Amid recent headlines detailing attacks on synagogues, a group of Jewish men in greater Washington is taking matters into its own hands.

The Collective Threat Response Initiative is a Jewish nonprofit organization that aims to train and license community members — Guardians — as professional armed security officers to protect synagogues, schools and Jewish events in the Washington, D.C., region. CTRI is preparing to graduate its first cohort of Guardians in August.

“That will give them ample time to integrate back into the community, so that they are fully in place in their congregations in time for the High Holidays,” CTRI’s CEO and founder Steve Birnbaum told Washington Jewish Week.

Guardians receive 80 hours of initial training with the CTRI team, which includes advanced firearms and tactical skills, active threat response, tactical emergency casualty care, threat detection and situational awareness, and de-escalation and use of force doctrine, according to the website. Ongoing training continues to build on that foundation, Birnbaum said.

They’re trained by a former SWAT instructor and active sworn law enforcement officer serving with two departments in Virginia.

“We’re bringing one of the most highly capable and highly qualified instructors to supervise the training,” Birnbaum said.

In addition, CTRI Guardians must undergo all of the state-mandated training for armed security guards.

“Whereas a lot of the armed security guards have only the state-required training, for us, [that training is] something we take for granted,” Birnbaum said. “We are expanding an additional 80 hours beyond what the state requires for armed guards.”

The 10 members of this inaugural cohort meet on select Sundays to learn and practice tactical skills. They meet at a shooting range in Ashburn or one of CTRI’s many partner synagogues to model real-life scenarios, such as “room clearing.”

After applicants pass a thorough background screening and demonstrate mastery of CTRI’s “rigorous” training and qualification standards, they may become Guardians. But it’s a highly selective process through which not everyone advances, Birnbaum said.

CTRI is relatively new, joining more established Jewish security initiatives on the scene including the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington’s JShield and the nonprofit Community Security Service.

For the past two years, CTRI has run security efforts for high-profile Jewish communal events such as the annual National Menorah Lighting in D.C. alongside a “large team” of medical responders, private security and law enforcement. The group also supports individual congregations.

Birnbaum said the aftermath of Oct. 7, 2023, is what drove him to launch the initiative.

“Seeing the eruption of antisemitism and threats facing the community, we wanted to enable the community to protect itself,” Birnbaum said.

He brings military experience, having previously served in the Israel Defense Forces.

“I also saw a need for members of our own community — not contractors; not outsiders — to be able to protect our community here from what I saw as a dramatically growing threat to the community,” Birnbaum said.

“It’s one thing to have an outside entity come and offer some level of security or safety,” said Matt Watson, CTRI’s director of training. “It’s another to build from within. And having that kind of self-assurance and confidence is very important.”

Private security and off-duty police officers come with a price tag, and Birnbaum said he wants the Jewish community to be self-sufficient as much as they can in terms of protecting themselves.

“All of this becomes an asset of our own community,” he said. “We’re building a resiliency, not just for today, but for years to come.”

Igor, a northern Virginia resident and member of Chabad of Loudoun County is among the inaugural cohort of Guardians, cited the Anti-Defamation League’s report that listed more than 9,300 antisemitic incidents against Jewish Americans in 2024 alone.

“A lot of people have been waking up, especially [with] everything that’s been happening since Oct. 7,” said Igor, who declined to share his full name for privacy reasons. “People went, ‘OK, what do I do about it?’ You can’t pray it away, right? So that’s why CTRI was born, and that’s why I jumped in.”

Igor recalled being 14 years old in Moldova, anxiously awaiting the next pogrom. Many boys and young men, including himself, covertly studied martial arts with Betar, a youth Zionist movement, even though that wasn’t allowed at the time.

From there, Igor got his first taste of defending a Jewish community event at the age of 15.

“We were very proud of it,” he said. “I always had a service mentality.”

Igor has worked in cybersecurity and risk management for nearly three decades now and used to volunteer as a flight officer for a Virginia rescue agency. He spoke to CTRI’s community approach, countering the stereotypical militaristic, gun-toting “security guard.”

“People need to be taught what security actually means,” Igor said. “It’s not just security; it’s about awareness. If you don’t understand the crowd, how can you respond to the threat?”

Miguel, an Ashburn resident who belongs to Chabad of Loudoun County, was among the handful of Guardians-in-training practicing combatives at Kemp Mill Synagogue on May 31.

“Being Jewish, it’s good to be informed, trained in how to prevent [dangerous] situations,” said Miguel, who previously served in the military in El Salvador. “[The Guardian program] is something that I want to join to help the community to understand how to prevent situations before they happen [and] safety.”

Like many of the Guardians-in-training who spoke with Washington Jewish Week, Miguel said he looks forward to stepping in wherever he’s needed in the community once he completes the program in a few weeks.

zbell@midatlanticmedia.com