Be a Mensch

Be a #mensch

Mensch is a Yiddish word, meaning a person of genuine decency and moral backbone. Today, in 2026, having 'moral backbone' means to stand publicly with the Jewish community at a time when visible solidarity is most in need.

The 2026 definition of being a mensch is to stand publicly with the Jewish community at a time when it most matters.

Anti-Semitism is rising sharply in the UK, and many in the Jewish community are frightened.

Frightened not just because two Jews were recently stabbed in Golders Green, or because another two were killed outside Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester last October; Jews are frightened because they don't know where this leads.

Talk to Jews in London and you will find many with relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust, ancestors who fled pogroms in Russia or Eastern Europe, or grandparents who arrived on the Kindertransport. This proximate history has taught them two things: that sometimes, in some places, parts of a community can turn violently on Jews. But worse — far worse — that in those same places, there will be parts of the community that will not defend them.

For those of us who are not Jewish, that is unfathomable. We take for granted that a neighbour would shelter us in the night, that the police would defend us, that the courts would prosecute those who threatened or mistreated us. That these protections might not apply — based solely on our identity — is something most of us have never had to consider.

Yet Jews across the UK are considering exactly this.

There is much to be done to face anti-Semitism head on — in education, in politics, in law, in the health service. But the most important thing any of us who is not Jewish can do today is to make our support visible. We may not be able to stop the bigotry overnight, but we can make clear that it does not represent the majority view — and that most good people in Britain would stand openly and without hesitation beside their Jewish neighbours, friends and colleagues.

But to make this clear, to send this message, the 'good people' need to be seen.

Mensch is a Yiddish word. It generally means a person of decency and moral backbone. Today, in 2026, having 'moral backbone' means to stand publicly with the Jewish community at a time when visible solidarity is most in need.