On Sunday, I witnessed one of the most beautiful and inspiring things I have seen in a very long time. It began with a Sefer Torah, it ended with a lesson about pride and continuity.
A Sefer Torah is the holiest object in Judaism, a handwritten scroll containing every word of the Torah, the Five Books of Moses that form the foundation of the Hebrew Bible. For Jews, it is far more than a religious text, it is our history book, our collective memory, the story we have passed from parent to child for thousands of years.
The celebration to recognise the completion and dedication of this Sefer Torah was also the fulfilment of a mitzvah, a commandment or sacred obligation. Many consider commissioning a Sefer Torah one of the greatest mitzvot a Jew can perform, particularly when done in memory of a loved one.
The process itself is extraordinary. A Sefer Torah contains 304,805 letters. Every one of them must be handwritten by a specially trained scribe, known as a Sofer, using a feather quill and black ink on parchment made from the hide of a kosher animal. The script follows ancient traditions and thousands of laws. If a single letter is missing, malformed or touches another letter, the scroll becomes invalid. One mistake, one letter, three hundred thousand opportunities to get it wrong.
The entire process takes more than a year and costs a substantial sum of money. Most Torah scrolls are therefore commissioned by groups of families, each dedicating a small part of the project to someone they loved and lost.
When viewed through that lens, every Sefer Torah is far more than a religious object. It is a physical manifestation of memory, a chain linking one generation to the next, a declaration that although individuals pass away, the story continues.
For more than three thousand years, Jews have passed down our story from one generation to the next. Not because every generation was deeply religious, certainly not because every generation agreed with one another, but because every generation understood that if they did not tell their children who they were, someone else eventually would.
That is why I have written so often about education. Education is not the transfer of information, information is everywhere. Education is the transfer of memory.
It is one generation placing a hand on the shoulder of the next and saying, "This is where we came from, this is what we believe, this is what we have endured and this is what we hope you carry forward after we are gone." A Sefer Torah is perhaps the greatest physical expression of that idea ever created.
Sunday was not ultimately about the scroll though, it was about the people carrying it. Because after the final letters had been completed, hundreds of Jews poured into the streets of North London. They sang, they danced, they celebrated and at the very heart of it all were our children. Children dancing on shoulders, waving flags, singing songs they will remember forever. Children seeing parents and grandparents entirely unashamed of who they are.
That mattered and it mattered because these are not easy times to be visibly Jewish.
Less than two miles from this procession of joy, Jewish ambulances were recently set alight in an act of arson.
Less than two miles from where these children danced, two Jews were stabbed in broad daylight simply because they were Jewish.
These same streets have seen intimidation, vandalism, threats, demonstrations and hatred directed towards our community.
Only days ago, police confirmed they would not investigate threats and hate speech directed at Dame Helen Mirren and Dame Maureen Lipman. Only days ago, Parliament hosted a debate discussing so-called “Israel lobby" influence. Only days ago, Zack Polanski called for a registry of Jews reentering the country from Israel and praised convicted terrorist murderer Marwan Barghouti. On the very same day as our celebration, Iran once again launched rockets indiscriminately towards Israeli civilians.
The message surrounding our children is becoming harder and harder to ignore. Be quieter, be less visible, hide a little more, apologise a little more, explain yourself a little more.
Sunday rejected all of it, because the answer to hatred is not merely survival. Survival is what happens when people retreat behind closed doors and hope to be left alone. Survival is the minimum and Sunday was about something much bigger, it was about thriving.
It was about hundreds of Jews walking through the streets carrying a Sefer Torah and Israeli flags for all to see. It was about refusing to bend the knee, to be intimidated, to allow others to dictate how visibly Jewish we are allowed to be.
It was a community standing tall and saying, "Here we are, this is our history, these are our children, this is our story." Look at us, we are not going anywhere.
The world our children are inheriting is different from the one many of us grew up in. The window has shifted, meaning the things that would once have been recognised immediately as antisemitism are now debated, excused, rationalised or simply ignored.
The politicians are not going away, the protests are not going away, the headlines are not going away. If anything, many of them are becoming more emboldened with each passing year. Which is precisely why Sunday mattered so much.
One day those children will face moments when being openly Jewish feels difficult. Moments when it feels easier to stay silent, when others tell them that their history is inconvenient, their connection to Israel suspect, their identity something that requires explanation or apology.
When that day comes, I hope they remember Sunday. I hope they remember hundreds of Jews singing through the streets of North London. I hope they remember parents and grandparents standing proudly beside them. I hope they remember a Torah scroll carried high above the crowd. I hope they remember Israeli flags flying openly above streets where others would rather they were hidden. I hope they remember the sound of Jewish joy drowning out Jewish fear.
Most of all, I hope they remember the lesson that mattered most. That being Jewish is not something to survive, it is something to celebrate. Not quietly, not apologetically, but proudly, visibly and without fear.
One day those children will inherit more than memories, they will inherit responsibility. One day, they will become the custodians of a story that stretches back thousands of years. One day, they will decide whether that chain remains unbroken.
On Sunday, they were given more than a memory, they were given an example. An example of what it means to be Jewish. Not fearful, not hidden, not apologetic, but proud.
The Sefer Torah that was carried through North London on Sunday will one day sit quietly in an ark, but the lesson those children learned will travel much further and those children will still remember what they saw.
A community that refused to shrink, refused to be intimidated, a community that chose pride over fear.
As Britain becomes a more difficult place to be openly Jewish, that memory may prove to be one of the most valuable gifts we could ever have given them. Because our continuity has never depended on what others think of us, but on whether each generation loves being Jewish enough to pass it on to the next.
On Sunday, hundreds of children were shown exactly how to do that.
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’ has won the 2025 Emmy of the 46th Annual News & Documentary Awards for most ‘Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary’.