There is a smell to fire, one that elicits something instinctive, almost primal. Sometimes it is warming, homely, comforting, the scent of gathering, of togetherness, of life lived in the presence of others. At other times it is something else entirely, acrid, deliberate, menacing.
In recent weeks in London, it has very much been the latter.
Jewish homes, Jewish spaces, synagogues, memorials to the murdered of October 7th, targeted, one after another. Not in theory, not online, not in the abstract, but in flames.
Fire as intimidation, as threat, as a warning, fire that says you are not safe here.
Then, this week, came Lag Ba'Omer.
Another fire, thousands of them, bonfires lit across Jewish communities the world over. Children dancing, families gathering, songs, food, laughter, the hallmarks of every Jewish celebration, every moment of Jewish joy.
This was fire again, but this time as defiance, as memory, as life, a fire that smelt different.
Two fires, burning at once in the same city. One sought to erase, the other insisted on enduring.
Lag Ba'Omer is, at its heart, a paradox. It arrives in the middle of the Omer, a period marked by mourning, restraint, and reflection and breaks it, if only for a moment. A rupture in the sadness, a spark in the darkness, a break in mourning. A moment in the Jewish calendar where, even in a period defined by restraint, we choose joy.
It marks survival, resistance and a simple yet steadfast refusal to disappear. Which is why its symbolism feels less historical this year, and more immediate.
Because British Jews today are once again being asked a question we know all too well:
Do you retreat or do you gather? Do you dim your light or do you build a fire?
The answer, instinctively, defiantly, is unchanged and was delivered unequivocally. We gathered, we lit and we lived.
Yet, while this fire was lit in defiance by a community, the other, the one who’s smell is acrid and threatening, has been allowed to spread.
This week, Keir Starmer hosted an antisemitism summit at Number 10. The imagery was powerful: condemnation, resolve, a Prime Minister standing shoulder to shoulder with Britain’s Jews. But something vital was missing: accountability.
This is still the same Keir Starmer who stood beside Jeremy Corbyn and vouched for his fitness to lead. The same man who downplayed a crisis that metastasised in plain sight. The same political instinct to do what is easiest in the moment, that has shaped too much of this story.
It was easier to go along with antisemitism in the Labour Party than to stand apart. Easier to ignore the hate marches than to confront them. Easier to tolerate the dehumanising language than to call it what it was. Easier to recognise a Palestinian Arab state than demand the return of the hostages. And now, easiest of all, to offer words when action is harder, to hug Jews when the cameras are on.
Leadership is not defined by what is easy, it is defined by what you were prepared to risk when it was not.
If there is any doubt about how deeply this failure runs, look not just at what has happened, but at how it is being received. Recent polling, conducted in the aftermath of the Golders Green stabbings and the wave of arson attacks, should stop this country in its tracks.
Only a third of the British public believe that government and law enforcement are not doing enough to protect Jews. Just let that sink in.
In a moment where Jews are being attacked in the streets, where places of worship are being set alight, where memorials to murdered civilians are desecrated, around 70% of the country believe the response is sufficient.
But perhaps even more shocking, more than 40% say Britain would be neither better nor worse off if Jews left altogether. Not harmed, not diminished, just…unchanged.
A minority community, present in this country since the Norman Conquest, with established Jewish life in England from around 1070 and since 1656, over three and a half centuries of continuous contribution since.
Yet, in 2026, nearly half the country shrugs at the idea of its disappearance.
That is not just indifference, that is a warning sign. Because hatred does not flourish in isolation, it flourishes when it is met with apathy.
So now the contrast becomes even starker. Two fires, one, fuelled by those who hate and those who look away. The other, fuelled by a people who refuse to disappear.
On Lag Ba'Omer, Jews lit fires not because they were blind to the moment, but because they understood it, because to light a fire in dark times is not an act of ignorance, it is an act of defiance.
A statement that says we are still here.
Now to the question that sits beyond the Jewish community. If one fire burns in hatred, and another in hope, which one do you stand beside?
The strongest responses to hate have never come from those under attack alone, they come when others decide it matters.
So let’s ask the question plainly.
What happens to a country whose people care neither way whether racism drives out its Jews? What happens to a nation where more than 40% can look at that possibility, not with outrage, not with urgency, but with indifference and conclude it would make no difference at all?
What does it say about leadership, about Keir Starmer, when, after years of equivocation, the response arrives only once the flames are already visible?
History answers that question, again and again.
It tells you that when a society reaches the point where it can tolerate the disappearance of its Jews, it is not the end of the Jews that defines what comes next. It is the beginning of the end for that society itself.
Indifference is never neutral, nor apathy passive. They are enablers, they are accelerants.
Those 40%, whether they realise it or not, are not standing outside this moment, they are part of it. Complicit not just in what is happening now, but in what inevitably follows.
When a country decides it can live without its Jews, history is unequivocal about what happens next.
It soon discovers it cannot live with itself.
Leo Pearlman is a London based producer and a loud and proud Zionist. His most recent film about the Oct 7 Nova Music Festival massacre, ‘We Will Dance Again’ won the 2025 Emmy of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Awards for most ‘Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary’.
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