When prayer needs protection, no faith is truly safe

Prayers turned into shouts as an assailant forced his way into New York City’s Central Synagogue during Friday-night Shabbat services on Aug. 14 and attacked a congregant and a guard. An hour earlier, worshippers walked past metal detectors, armed guards and a police sergeant just to enter the building.

The attacker, Larry Montes, burst in, calling the congregation “fake Jews,” striking a 63-year-old woman in the face and headbutting a security guard. He raised no alarms on his way in. Despite the frightening intrusion, prayer services continued as an act of defiance. Like an eerie foreshadowing, Rabbi Angela Buchdahl had warned weeks earlier that political rhetoric was creating “the climate in which threats and violence flourish.”

New York City Police Department Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who grew up in the congregation and was married there, stated that “a place of worship should never be a crime scene.”

Buchdahl’s warning had been directed at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, whose “rhetoric that demonizes Jews and the Jewish state” she condemned, while citing multiple prior threats against her congregation.

American synagogues maintain a level of security that places of worship for other faiths rarely need—and it was still not enough. Protection stops at the door, leaving Jews exposed the moment they step onto the sidewalk. Solutions that can restore a sense of safety require politicians, law enforcement and non-Jewish neighbors to treat an attack on Jews as an attack on America itself.

Deadly attacks increase security costs

Security preparations at synagogues, schools and other Jewish community centers are now standard, often carried out by people who never signed up for the job. Clergy rehearse active shooter scenarios, volunteers guard doors and preschoolers practice lockdown drills.

The deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history pushed communities to increase their security. The Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh had no armed guard at its doors when a white supremacist murdered 11 Jewish worshippers in October 2018. A year later, a gunman murdered Lori Gilbert-Kaye, 60, inside Chabad of Poway, Calif., before congregant Oscar Stewart charged him and he was apprehended by law enforcement.

The Hamas-led massacre of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 others in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, unleashed an unprecedented wave of antisemitic violence in the United States and around the world. This past March, an Islamist terrorist drove his pickup truck filled with explosives into Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., stopping only feet from the Early Childhood Center, where more than 100 young children were inside. The security director led an FBI active-shooter training for the synagogue’s staff months earlier, information that helped save lives that day.

The Jewish Federations of North America puts the cost of community security protection at $765 million a year, warning that it means “fewer resources for education, camps and essential programs.” A Teach Coalition report found that Jewish day schools are spending 84% more on security currently than before Oct. 7, akin to “an antisemitism tax.” Synagogues are preparing perimeter plans and hiring guards now for the High Holidays, which begin at sundown on Sep. 11, the 25th anniversary of the worst attack on U.S. soil, resulting in the collapse of the World Trade Center and deaths of nearly 3,000 people.

Attackers target Jews where they’re most vulnerable

FBI data shows that most anti-Jewish hate crimes are committed outside Jewish institutions—on city streets, at schools and in private homes. Nationally, Jews are targeted in 64% of religious-based hate crimes, despite only being about 2% of America’s population. Beyond the perimeter, what often marks a Jew as a target is visibility: a kippah, a Star of David or Hebrew being spoken.

Moshe Grunhaus had just finished afternoon prayers at the Jewish Center on Manhattan’s Upper West Side on July 23 when an assailant shouting Allahu Akbar (“God is great”) stabbed a screwdriver into his chest. Grunhaus, who was wearing a kippah, pulled it out himself. Four blocks away, the attacker stabbed a 57-year-old Asian man in the back.

A Hadassah survey of Jewish women found 52% had hidden their Jewish identity out of fear. “I am afraid to wear my Jewish Star necklace and chai ring out in public,” one respondent said. “I only wear it to the synagogue, Hadassah and other Jewish events.”

Faith groups are answering threats together

A response to the violence and intimidation is already underway in state legislatures, federal court and among neighbors; however, more is needed.

After tense protests outside Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue in May, Jewish New Yorkers didn’t wait for a second incident. Leaders pressed their legislature to enact a 50-foot buffer zone around houses of worship, community centers and religious schools of all faiths, making it a misdemeanor to intimidate individuals entering them.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul stated that these kinds of demonstrations are “harassment, not free expression.” Since Mamdani declined to sign a similar bill protecting houses of worship, the New York City Council overrode him with a veto-proof majority.

The California legislature is also pursuing safe worship zones and a measure expanding state security grants to cover events held away from a congregation’s building, written after anti-Israel protests at Wilshire Boulevard Temple and Adas Torah in Los Angeles.

The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act makes it a federal crime to obstruct religious worship, but for three decades, it was used almost exclusively in abortion clinic cases. That changed when the StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, sued the organizers of the mob that blocked Jews from entering Adas Torah. Assistant U.S. Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that the “pioneering application of the FACE Act to defend Jewish synagogues” is now the model for protecting churches.

Neighbors have stepped up their support as well. After the terror attack at Temple Israel in Michigan, the Shenandoah Country Club opened its doors. Temple Israel said the Catholic organization founded by the Chaldean Iraqi American Association of Michigan “welcomed us, fed us, and sheltered our staff, teachers, children and parents.”

On Capitol Hill, more than 100 Jewish organizations across the ideological spectrum are backing a six-point security policy plan asking national politicians to raise the Nonprofit Security Grant Program to $1 billion annually. Current funding falls far short of that and a bipartisan group of lawmakers recently raised concerns.

The day after her congregation was attacked, Buchdahl described the city she wants: “One in which people of all faiths, classes and colors feel belonging.” Religious freedom is one of the most cherished American values.

Points to consider:

1. Armed guards have become a prerequisite for Jews to worship safely.

Joined by other faith groups, a coalition of Jewish organizations is pressing Congress to pass the Pray Safe Act, which would create a centralized resource hub to provide security guidance for houses of worship. Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut told Congress that exercising the First Amendment right to worship now “depends on comprehensive, even extraordinary, security precautions.” That is not a description of a grant program; it is an admission that prayer itself now requires a security plan. In Europe, many synagogues require armed soldiers—a sight American Jews hope never becomes their reality.

2. Being visibly Jewish in public carries real risk.

A Star of David deserves to be worn as proudly as a cross or any other religious symbol, but for many Jews, the anxiety starts before leaving home. Jews also weigh whether to wear a kippah or cover it with a baseball cap or to speak Hebrew in public—considerations that would be unimaginable for most Americans walking out their door.

3. Violence aimed at Jews does not stop with Jews.

The man who stabbed Moshe Grunhaus outside his Upper West Side synagogue in July also stabbed an Asian man. Two teenage gunmen who murdered three men at a San Diego mosque earlier this year carried a racist manifesto that also targeted Jews. An attacker who hates Jews rarely stops at just them. Anyone who ignores an attack on Jews should not assume that they are safe from the next one.

4. Federal security funding for all religions falls far short of needs.

A coalition of faith groups wrote to congressional leaders warning of an “unprecedented and escalating threat environment facing religious communities” and requesting up to $1 billion annually for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program. Congress appropriated $300 million for 2026, and the House Appropriations Committee has proposed $315 million for 2027—a third of the request, two years running. A funding request that keeps getting shortchanged is not a budget dispute; it is an unheeded warning.

5. Jews respond to danger with defiance.

Central Synagogue’s Rabbi Buchdahl said her sanctuary has filled to the balconies every Friday night since Oct. 7. She is moved to tears by it “because I know it takes a lot of courage sometimes to do that, to just show up.” Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs answered the Central Synagogue attack the same way: “We will not answer fear by retreating behind locked doors.” Every filled sanctuary is not simply attendance; it is an answer of defiance in the face of continuing attacks.

Read more here