WASHINGTON – As Jewish communities across the US prepare for the High Holy Days, two challenges emerge: the first is the safe reopening of synagogues after last year’s corona restrictions, which require communities to find creative ways to gather and pray as the Delta variant keeps spreading across the US. The second challenge is the physical security of these institutions. Newly released FBI statistics for 2020 show that Jews in America are the target of 58% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the US, despite constituting a mere 2% of the population.
“The subject of security is very much on our minds at the holidays,” said Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America. “We must and are accelerating to make sure that every community and every Jewish institution, every synagogue has the training and support of the professional security system in their community,” he said. “It is front of our consciousness on the High Holy Days, because this is when we gather, so the risk is elevated.
“We have seen over the last several years the most significant rise in violent attacks on the Jewish communities in the history of this country,” he said. “People don’t even know how many such threats are headed off because of our security efforts. But we know that the threat is growing. We’ve seen too many successful attacks to believe that we’re not in need of sophisticated security measures. And so that’s what we are building and what we need to continue to build.”
Fingerhut said that there are 45 community security initiatives across the US, housed at federations that are working with each of the Jewish institutions in their communities for emergency preparedness.
“Our goal is to build in three years the complete security umbrella across the entire Jewish Federation system, which will reach basically every Jewish community in North America,” said Fingerhut.
The Secure Community Network is the official safety and security organization of the Jewish community in North America. Brad Orsini, senior national security advisor to the organization, said that the community “is very good at paying attention to the High Holy Days and security that relates to all the services.”
“The increase of antisemitism and these incidents we see are something that we’re taking very seriously,” he said. “We’ve conducted a webinar series of seven national webinars over the last six weeks to prepare the community. We have plans in place to get great awareness out there for law enforcement and first responders to make sure that they all know where the community is going to be and where mass gatherings are going to be, to get as much situational awareness as possible.
“Preparedness matters,” he added. “How much do we prepare the community prior to the High Holy Days and building through a layered security approach for the community to keep everybody as safe as possible? As we make those plans, I would like to make sure that everybody is reporting if they see any suspicious behavior or activity out there, so we can really mitigate and diminish any threat.”
Aside from the security concern, corona fears will be very much on the minds of congregants this year. Josh Kashinsky, executive director of Congregation Beth Israel in Portland, Oregon, said that there are 850 families in the synagogue, and that the community is working to find the safest way possible for people to gather in person, while still having an online option available.
“We were concerned about the safety of gathering a large number of people, but we also wanted to make sure that we could provide an opportunity for those who wanted to gather in-person to do it as safely as possible,” Kashinsky said. “And also, everything we’re doing is going to be streamed and available online.
“Many congregants tell us that they’re concerned about COVID and not planning to come in person. Several others are very thankful that there’s still an opportunity to gather in person. We’re feeling very good about still gathering, but trying to do so in the safest way possible.”