At sundown on Friday, Sept. 11, as America marks 25 years since the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, Jewish families across the country will welcome in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year marking 5787. They will enter synagogues at the moment of peak annual attendance, walking past armed guards, security cameras, secured doors and bag checks. The convergence brings into focus how the Sept. 11 attacks transformed security in American synagogues and helped create the national infrastructure that now protects Jewish life.
FOX NEWS MEDIA ANNOUNCES EXTENSIVE 9/11 ANNIVERSARY COVERAGE FROM GROUND ZERO, PENTAGON AND SHANKSVILLE When Rosh Hashanah began six days after the attacks in 2001, a security guard stationed outside a synagogue was still unusual. Twenty-five years later, security is no longer an occasional precaution. It has become a permanent precondition of Jewish communal life.
"The confluence of events, the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and Rosh Hashanah, is really very meaningful to us," Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of Jewish Federations of North America, told Fox News Digital. "If you trace the evolution of the security situation for the Jewish community in North America, you see that 9/11 really was a major turning point." Before the attacks, Fingerhut said, synagogues may have relied on police to direct traffic during the High Holidays or installed basic alarm systems, but there was no widespread belief that Jewish communities needed protection from threats to their physical safety. "That changed on 9/11," he said.
"The Jewish community understood quite clearly that the people who attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were attacking America that day, but they had a special animus for the Jewish community and the Jewish people." Fingerhut said that shift led Jewish Federations of North America to help create the Secure Community Network after 9/11, giving communities a model for protecting Jewish institutions and a unified channel to federal law enforcement. For generations, Rosh Hashanah preparation meant apples and honey, prayer books and the shofar. Now the checklist also includes secured entrances, emergency plans and congregants standing watch while their neighbors pray.
The price of that new reality is staggering. MARYLAND SYNAGOGUE SUES COUNTY OVER LAW RESTRICTING CONCEALED CARRY NEAR HOUSES OF WORSHIP A national study by Jewish Federations of North America found that Jewish communal institutions spend an estimated $1 billion annually on security. Based on an examination of more than 4,500 institutions, that amounts to nearly $2.8 million every day simply to keep Jewish life open and accessible.
The organization leads the national initiative placing professional security directors across all 141 Federation communities. Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz, senior rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, described the contrast on his own block. "If you walk past the churches on our block, the doors are wide open, inviting people in," Steinmetz told Fox News Digital.
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