, not come in and leech. And it will get to a point where they become the majority. The only hope is a radical change in leadership.’
The afternoon is wearing on. I want to speak to some community leaders and arrange to meet Justin Cohen, editor of the Jewish News. Cohen met the King on his recent visit and sings his praises.
’The King has consistently gone above and beyond in his support for the Jewish community,’ he says. ’The fact that he came to Golders Green so quickly after the attacks – because he personally wanted to meet the victims as soon as possible – meant a lot. Where there had been fear and tension, there were smiles that day. People here will remember that for a very long time.’
I walk through Golders Green with Cohen. As we turn on to Highfield Avenue, the site of the April 29 attack, he explains just how bad things are. ’It seems that every time I do an interview, the situation has got worse,’ he tells me as we walk past a synagogue with a security guard standing outside looking watchful.
I realise that it was at a friend’s house just over the road where, aged 14, I got drunk on sickly liqueurs we had filched from his parents’ drinks cabinet. That feels like more than a lifetime ago.
Cohen continues. ’For years, British Jews reassured themselves that however bad anti-Semitism got – and it always flares up after crises in the Middle East – we could look at the problems facing Jews in France and think at least things weren’t that bad.’
But that has changed. ’People are starting to talk about leaving the UK for good. I never thought that would happen.’
Almost everywhere in Golders Green now are memories and traces of violence. I walk down a side road and look at the Hatzola ambulances. A security guard briskly asks what I’m doing. Behind him I see black scorch marks on the car park’s concrete floor: a legacy of the firebombing.
I leave Cohen and walk back down the high street. My last port of call is a meeting with Rabbi Benjy Morgan, who heads Olami UK, an organisation that connects thousands of young Jews around the world.
’Anti-Semitism is a very light sleeper,’ he says. And he is clear on what has awoken it. This is the manifestation of ’globalise the intifada’ – the chant heard on every pro-Palestine march every single week that urges people around the world to mimic the violent Palestinian intifada against Israel that has killed so many Israeli civilians.
’My son goes to school on the Tube,’ Morgan tells me. ’And after the Golders Green stabbing, he was looking around to see if anyone was within stabbing distance of him.’
We part ways with a handshake, and I walk back to the station.
The memories return. I think of the fun and easy Golders Green of my youth, and then of how we arrived at today. The endless marches, the growing Islamist extremism, and I think of something Morgan said to me as I left.
’Jews are the canary in the coalmine: the first warning of things to come for everyone. People must understand: what is happening in Golders Green will not remain here. It’s more than just a problem for Jews; it’s a problem for Britain.’
Photographs by Bradley Page
