In first, US Jewish security outfit opens boot camp for volunteer synagogue guards

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, New York — A woman in a black jacket, black pants and dark sunglasses emerged from a bank and stepped into the bright morning sunlight on the main street of a small town north of New York City. A passerby with a flannel shirt tied around her waist snapped a furtive photo of the woman, and a man began to tail her from the opposite side of the street, noting the precise time and location of her stops and movements.

An hour later, all three were debriefing in a nearby conference room. The woman in black was a trainer for the Community Security Service, a nonprofit that trains volunteer synagogue guards throughout the US, and the two surveilling her were participants in a training program. The exercise was part of a three-day course for 10 CSS volunteers at the organization’s new facility in Westchester County.

The facility, the first in the US dedicated to training synagogue guards, is part of the group’s expanding efforts to protect Jewish institutions, as American Jews build out an array of connected security measures amid a global surge in antisemitism.

CSS granted The Times of Israel exclusive access to the training facility on the condition that it not divulge the building’s location, volunteers’ identities, or certain details of the group’s protocols, due to security concerns.

CSS was established as a non-profit by several congregants at a New York City synagogue in 2007. The group is modeled on volunteer guard programs for Jewish communities in Europe, where security became a concern before it became one in the US.

Richard Priem, the group’s CEO, got his start as a volunteer guard when he was a teenager growing up in Amsterdam in the early 2000s. At the start of the training, the group watched a short documentary on a deadly shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France.

“We never thought that in the United States people would start feeling that way as well. We always thought that this is something that happens in Europe, in the Middle East, but there are two places where Jews are safe. One is Israel,” Priem told the guards at the start of the training. “The other was the United States, and we’ve seen now that’s no longer the case.”

Security efforts for US Jews gained steam after the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018. More deadly attacks on Jews followed, in Poway, California; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Monsey, New York. The October 2023 Hamas assault on Israel and ensuing wave of antisemitism was another shock to US Jews.

CSS expanded as those fears grew, and now counts around 5,000 active volunteers in 25 states. In the past five years, CSS’s staff has grown from two to 20.

One of the guards at the course, a woman in her 50s from New York, started with CSS eight years ago. She saw attitudes toward security start to change with the Tree of Life shooting.

“That really brought it home. It could happen to any synagogue, any school,” she said. “When I first started, people didn’t take it as seriously. ‘Why do we have to do this? Why do you have to check my bag?’ It was a pain. Over the years, people are used to it and they appreciate it.”

CSS trained local leaders on an ad hoc basis, using a one-on-one mentoring model in their communities. Those local leaders would then pass the training on to rank-and-file volunteers.

As the group grew, its leadership realized it needed a more formal training system, an established curriculum, and a central location to bring together volunteers from around the US for more advanced training. In 2022, CSS started hosting annual retreats. The first year, 50 volunteers showed up. Last year’s retreat in Pennsylvania brought in more than 200 applicants, but could only accommodate 75 trainees.

The training facility located in CSS’s headquarters, is the next step in building the group’s infrastructure. CSS opened the headquarters, housed in a nondescript office building, in December to streamline its operations and bring in groups of volunteers from around the US year-round to train as synagogue guards.

The participants are expected to bring those lessons back to their local communities, where a vast majority of the training still takes place. CSS held around 700 training sessions throughout the US last year, Priem said.

The synagogue guards, who work with local law enforcement and often volunteer alongside paid armed guards hired by individual synagogues or provided by local federations, are meant to be part of an interlocking system of Jewish security organizations that has developed over the years.

The array includes the Secure Community Network and the Community Security Initiative, which collect intelligence, with CSI focusing on the New York region.

The Anti-Defamation League does research and advocacy. Groups such as Guardian Self Defense teach Krav Maga. The organizations collaborate with each other and with law enforcement. CSS volunteers train in Krav Maga with Guardian Self Defense, and the group receives threat alerts from other partners, for example.

The cohort last week was the fourth group to train at the facility. Moving boxes still litter the office, and framed photos of two synagogue guards who were killed in attacks abroad — Dan Uzan and Yoel Kohen Ulcer — hang on a wall.

Local volunteer leaders identify rank-and-file members from their community with leadership potential and refer them for the advanced training. During the three-day course, the trainees learn security skills and how to lead security teams in their communities.

The guards train in surveillance, questioning, intelligence, decision-making, security planning, and Krav Maga, both at the office and at synagogues in the community that lend space to CSS.

Six men and four women attended the training session. The volunteers came from New York, Florida, California and Massachusetts. They included a college student, a retired lawyer, a Coast Guard veteran and an ex-fireman, ranging in age from their mid-20s into their 60s. Some were secular and others were Orthodox.

Most were there to learn how to guard their local synagogue, though a few of the younger volunteers were there as part of a separate CSS group, called ROAM, which dispatches young professionals to secure Jewish community events in the tri-state area.

The trainers included a veteran of an Israeli infantry unit with around 15 years of post-army experience securing Israeli diplomats and consulates, and Chuck Berkowitz, a former senior detective for the New York City Police Department.

One of the trainees, a woman in her 20s from New York, said she had joined ROAM after looking for community security programs following October 7.

“It feels like I’m making a tangible difference,” she said. “You can go to bed knowing that there was a Jewish event that did not get blown up, that was protected, was safe.”

“That’s felt more constructive for me than getting stuck in my head, thinking how much the world hates us. You can do something,” she added.

At the start, the group trained in “red teaming” — getting in the head of a bad actor to probe their own vulnerabilities.

“We’re going to think like an attacker. We’re going to try to put ourselves in their shoes, in terms of operational planning, so we can deter and detect and disrupt them,” one of the trainers said.

The street surveillance drill was not meant to train the guards in doing surveillance, but to teach them how it feels to do “hostile reconnaissance” in a live environment, the kind of surveillance a would-be attacker might perform while on a synagogue. The experience is meant to help the trainees identify bad actors carrying out surveillance, the instructors said.

Each group was assigned a target — one of the trainers — and instructed to observe them without being caught, take notes about their movements, and look for patterns. Berkowitz led the drill, which was coordinated with local law enforcement.

In the next exercise, a CSS intelligence staffer trained the group in open-source intelligence techniques. Trainees were made aware of their own online exposure and vulnerabilities.

The guards also practiced questioning, with some volunteers role-playing while others questioned them. The drill trained the guards to identify suspicious behaviors, to learn access control and effective screening.

The guards left the facility to train emergency responses at a local synagogue. The trainers separated them into two groups — one charged with protecting the synagogue, and the other role-playing as bystanders or attackers. The trainers laid out a scenario for that group to surprise the guards. The instructor repeatedly told the guards to act with urgency, to practice going “from zero to 100 in a split second.”

“I need you to take control of a situation,” he said. “It’s a mental change you need to work on.”

“Every time I go on shift, I’m thinking, ‘Today something is going to happen,’” Priem told the group.

In one scenario, the guards questioned the role-playing community members as they lined up at the synagogue door. One of the entrants told a guard, “I saw something weird by the bushes,” where the trainers had stashed a fake explosive wrapped in cloth. The guard told his associates via radio that he was going to check. After he left his post, a shooter with a fake gun emerged from behind a cherry blossom tree bursting with pink flowers, opened fire, then retreated. Two people dropped to the ground, wounded.

“Lockdown, lockdown. Active shooter,” the guard said into his radio. Another guard slammed the synagogue door shut.

After the exercise, the instructors debriefed the participants, giving them pointers on how they could have responded more effectively.

Antisemitism has spiked in the US and internationally in recent years, and in the US, authorities have foiled repeated attack attempts on Jewish communities.

In the past year, authorities arrested a suspect who threatened a New York synagogue, after receiving a tip from the Community Security Initiative; detained an armed man in Florida for planning an attack on the American Israel Public Affairs Committee; arrested a college student who planned a terror attack on the Israeli consulate in New York City; detained a suspect in Canada who was attempting to enter the US to attack a Jewish center in Brooklyn; and indicted a neo-Nazi for planning to distribute poisoned candy to children at Jewish schools in New York.

CSS and other security groups have proven their worth in recent years. In 2022, a CSS volunteer noticed a threat on social media and sent the information to CSI, which sent the threat to law enforcement. Police arrested a pair of suspects armed with a knife, a handgun and a Nazi armband.

A year earlier, volunteers in the Bronx pursued and snapped a photo of a suspect who had carried out a string of vandalism against Jewish institutions in the area, leading to his arrest. In 2023, in Washington, DC, volunteer guards blocked an assailant who attempted to attack congregants with a foul-smelling spray outside a synagogue while shouting “Gas the Jews.”

In other incidents, volunteers have screened out protesters from attending Jewish events, preventing disruptions and allowing the events to go forward.

Priem said volunteers have reported around 200-300 suspicious incidents a year in recent years. Around half of those incidents are referred to law enforcement for investigation.

Synagogues use volunteers because hiring security is expensive, and some government security grants that are already onerous to obtain offer only limited funding for guards. CSS also says that volunteers are familiar with their synagogue’s members and culture, so are better able to spot outsiders or suspicious behaviors. In some states, strict laws regulate police interactions with the public, such as prohibitions on any kind of profiling, rules that do not apply to volunteers.

According to Priem, another benefit to using volunteers is that they will be able to continue their work on their own should funding dry up altogether.

“My feeling, especially the time that we live right now, I feel that I am part of a big family and I’m protecting that family,” said a volunteer who does up to six shifts a week at his New York synagogue. “There is a feeling of belonging and giving back to the community.”