Armed Guards Aren’t the Answer
Jews must stop being dependent on others for our safety
On a recent Sunday in New York City, my family and I went on a walk that turned from a nice neighborhood stroll into a survey of our current state of institutional security.
First, we passed a synagogue with three armed guards outside; they had earpieces firmly in place and looked furtively around. Another shul had two armed guards, a set of locked doors, and more security cameras than your average bank vault. The Jewish community center had concrete bollards on the sidewalk—the sort you’d find in front of the American embassy in a European country—and a metal detector greeting you as soon as you walked in the door. According to recently available data, a typical Jewish organization spends about 14% of its overall budget on security, with the total communal expenditure now reaching $765 million—every year.
It doesn’t take a brilliant strategist to understand why these measures are in place. We all know the statistics showing a sharp spike in antisemitism, and we can all speak intelligently about the most recent attempt—in Detroit, in Denver, you name it—to harm Jews wherever we congregate.
What I want to propose here, without everyone losing their minds, is that our approach to communal security is creating more vulnerability—of all kinds.
Spend some time in the real world, and you realize that communities tend to fall into one of two categories: Paris or Texas.
Step back for a moment and think about the meaning of a heavily fortified synagogue guarded by professional sentries. This image sends two clear messages. To our fellow citizens, it says that it is normal for Jews in the United States to require extensive security in order to safely practice their religion. This is a radical departure from this country’s self-conception; indeed, Jewish vulnerability is part of a wider collective of societal trends—district attorneys that don’t prosecute criminals, mayors doxing private citizens, etc.—all threatening America’s claim to be the freest nation in the world.
Perhaps even more toxically, though, is the message it drills into Jewish children. By turning our communal centers into well-fortified bunkers, we’re teaching our children that it is normal to associate Jewish life and identity with anxiety, with insecurity, with lack of confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors. Faced with such conditions, we should not be surprised when smart kids run as fast and as far away from our airless fortresses as they can, while others remain depressingly in place, too afraid to find any joy or meaning in their faith.
I can already hear you freaking out. But Liel, the threats are real, and getting realer every day. Are you suggesting we live in la-la land and pretend otherwise? What kind of parent would send their child to a shul, a school, or a center unguarded and exposed? And what kind of community would we be if we didn’t have a similar strategy?
I am not, of course, suggesting mindlessness or irresponsible bravado. What I am encouraging you to accept—because it is true—is that we American Jews have gotten ourselves into a moral, spiritual, and tactical arms race, one in which there can never be enough security because the vulnerability we are allowing is ever expanding. More money for more guards and bigger barricades isn’t the answer. There’s a better way, one that not only delivers comparable protection but also does so while instilling in ourselves and in our children a sense of agency, purpose, and pride, and in our neighbors a sense of respect, however begrudging.
Put simply: We Jews must get serious about protecting ourselves. This doesn’t mean firing every hired armed guard right away; it means meaningfully transitioning into accepting that you are personally responsible for protecting your institutions—a responsibility that includes overcoming the psychological crutch of being protected by others and then getting trained, armed, and involved.
Float this idea at your average Manhattan Shabbat table, and you’ll encounter a flurry of standard objections: You’re talking about guns, right? Guns are dangerous! And bad! And useless to boot: You expect the shul’s elderly gabbai to whip out his Glock and shoot a bunch of bad guys?
These objections are delivered almost as punch lines, as if the idea of an armed and competent Jew defending his or her domain is so outrageous as to be insane, even humorous.
The answer to these objections is simple. Spend some time in the real world—an undertaking that requires leaving New York City—and you realize that communities tend to fall into one of two categories: Paris or Texas.
In the former, la vie en rose means going to shul and being greeted by a security detail right out of a Jason Statham movie. Police cars, guards with Kevlar vests and helmets and powerful rifles, trained dogs: The experience feels like walking into a war zone, not a house of worship.
And then there’s Texas, where some synagogues have a guard posted somewhere on campus but don’t really need it because multiple gentlemen davening inside have sidepieces tucked neatly into their tallis bag. As a result, the entire experience feels more open, normal, and free.
To this general observation, allow me to add one more report from the field.
These past few months, I’ve been introducing my 12-year-old to firearms. Anytime we tell this to certain Upper West Side friends, they look at us as if we had confessed to child abuse. Instead, here’s what he’s experienced at the range: First came the requisite lessons about safety. Then the basics: grip, stance, aim, etc. Then familiarity with the terrifying yet exhilarating experience of a small explosion unfurling in his hands. And, finally, an emphasis on greater accuracy and competence.
The results are evident: The kid can shoot. Even more importantly, he doesn’t fetishize guns, as so many of his inexperienced peers do. He now understands them to be exactly what they are: incredible tools of self-protection, to be used responsibly and only as needed. Raise a kid that way, and chances are he or she will feel comfortable enough stepping in, stepping up, and partaking in communal protection that isn’t purchased, paranoid, and paralyzing, but integral and organic.
Here, then, is my crazy idea. Imagine if instead of another influencer campaign or conference about fighting anti-Zionism, we invested in sending our children—at seventh grade or eighth or ninth—to Texas for a week. Imagine that there, in some spacious ranch in Hill Country, these kids spent a week with IDF and U.S. Marine Corps veterans learning the foundations of self-defense. Imagine two or three days of intensive Krav Maga basics. Imagine a day or two of learning to shoot.
What would such an endeavor achieve?
First, it would show our children what we truly value. Just as so many of us spend so much on tutors and tuition to ensure that our sons and our daughters get into the best schools, so, too, we should now invest in something without which that fancy education is worth nothing: a sense of self-worth, mastery, and empowerment. I can’t think of anything better to give a young adult about to enter the moment of massive societal flux that our kids are currently facing.
Second, it would help transform the community from one reliant on bloated and comically inept organizations that fetishize victimhood to one invigorated both by the spirit of service at every level and by the understanding that the true promise of Zionism was never for Jews to be safe—it was for Jews to be free.
Finally, it would also very likely help deliver superior security solutions. Consider the attack, last Yom Kippur, on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England: The attacker, Jihad al-Shamie, began his rampage by ramming his vehicle into the security guard outside the shul at 9:30 a.m. It took the police eight precious minutes to arrive on the scene, open fire, and kill al-Shamie, eight minutes during which the best the congregants inside could do was hold the door tightly shut and hope that the demon on the other side did not possess a weapon strong enough to force his way in. What would have happened if he did? And what would have happened if the cops had taken even longer to arrive?
If it becomes widely understood and accepted that most synagogues are filled with frightened, unarmed Jews who outsource their security, the only barrier to a successful attack is getting through that one single—and nowhere near impregnable—layer. If the public perception is that most synagogues are stacked with well-regulated minyans of trained shooters inside, that’s a much less appealing target.
There’s little we can do to keep the barbarians from our gates. But we do have a choice: Retreat into ever more guarded bunkers, cowering behind taller walls and hiring the services of a growing phalanx of guards, or stand tall and alert, vigilant and independent and unsubdued. It’s not very hard to figure out which way lies true freedom.
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/armed-guards-jews-safety?