After massacre, Israelis grapple with shul safety

How does the attack in Kehilat Bnei Torah in Jerusalem’s Har Nof neighborhood affect the Jewish state’s roughly 11,000 other synagogues, which in many areas can be found on virtually every block?

“Of course, we are all reeling from this terror that has echoes of [the] Kishinev [pogrom] over 100 years ago and [the] Hevron [massacre] in 1929,” says Rabbi Daniel Beller of the Kehillat Shivtei Yisrael synagogue in Ra’anana.” He adds, “Yes, we do plan to be more vigilant at shul.”

That commitment to heightened security is a common theme in conversations with Israeli synagogue leaders, particularly concerning Shabbat services. At the Mizmor LeDavid synagogue in the trendy Jerusalem neighborhood of Baka, where more than 200 crowd into the building each Friday night for a rousing Kabbalat Shabbat service, there is talk of hiring a guard — someone who packs a gun and knows how to use it. 

“We know we need to do this. Though it’s certainly not anything we ever wanted to do,” says Naomi Goldberg, wife of Rabbi Mordechai Goldberg, the congregation’s leader. 

Over in Maale Adumim, Ze’ev Orenstein is president of the Nachalat Yehuda congregation. “I don’t think anyone is panicking or planning to stay home on Shabbos out of fear,” he says. “But, though on the one hand it’s important not to panic, on the other hand, we also need to be alert around our congregation’s safety.” At Nachalat Yehuda and many other shuls, that means having volunteer “shomrim” (guards) take shifts during services and get training from the city’s police force.

“It’s been a difficult week, but this is not the first time Jews worshipping have been targeted, and we have to learn how to deal with a minority who doesn’t want us here,” says Orenstein. “But one of the blessings of the sovereignty of having a Jewish state is that, thank G-d, after 2,000 years in exile, we have police and an army whose job it is to protect us. That’s something our grandparents and great-grandparents never had.”