Ensuring that memory becomes responsibility

My story is unremarkable.

I grew up in a golden age in this sunburnt country. Perhaps the most fortunate era for Jews across all time and space. And yet, antisemitism has been ever-present. It has influenced every major life-choice I have made.

When I was 15, I visited Auschwitz for the first time with my father. I saw where my grandparents had lost most of their family, taken after the Nazis invaded their Passover Seder in 1944, as they sat down to tell our ancient stories of freedom and survival.

At 17, I watched the Twin Towers fall and began studying the extremist ideologies fuelling anti-democratic and antisemitic violence across the globe. I watched it brewing in the darkest corners of the internet, in chat groups that glorified violence, especially against Jews.

As a young law student, a tutor once accused me of killing Jesus. My first appearance was at a junior soccer tribunal, representing my brother after he punched an opponent who had called him a f**king Jew.