IIt was just after 6 a.m. and Yoni Finley woke up early because she was nervous. It was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, and the 39-year-old Mancunian had to sing the dawn prayer, ShakarisLater that morning in front of hundreds of worshippers.
After practicing his poetry, Finlay donned his white robes and headed to the Heaton Park Shul in North Manchester. He greeted familiar faces – cheerfully exchanging hellos with security guard Bernard Agyemang – then took a seat on the stage. BimahAnd prayed.
“And then we heard a bang,” he said. He remembers Alan Levy, chairman of the synagogue’s trustees, running into the synagogue saying, “Lock the doors, lock the doors”.
Finley ran to the entrance to see what was happening. Through the reinforced glass, he saw Agyemang’s broken body on the ground. They turned and saw Andrew Franks, a volunteer security guard, covered in blood.
The moment that many in Britain’s Jewish community had been dreading has finally arrived. He was being attacked.
Finlay, a father of four, helped close the doors when the attacker tried to force his way inside. “When we were holding them he was pulling them and they were bending,” she said.
He saw the attacker’s knife – “I’ve never seen such a big blade on a knife” – and what appeared to be a bomb strapped to his waist. “He was yelling something about killing children.”
In his first newspaper interview, Finlay told the Guardian that he saw evil when he saw the knifeman: “I never felt it before, I never experienced it, but the evil was there. We were in the presence of evil.
“That was his whole demeanor. He was angry. Very, very angry. He just wanted to kill Jews, and he was willing to die for it.”
Finlay was not aware but the attacker, Jihad al-Shami, had already claimed responsibility for his ongoing attack by calling 999 and pledging allegiance to Islamic State.
Armed police arrived within seven minutes and shot Shami, a Syrian-born Mancunian, as he charged at them. Somehow he stood on his feet and pounced on them again. The police fired more bullets, killing the attacker.
Behind the synagogue door, Finlay felt “a very strong punch to his chest” and fell to the ground.
“I immediately knew I had been shot,” he said. A police bullet had entered the left side of his chest and exited his back. Behind him, 53-year-old Adrian Dolby was also killed.
Dolby, described by his family as a calm man and an “extremely strong hero”, was pronounced dead 40 minutes later. Another worshiper, 66-year-old Melvin Kravitz, died in hospital a short time later from a knife wound.
It was the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in Britain in recent memory.
Seven weeks later, Finlay is physically recovering from his injuries after a seven-hour operation and two weeks in hospital. But the psychological wounds are still green.
“What I’ve been told is survivor’s guilt,” he said. “Even though it was a miracle and I’m extremely grateful that I’m still here — I thank God every day — but it doesn’t take away the lives that were lost. And that’s very difficult.”
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There was anger in the Jewish community in Manchester and beyond in the days following the attack. He said warning signs of atrocities had been clearly visible for two years. The Justice Secretary, David Lammy, was harassed and booed at a surveillance event where ministers were accused of having blood on their hands.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded by the Community Security Trust (CST) has increased sharply since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7. A decade ago, 100 such incidents in a month would have been shocking, but in the first half of 2025, CST has recorded more than 200 incidents every month. That rose to 300 per month in June, July and August, according to Dave Rich, CST’s policy chief.
He said that the actions of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli government leading to hostility towards British Jews and the failure by UK ministers to address it forcefully have normalized anti-Semitism in the country.
“People don’t wake up in the morning and think I’m going to kill Jews, I’m going to attack some shul. That doesn’t just happen in a vacuum. It’s the result of what happens in the weeks, months and years before that.
“There is an undercurrent (of anti-Semitism) in the country and people are leaning towards it… It’s not just the government – it’s the way the media has portrayed (the Gaza conflict). That whole environment allowed something like this to happen.”
The decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from a match against Aston Villa in Birmingham this month over security fears plays out as a capitulation to anti-Semitism, he said: “How can it be that British citizens, or citizens of any other country, Jewish people, can’t go to a certain area of England? We’re in 2025. How was this allowed to happen again?”
“Screaming anti-Semitic things, holding hate marches, and being disrespectful toward Jews have become normalized. Anti-Semitism has been allowed to flourish in this country.
“We can’t keep reacting to things that happen. There has to be real change. We have to stop normalizing anti-Semitism and the role the government plays in it.”
Speaking at the Guardian’s Manchester office, Finlay stressed that he is not a politician and does not have all the answers. He’s just a “very normal guy”, a Manchester United-supporting utility manager who can be found either on the football field or with his four children, a 16-year-old son and three daughters aged nine, 12 and 14.
She is very passionate about her volunteer work at Friendship Circle, a charity that supports Jewish children and adults with learning difficulties and other disabilities.
Finlay said he did not want to focus on the attacker, who was picked up barely two miles from his victims. Nor does he blame the armed officer whose bullet hit him and he believes Dolby: “They were doing their job. Their actions that day saved lives”.
In the days following 2 October, Heaton Park Shul received over 2,000 messages of support and solidarity. Many were from non-Jewish communities and Muslims, Finley said, the “silent majority” who hate discrimination: “They were from every religion, every society. People don’t want violence, they don’t want hatred, they want to live together in peace.”
As far as the government was concerned, Finlay said it would be a mistake to push British Jews beyond their already protected community. “The answer is not that we keep putting up more walls and more doors and we keep going further and further behind the gates. We’re not dealing with the root cause of this,” he said.
Finlay considered carefully whether to speak out publicly considering the impact the attack has had on those affected, including her family, and the sensitivities surrounding the Gaza conflict.
He is doing this, he said, because he believes this should be the moment when compassion triumphs over hatred.
He said, “I saw evil and that was something that was very powerful in the wrong way at the time. But let’s combat it. Let’s bring light into the world, and it doesn’t take a lot.”
“Love, care, good. It conquers hate. It eliminates hatred. We need to learn and choose to connect rather than divide. Hope builds bridges, hate builds walls.”
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