Yom Kippur is the holiest day in the Jewish year, a day of repentance, prayer, fasting; and now – for two Jewish families in Manchester – also a day of mourning. It is also, increasingly, a day when terrorists visit their local synagogue to murder the Jews inside.
Six years ago, that terrorist was Stephan Balliet, a German neo-Nazi, and the synagogue was in Halle, Germany. Yesterday it was Jihad Al-Shamie, at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester. Both attacks left two people dead; both were thwarted from further atrocities by the simple act of closing the front door.