On Yom Kippur morning, terror hit a Manchester synagogue. Yoni Finlay faced the terrorist, fighting to keep the attacker out, and was shot in the chaos.
On Yom Kippur morning in Manchester, Yoni Finlay, 39, came to the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, U.K. ready to lead prayers. Within moments, a terrorist attacked the synagogue, and Yoni was pulled into a fight to protect his congregation. When police rushed in, shots rang out—and Yoni was hit. What should have been a day of holiness became a face-to-face encounter with evil.
Around 9:30 that morning, Yoni recalls, “I'm waiting, and trying to make sure that I remember the tunes.” Then he heard a loud bang. “That's when we first realized something was wrong. We kind of all looked at each other, what on earth was that?”
The bang came from the terrorist’s car ramming into the synagogue wall in an attempt to get through the gates. At the time, all he saw was Alan Levy, one of the people who welcomes people as they come into the shul, running in, shouting, “Get the doors closed!”
Yoni relates, “I didn't know this at the time, but Adrian Daulby, who, unfortunately, didn't survive, was closest to the door on the left-hand side. He quickly got both doors closed. Then we went out into the foyer because there was something going on, and we didn't know what.”
In the foyer, “the first thing I saw was the security guard, lying on the floor in front of the car,” says Yoni. “Then I saw Andrew Franks, absolutely covered in blood. I didn’t know at the time that he’d been stabbed.” Thankfully, Andrew survived.
Yoni’s father, a doctor, came out to the foyer to administer first aid to Andrew. A consulting geriatrician, he later shared that he was not trained for such a situation.
At that point, the terrorist got out of the car and was trying to break into the synagogue. Yoni recalls, “Just on instinct, people were holding the doors closed. I joined in with that. There must have been 7 or 8 of us on the doors.” Rabbi Daniel Walker, the congregation’s spiritual leader, was one of them. Meanwhile, the terrorist “was doing his best to pull the doors open, because they opened outwards.”
As the terrorist continued to try breaking through doors and windows, Yoni and others “were going from door to door to stop him from coming in. He was running up and down the steps. At one point, he was throwing stuff at the windows to try and get in. He was using his knife to try and shatter the glass, but thank God, he couldn't get in.
“We were in the presence of evil. I've never, ever felt evil radiating off somebody in the way that it did that morning.”
At the time, the men did not think about the danger they were in. Yoni says, “I did notice that he had a very large knife. And he had a belt around his waist that looked like some sort of bomb. But the very weird thing is that you kind of forgot about that. We were just concentrating on keeping the doors closed and making sure he didn't get in.”
What felt like a long time was, Yoni later learned, only seven minutes—but to them it felt like an eternity as they clung to the doors and waited for police to arrive.
Getting Shot
When the armed police finally arrived, the terrorist “came down the steps towards them quite aggressively, and they were shouting at him. They probably saw the bomb, and that's when they shot him. He got back up again, somehow. They shot him again, and that's when the bullet went into me.”
Yoni was shot by a stray police bullet.
“I knew straight away I'd been shot but it didn't hurt. It just feels like someone's punched you very, very hard. But then you're struggling to breathe. I didn't know at the time that my left lung had collapsed. So I'm struggling to breathe, I sort of had my hand over where the bullet had gone in. My thought was, I didn't want to die here.”
Other congregants immediately rushed to help. Yoni remained conscious throughout the ordeal. “People were really good. Somebody lay down next to me, kept talking to me. Somebody gave me some water. They were making sure I was okay until the paramedics could get in. They couldn't get in until the area was clear. So the police had to come in first, clear the whole area.”
Somebody alerted Dr. Finlay, Yoni’s father. He rushed over, but he felt completely unprepared and helpless. Nothing prepares a father for treating his own seriously wounded child.
When Yoni was finally taken to a hospital by an ambulance “My parents knew I was in hospital being looked after, but for hours they didn't know where I was,” Yoni says. It was an excruciatingly difficult day for them.
In the ER, Yoni was taken for a CT scan. “I'm actually terrified of operations,” He laughs. “It’s one of my biggest fears. I think I tried to convince myself I'd be fine, I just needed a couple of days’ bed rest.”
While waiting, Yoni gave a statement to the police. Then the doctor rushed in with the results of the CT scans. “He said, yeah, we're going to need to operate, sign this. I was taken into the operating theater, and next thing I knew, I was waking up.”
The surgery took over four hours. By the time Yoni woke up, his parents were already in the hospital, at his side. They remain a pillar of support throughout his recovery.
The Victims
Yoni didn’t know that at the time that two of the congregants, Adrian Daulby and Melvin Cravitz, lost their lives in the attack. Melvin was stabbed to death by the terrorist outside the synagogue. Adrian was one of the men holding the synagogue doors closed. He was also shot by a stray police bullet.
Both men were beloved members of the community and are very much missed. Yoni says, “Adrian and Melvin are the type of people that our synagogue is built on. Often, Adrian was the first person I saw when I came into the synagogue, and always with a smile. Always, ‘Hello, how are you? Nice to see you.’ And he was there every Shabbat, in his seat, which I think his father and his grandfather had sat in before him.
“And Melvin's the same, very devoted to his family, very friendly, warm, and welcoming. It affected a huge amount of people, what happened.”
For Yoni, it is especially difficult because both Adrian and Melvin used to sit behind him in the synagogue. “And now, I turn around, and there are two empty seats where there shouldn't be.”
Impact on Family and Community
The whole community has come together in mourning the victims and supporting each other, especially those directly affected.
Yoni’s parents, he says, “are strong people, but an experience like this, it has to affect you. They've been absolutely fantastic, really doing everything that they can for me whilst trying to manage their own trauma.”
Yoni’s four children, ages 16 to 9, are also still processing their trauma. Thankfully, they were not yet in the synagogue at the time of the attack. Yoni says it was a miracle that the attack took place so early in the morning. Two hours later, the synagogue would have been full of people, including children.
“I'm incredibly proud of how they've reacted to it,” Yoni says about his children. “My 16-year-old son gave an interview to one of the media stations on the day after, where he spoke about what had happened, and he said some very nice things about me.”
Another miracle, says Yoni, is that Rabbi Walker was not injured or worse. He had been one of the men going from door to door and holding them closed, as well as administering first aid to the wounded. “He’s held the synagogue together, and he’s been absolutely fantastic.”
Rabbi Walker has been guiding his congregants through the aftermath of the attack, providing encouragement and support as they mourn their losses and carry on.
On Yom Kippur itself, says Yoni, Rabbi Walker “was a pillar of strength. He made a decision that no matter what happened, we're going to carry on. We're not going to miss prayer services.” All the services of Yom Kippur took place that day, first outside, in the street, then at the police station where the congregants were taken, and later, at a local community center. The next morning, the congregation prayed at the rabbi’s house. Then other organizations offered their space, until the synagogue building was reopened for Simchat Torah.
“There wasn’t a prayer missed,” says Yoni. “The rabbi said that we were not going to let the terrorist win. He wanted to stop our prayers, and we weren’t going to let that happen.”
Fighting Darkness with Light
Yoni says, “The Jewish people have this immense power to bring light into the world.” The terrorist embodied “real darkness. He wanted to die, and the only reason he wanted to die is because he hated Jews. He wanted to kill as many Jews as he could. So we have to combat that.”
Yoni urges all Jews around the globe to be the bearers of light through acts of kindness. “It doesn't take a lot,” he says. “Say hello to somebody. Smile. Ask somebody how they are. It doesn't have to be big things, but you can bring that light into somebody else's world.”
“There's so much good in this world,” Yoni says. He witnessed the good in people who “ran towards danger that day. I wasn’t alone in that, just trying to protect the people in the synagogue. There's so much darkness, there's so much hate in this world, but actually we have that power to bring light. Everybody, no matter who you are, has an ability to make a difference. It doesn't take a lot to put a smile on someone's face, to make somebody feel good, and we have no idea what impact this has on people.”
The Outpouring of Kindness
Yoni stayed in the hospital for ten days. He is tremendously grateful to the doctors and nurses. “I had nothing but absolutely wonderful care and support,” he says. “I was incredibly well looked after.”
Yoni says he was overwhelmed by the outpouring of support he and his children received from the community.
“The unity that the Jewish community displayed is remarkable,” says Yoni. He recalls that the police later commented on how impressed they were with the whole Jewish community. “People bought food out to them, people made sure that they were warm, they had what they needed. Because it's how we respond. We don't respond with violence, we don't respond with revenge. That's not who we are.”
Within days of the attack, the synagogue received over 2,000 messages from all over the world, from both Jews and non-Jews, expressing their horror at the attack, condolences on the lives lost, and well wishes for the wounded.
Two weeks after the terrorist attack, King Charles visited the synagogue and met with the congregants. He offered condolences and expressed his solidarity with the community. Yoni says that the king’s visit was very important to the community because it “showed us that we're not alone.”
Carrying On
After Yoni was discharged from the hospital, he was nervous about going back to the synagogue and being reminded of the trauma. “But the welcome I got was so warm,” he says. “There wasn't really time to think about what happened. I was never on my own. I sat, and people came over to talk to me, and at no time was I sitting there by myself. People were making sure I was okay.”
Yoni still struggles with survivor’s guilt. “I'm not sure if it's the same bullet that went into me that also went into Adrian, but certainly it was this close… and Adrian isn't here, and Melvin isn't here, and that's really difficult for me to cope with.”
At the same time, Yoni is grateful to God for the miracle of his survival. Physically, he is on the mend. “Thank God, I've had the good news that I'm allowed to go running again,” he says. “There's still bits of pain, but I'm walking, I'm going out and doing things.”
He sees his experience as a lesson that “ultimately, we don't know what tomorrow brings” and advises others not to put off for tomorrow anything that is important to them.
On a practical level, the synagogue is increasing its security measures. The community is concerned about the rise of antisemitism in the U.K. over the past two years. Yoni says, “There's been so much hate towards the Jews in this country, and it's fueled by the media.” What happened on Yom Kippur, says Yoni, “was a shock but not a surprise.” The terrorist did not wake up that morning and decide to kill Jews. The hatred had been continuously fed to him by the media.
Yoni explains that these seemingly small and insignificant messages are the flip side of small acts of kindness making a difference. Small acts of hate have a major effect on the world. “People really have to think about the consequences of what they say and what gets put out there, because ultimately, it has an impact,” says Yoni.
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