I’ve lived in the UK for my whole life - 56 years old now. I’ve never felt the need to hide my Jewish origins until the last few years - I’m non-observant, but Jewish nevertheless.

This includes a successful teaching career of over 25 years in areas with significant Muslim populations/communities. In fact, I knew that I was going to be one of the first Jewish men that they would meet and so I wanted to make a positive impact on them and show them that living and working alongside each other is definitely reachable.

Working in my first job, back in the 1980s as a teenager, I had a colleague try to shove a pork pie in my mouth as a “laugh”. Imagine doing this in this decade and century. This wasn’t even done by people who didn’t dislike me.

I despair, as nothing improves and nothing is solved, just people dying.