The Friday after the May 21 shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum, Lindsay Feldman received several calls from congregants asking, “Are we going to hold Shabbat services?”
It’s a question that many in the Washington, D.C., Jewish community have on their minds.
Feldman, the executive director of Washington Hebrew Congregation, recognizes this collective concern given that the synagogue is less than five miles from the site of the fatal shooting. But at the same time, it was never a thought that the congregation should pause in its usual functioning.
“[It] was just baffling to me that there is this fear that, potentially, because of what happened, we need to shut down, and that’s not the case,” Feldman said.
Rusty Rosenthal, the executive director of community security for JShield, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s security division, spoke to these same fears across the region.
“Everyone throughout the entire Jewish community is feeling a lot of anxiety with everything going on across the country and around the world,” Rosenthal said. “I can say that the entire community and its institutions are making adjustments, both seen and unseen, to enhance their security posture.”
These measures could look like security guards doing bag checks and having attendees walk through metal detectors upon entry. Recent Jewish communal events directly related to the May 21 shooting — a solidarity event and the reopening of the Capital Jewish Museum — hired D.C. police to sit outside the building during gatherings in case of a follow-up attack.
Rabbi Marc Israel of Tikvat Israel Congregation received a federal security grant that was approved last month and staff at the Rockville synagogue are “working to implement [these security upgrades] as quickly as possible,” he said in a text message to Washington Jewish Week.
Before last month, Israel said Tikvat Israel didn’t always have police presence if a festival or event fell on a weekday. But the community hired police for both days of Shavuot — June 1 to 3 — “based on the increased level of concern,” he said.
Many community members were similarly fearful for their safety at downtown D.C.’s Hill Havurah. Rabbi Hannah Spiro of Hill Havurah said the community has a “very devoted security committee” that is in constant communication with Hill Havurah’s board of directors and the church that houses Hill Havurah.
Like many American synagogues, Washington Hebrew Congregation enhanced its security measures in the immediate wake of Oct. 7, 2023, a time that Feldman said was the highest need for heightened security. Many have kept up that level of security 20 months later.
“As of a few weeks ago, we have and continue to review and analyze our security measures,” Feldman said of the WHC community.
D.C.-area police have increased their presence near synagogues and JCCs in light of the recent Boulder attack on a Jewish community event — WHC regularly has had police officers stationed onsite even before Oct. 7 — but Rosenthal said this solution isn’t sustainable for every Jewish institution in D.C. for the long run.
“Police departments are understaffed and they’re stressed for resources as well,” he said.
Rosenthal said in addition to overt security measures, such as security guards and law enforcement, many efforts are behind the scenes.
One of JShield’s responsibilities is to educate the public about what to do in the case of an active threat through trainings for synagogue communities, Jewish community centers and Jewish day schools.
Community trainings include simple measures people should incorporate into their everyday lives, according to Rosenthal, such as being aware of one’s surroundings, reporting suspicious behavior to the police and knowing how to deescalate a tense situation: “Security is a team sport.”
“If someone is walking by looking to do harm, but they see that this is a place that has a presence — it has an alert community that’s looking around, that’s noticing … people are approached and they’re welcome, but they’re asked, ‘How are you doing? What brings you here today?’ If they see that we have cameras in our parking lot, we have locked doors, all these things in the mind of a potential perpetrator let them know that this is not an easy target,” Rosenthal said. “The hope is that they’ll move on to somewhere else and hopefully be intercepted in the meantime.
“The community needs to understand that we all have to be a part of the solution, that security goes beyond just guards and gear.”
