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Worried by terrorist attacks, some L.A. shuls hike security

Shortly after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, the board of trustees at Sinai Temple held an emergency meeting during which the members voted to double the number of armed guards posted at the prominent Westside synagogue. Sinai’s extra guards were in place by the next morning.
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December 16, 2015

Shortly after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, the board of trustees at Sinai Temple held an emergency meeting during which the members voted to double the number of armed guards posted at the prominent Westside synagogue. Sinai’s extra guards were in place by the next morning. 

One day later, the perceived threat moved even closer to home when a heavily armed couple walked into a government building in San Bernardino and murdered 14 people. 

The high-profile nature of both the Paris and San Bernardino attacks — the latter striking on the outskirts of Los Angeles — have placed Jewish communities in the Southland on even higher alert, and, as a result, some Jewish organizations have chosen to ramp up security measures.

For Jews and Jewish institutions, when terrorists and extremists strike, the fear is deeply personal: Attackers in Toulouse, France, targeted a Jewish school in 2012, and a Paris kosher market came under assault this past January. A 1999 shooting at a Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills still acts as a grim reminder today.

In addition to increasing the number of its armed guards, Sinai Temple is installing a “custom-made safety-buffer zone” with bullet-proof glass to restrict access to the building in case of an active shooter situation, according to Howard Lesner, Sinai’s executive director. The temple is requiring each of its families to pay an extra $200 for the security upgrades, to which the response has been overwhelmingly supportive, Lesner said.

“We know we did the right thing,” he said. “We’re sad that we had to do it.”

He sees the increased need for security as an unfortunate “new normal.”

Indeed, Americans are more fearful of a terrorist strike now than at any time since the Sept. 11 attacks, a New York Times/CBS poll reported on Dec. 11. Lesner said the 9/11 attacks first prompted Sinai to implement existing security measures, including limiting pedestrian access to one entrance.

Sinai Temple’s senior rabbi, David Wolpe, said the congregation undertook the recent adjustments as a preventive measure and not in response to any specific threats to the synagogue.

“I feel fundamentally safe, and I think American Jews are fundamentally safe,” Wolpe told the Journal. “But there is no perfect safety.”

Wolpe said not much can be done to offset any disconcerting effect the visibly increased security might have on some people, but he believes it’s “going to reassure people more than its going to upset them.”

Many synagogue leaders at Los Angeles institutions contacted by the Journal were hesitant to share details of their security mechanisms, for fear those details could be exploited. But each described an increase in concern and attention to security in light of the terrorist acts so close to home. 

“In these days of heightened tension, we have stepped up our security personnel to some degree,” Bart Pachino, executive director of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, wrote in an email. “We have also intensified our procedures for checking identification and bags, but cannot be more specific about other measures for precautionary reasons,” he wrote.

“To date, the response of our members has been uniformly positive without a single complaint registered about the increased measures we have taken,” Pachino added.

The San Bernardino killings have dominated the news cycle since Dec. 3, with continual updates about the couple and their motives from the FBI. 

The San Bernardino shootings came just five days after a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“Local incidents notwithstanding, we’re constantly re-evaluating our security needs and concerns,” said Michael Cantor, executive director of Temple Isaiah, a Reform congregation on the Westside. “When things strike close to home, it brings an urgency to those considerations.”

Many people appear to be more frightened than ever now, because they’re aware of the seemingly random nature of these terrorist attacks.

“Nothing changed, it’s not like there was some major shift,” Jess Dolgin, president of the Modern Orthodox Beth Jacob Congregation in Beverly Hills, said, adding that the statistical likelihood of such an event in the Los Angeles area is no greater because of recent high-profile attacks. 

Instead, synagogue leaders feel a need for a new and more urgent tenor to a longstanding conversation about keeping members safe.

“We have a committee that is dedicated to constantly monitoring — literally on a daily basis — the security measures that the shul employs,” Dolgin said.

Today’s concerns were identified at the prominent Olympic Boulevard synagogue long ago, Dolgin said. In particular, two years ago, Beth Jacob identified “evident lapses, with the understanding that the danger is clear and present.”

“We started to make radical changes and beef up security, and educate and raise awareness in our congregants about the importance of security measures and alertness,” he said.

The conversation has also been ongoing just east of Beth Jacob, at the Conservative Temple Beth Am, which houses one of the area’s largest Jewish elementary schools.

“There have been near-constant and meaningful upgrades to how we process new faces, how we make the campus secure,” Rabbi Adam Kligfeld, Beth Am’s senior rabbi who took over nearly seven years ago, said.

Recent high-profile attacks have forced Beth Am leadership to weigh the benefits of upgrading security while also attempting to maintain a welcoming environment and growing the congregation. Having those two conversations at once, he said, is “mind-boggling.”

“Some people in the Jewish world will only feel safe if they walk into a building where there are not only armed guards, but visibly armed guards, Kligfeld said. “There are many people who would never feel comfortable walking into a synagogue on Shabbat past a gun. It’s anathema to them.”

Nonetheless, Kligfeld is realistic about Beth Am’s risk factors, including its location on La Cienega Boulevard, a busy commercial thoroughfare.

Sometimes the methods of keeping a synagogue safe can result in unexpected events.

In his first year at the synagogue, Kligfeld said, he was chatting with a friend in his office when the friend pointed out a nondescript white button under the rabbi’s desk.

“He said, ‘Push it, see what happens,’” Kligfeld said. 

And so, the rabbi pushed.

“Three minutes later, there were [Los Angeles Police Department] officers at my door,” he said. “They had not passed go or collected $200, they had come straight past security at the time. That’s the ‘something very, very, very bad is happening to the rabbi’ button.”

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