Emma Barnett ‘crying for the community’ after terror attack at her old synagogue

BBC radio presenter Emma Barnett has said she cried for her community after learning of the terror attack which took place outside the Greater Manchester synagogue she worshipped at as a child.

Manchester-born Barnett, 40, who presents BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, said she has not been to the temple in Crumpsall since she was 16 but still remembers “proudly holding my mum’s hand going to sit in the women’s gallery”.

In a Times column she wrote: “I saw the news alert flash up on my phone as I was leaving the BBC after presenting the Today programme.

“My stomach dropped and churned. A killing at a synagogue? A place I should have been today and was at only a few days earlier celebrating Rosh Hashanah and taking our son and daughter to cheder, their Sunday school.

“My seven-year-old boy doesn’t even ask about the airport-style security when we go in – it’s all he’s ever seen.

“And then I realised the attack happened at my shul from my youth and felt very, very strange indeed.”

Barnett said her friends’ parents in Manchester were locked in a synagogue, explaining: “No one in my little corner of Manchester who is already inside a shul is being allowed to leave.”

Greater Manchester Police said two members of the Jewish community died and four other people remain in hospital in a serious condition following the attack – and confirmed a bomb disposal unit was sent to the synagogue.

Barnett said: “My tears fall softly on the street outside my home, helping me to pierce the news wall I’ve built and absorb the dawning reality.

“I cry for the community. I cry for the people who have been killed and their families. I cry out of fear and for what such hate can do. But I also cry out of sheer rage, indignation and horror.”

Other public figures and celebrities have expressed their sorrow at the terror attack, which took place on Thursday during the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.

Among them was TV presenter and reality TV star Stacey Solomon, who said it is “heart-breaking” that being Jewish “feels scary”.

In a post to her Instagram story, she said: “It is heart-breaking to hear of the attack at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur.

“My thoughts and prayers are with everyone effected.

“I’m also thinking of anyone right now who feels scared for themselves and their loved ones just because of who they are.

“Being Jewish feels scary and that is heart-breaking.

“It goes without saying, although I’ve said this before, My thoughts are also with the innocent people in Gaza. Being proudly Jewish and being against the horrific attack today does not cancel the other.

“I realise no matter what I say. Someone somewhere won’t like it. But all I really have to say is that none of this is ok.”

Criminal barrister and TV personality Rob Rinder said in a post to X: “On the holiest day of the year we are attacked at a Manchester synagogue. Our children walk to school behind barbed wire protected by guns.

“Yet some still answer this atrocity with ‘what about…’ This is my country, the sanctuary my grandfather found after surviving the Holocaust, promising freedom under the rule of law.

“Today I pray for the victims, thank the brave who responded and wonder if that promise is fading. A community this small cannot stand alone.

“If you believe in Britain (wherever you’re from and whatever your faith) you must stand with us. Many Jews cannot imagine a future here and history tells us what follows when that happens.”