From Our CEO
After Colleyville
January 21st, 2022

Heading into Shabbat just a week after the Colleyville synagogue hostage situation, we’re still grappling with what happened — what, thank God, didn’t happen — and what is the increasingly complicated reality for Jews in America today.

Most of us remember that as recently as five years ago, when we wrung our hands about rising antisemitism, it was in the context of Europe. Jews in New York, like Jews in Pittsburgh, worried about Jews in Paris. That was the world we knew until October 2018, when the Tree of Life massacre served as a harrowing wake up call.

In the aftermath of Pittsburgh, there was a tragic recognition that enhancing security for local Jewish organizations needed to become a communal priority. Looking closely at our New York landscape, enriched by nearly 2,000 Jewish institutions, we considered what was needed to better protect our community. Together with JCRC-NY, we conceived and created the Community Security Initiative (CSI), funded by UJA, which has quickly grown to include 10 full-time staff, led by Mitch Silber, former NYPD director of Intelligence Analysis, with five regional directors; a cybersecurity specialist; a procurement officer; and an online threat intelligence analyst.

Over the last year alone, CSI conducted 135 physical security assessments at local Jewish institutions, and helped guide 177 organizations to secure $27 million in federal nonprofit security grants, almost 30% of the Department of Homeland Security’s national funds for urban areas. And nearly 1,000 local institutions received support, from incidence response to security training.

On the national level, we support the Secure Community Network (SCN), co-founded by the Jewish Federations of North America, which provided the security training that Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker in Colleyville credits with quite literally saving his life. UJA also funds a national camp security director through SCN. And to complement CSI’s work, we support the Community Security Service (CSS), which trains volunteers who add another important layer of watchfulness on top of the physical security and presence of guards and police.

Locally, CSI has become so integrated into Jewish institutional life that when the hostage taker in Colleyville contacted Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue here in New York, she called her synagogue security, who in turn reached out to CSI. Mitch Silber, CSI’s executive director, spoke to Rabbi Buchdahl as she waited for the FBI, advising her on what to do should the hostage taker call back. CSI also shared real-time security alerts with synagogues, schools, JCCs, and museums in the New York area.

To be clear, security is a means to an end — not the end itself. The purpose of the training and security enhancements is so we can live proudly, openly Jewish lives, unencumbered by fear as we walk into Jewish communal spaces. So we can fortify our resilience and expand our Jewish footprint, not contract. And on the Monday after Colleyville, that’s exactly what we did, with thousands showing up at dozens of Jewish institutions across New York City, Westchester, and Long Island to take part in UJA’s MLK Day of service and volunteerism.

I was at our partner Met Council’s distribution center with my two daughters, where we were put to work fulfilling orders from the digital food pantry system. As background, the digital pantry is an initiative UJA launched to mark our centennial in 2017 that empowers clients to use technology to choose the foods they want for themselves and their families. There are no lines spiraling around the block, no unwanted food items — all of which puts a premium on dignity and efficiency.

We’ve already transitioned 11 of the 29 food pantries in our network to a digital model, a particular blessing during the pandemic that allowed many, including isolated seniors, to order and access food without leaving their homes. On Monday, after putting together about 15 packages — noting that no two were the same — my daughters and I delivered them directly to the clients, whose smiles of gratitude uplifted me all week.

Why am I sharing details about food pantries in a week when we’re rightfully consumed with Colleyville? Because the same community that invests in security is even more invested in human dignity — in doing what is needed to build a better world for our children and grandchildren. That is who we are. That is what it means to be Jewish today.

We may enter Shabbat wary of what comes next, and weary for what’s already been endured, but we cannot allow our legacy to be what was done to us. The mark we leave on this world will be what we do for others — how we live more purposeful Jewish lives.     

Shabbat shalom