A longtime leader in Britain’s Orthodox Jewish community, Jeremy Jacobs, and his wife, Karen, are planning to immigrate to Israel out of a combination of Zionism and pessimism about the future of British Jewry, he told the media this week.
Jacobs, a former chief executive of the United Synagogue, which supports 56 Orthodox synagogues, told JNS: “I am a very proud Zionist. So that you can put that at the top of the list.”
He elaborated on concerns he first outlined in a Telegraph letter headlined “Jewish leader leaves country after ‘losing faith in Britain.’”
For British Jewry, Jacobs said, “the die is cast” because of a growing hostility toward Israel and, by extension, Jews. For his family, “It’s better to make the move on our own terms now when it’s still relatively convenient, than leave later in circumstances we don’t control.”
The letter intensified debate within British Jewry amid record antisemitism and rising aliyah.
In response, PR consultant Shimon Cohen wrote in The Telegraph: “British Jews should resist despair. We should show the grit and courage of earlier generations, stand firm against murderous hatred, defend truth and justice, and continue working alongside all people of goodwill to build a Britain worthy of pride.”
The National Jewish Assembly said Jacobs’s experience “will resonate with many Jews who increasingly feel that something fundamental has shifted,” and who are “losing confidence,” but cautioned that his move should not be seen as proof “that British Jewish life is somehow over or beyond repair.”
Part of the stir surrounding Jacobs’s announcement stems from his deep roots in Britain.
“My family came to the U.K. in the 1850s. My father fought in World War II. My great uncle died on the Somme [in World War I]. We are very much proud to be British,” Jacobs told JNS. “If you cut me open, you’d see United Synagogue written through me.”
National Jewish Assembly acting director Steve Winston said the group was “deeply saddened” to see Jacobs make aliyah, noting his many years in the service of the community. Jacobs’s decision “should concern far more than the Jewish community alone,” Winston said.
In his response, Cohen said, “Jew-hatred itself is hardly novel. We have endured it for millennia. What matters is whether decent people confront it or accommodate it.”
Jacobs agreed, but argued that too few are confronting it effectively.
He contrasted today’s Britain with the public resistance against Oswald Mosley’s fascists in the 1930s, when ordinary Londoners blocked pro-Nazi marches in the “Battle of Cable Street” in London’s East End.
“There’s antisemitism now, and there was antisemitism then. But back then, the ordinary Londoner confronted it, rejected it. I can’t see the same thing happening today,” Jacobs said.
In 2022, a convoy with dozens of people waving Palestinian flags was filmed passing through the streets of a heavily Jewish neighborhood of London. Several men shouted out antisemitic slogans, including about “raping Jewish women.” Police arrested some of them after the event, which was allowed to take place without interference. Charges were dropped against two of the detainees.
Antisemitic incidents surged in Britain after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel.
According to Israel’s Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, the U.K. recorded the highest per capita rate of violent antisemitic assaults in the Jewish world in 2025, with 121 serious cases among a Jewish population of roughly 300,000.
Incidents included the Oct. 2 jihadist attack on a Manchester synagogue, in which two Jews died. This year, British Jews were horrified by the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green on April 29 and the torching of four Hatzola Northwest ambulances in London on March 23.
The Community Security Trust, British Jewry’s watchdog on antisemitism, recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025, the second-highest total on record.
“This is not simply about isolated incidents or statistics,” Winston said. “It is about a growing sense that Jews are being asked to tolerate levels of hostility, intimidation and insecurity that would rightly be considered unacceptable if directed at almost any other minority community.”
Jacobs said his concerns predated Oct. 7.
“We have been concerned about what’s happening in the U.K. for quite a few years now,” he said. “What happened after Oct. 7 only confirmed to us that leaving is the right decision.”
He traced part of his unease to the Labour Party antisemitism crisis under Jeremy Corbyn beginning in 2015.
Though Prime Minister Keir Starmer expelled many antisemitic members after replacing Corbyn in 2020, Jacobs believes the change is “superficial” and worries about the rise of the Greens and broader anti-Israel sentiment on the left.
Other British Jews have reached similar conclusions.
Blogger Joseph Cohen made aliyah in 2024 after Oct. 7 “changed everything,” while investigative journalist David Collier, who is planning to make aliyah in the near future, says he expects the Jewish community in Britain “as we know it” to disappear within a generation through assimilation or emigration.
Aliyah figures may reflect that mood. Last year, 872 Britons immigrated to Israel—a 40-year high, according to The Jewish Chronicle. In 2021-2022, Israel saw 572 and 681 newcomers from the U.K., respectively.
Asked about the numbers, Starmer told the Chronicle last month: “I want to make Britain a country where our Jewish community feels safe.”
Jacobs remains unconvinced.
“There’s a lot of talk every time that something happens,” he said. “But ultimately, the establishment as a whole doesn’t seem to be protecting the Jewish community.
“The political climate, the demographics—they all point to a certain inevitable reality. I pray that I am wrong. But I don’t think I am.”
Still, he acknowledged that leaving Britain is painful.
“Israel is home to us,” he said, “but leaving the U.K. is very hard.”
The couple’s three children and eight grandchildren remain in Britain, but Jacobs hopes to influence future generations.
“I’m encouraging my children, over time, to do the same,” he said. “Some of them will, some of them won’t, but we want to set an example.”
Though Israel faces its own dangers, Jacobs said the difference is societal solidarity.
“The difference is as follows: Here I know the government, the people next door, the people on the street—they will do whatever they can to protect you,” he said. “And that makes all the difference.”
