Jews prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah as the group unites to keep the community safe amid a huge rise in anti-Semitism

As the Jewish community approaches the High Holidays, many are concerned about rising anti-Semitism in the United States, stemming from the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, in which approximately 1,200 Israelis were murdered and hundreds of innocent people were taken hostage in the Gaza Strip .

This year’s celebrations of Rosh Hashanah (October 2-4) and Yom Kippur (October 11-12) fall on either side of the one-year anniversary of the attack, as Israel wages a multi-front war that continues to inflame tensions at home.

FBI hate crime statistics for 2023 released last week show a significant increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes since October 7th. The FBI Crime Data Explorer shows a total of 1,951 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2023, a 55% increase from 1,257 incidents reported in 2022. Of these, 980 incidents occurred between January and September. In the last three months of the year, 971 incidents were reported, an increase of more than 300% compared to the 318 incidents during the same period in 2022.

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Amid this frightening rise in hate, Richard Priem, CEO of the Community Security Service (CSS), told Fox News Digital that he wants Jewish Americans “to have the assurance that there are many competent organizations and individuals, both in government and within the community, working proactively to ensure that these High Holidays are safe and enjoyable.

The explosion of intolerance has led to growth within the CSS. It took Priem’s ​​nonprofit organization about a decade to train volunteers to support nearly 300 Jewish institutions. CSS now works with 470 institutions, an increase of “30% within 10 months,” Priem said.

Some of the CSS’s new growth is taking place on college campuses, where anti-Israel protests and encampments created hostile conditions for Jewish students last academic year and continue to cause chaos this year.

Priem said the CSS campus program, now present at a dozen locations, “provides self-defense, awareness and de-escalation training for Jewish students” as part of the larger CSS mission “to ensure that Jewish life can continue unhindered.” “.

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(Community Security Service)

The CSS model focuses on “empowering Jewish community members to become experts” in securing their institutions. There are now more than 5,000 volunteers available to protect their facilities, compared to fewer than 3,000 last year. With this effort to respond to community needs, “we are making the most of the resources available to us,” Priem said.

But the work was worth it. Priem noted that his team “reports hundreds of incidents each year, many of which are investigated by law enforcement and some of which actually result in arrests and federal charges.” While most of these incidents were uncovered by the media, ABC 7 reported Washington, DC on December 17 that CSS volunteers stopped an attack on Jewish worshipers outside the Kesher Israel Synagogue in Georgetown.

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Richard Priem, CEO of the Community Security Service, teaches a course on security at the CSS 2024 Annual Retreat. (Community Security Service)

CSS volunteers were outside the synagogue when a stranger got out of a U-Haul parked near the synagogue entrance, yelled “Guest the Jews” and sprayed worshipers with a substance that later turned out to be just fart spray. CSS volunteers documented the incident and contacted law enforcement, who arrested the perpetrator, Brent Wood. In August, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., secured an indictment against Wood, now a fugitive from the law, on “three counts of obstructing, by force or threat of force, a person from the free exercise of his or her religious beliefs while a…”dangerous weapon.”

The root cause of the escalating threat to the Jewish community since October 7 is the spillover of hatred due to the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.

“Because of what’s going on between Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, it could be that people are coming to target this synagogue because they disagree politically with something in a foreign country, but they feel entitled to target a Jewish institution to express their hatred,” Priem said.

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Rosh Hashanah, March 2-4 October, and Yom Kippur, 11-12. October, falling on either side of the one-year anniversary of the Hamas attack in Israel on October 7, 2023. (Gregory Rec/Portland Portland Press Herald via Getty Images)

Priem said CSS volunteers have not lost sight of other threats, such as the homegrown extremism of white supremacists like Robert Bowers, who carried out an attack in October 2018 that killed 11 congregants at Pittsburg’s Tree of Life synagogue. The radical Islamic threat from groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda also remains a major concern. On September 4, a Pakistani man who supported ISIS was arrested in Canada when he traveled to the United States to carry out planned attacks on a Jewish center in New York on October 7 or 11.

Although these threats are varied and serious, Priem said CSS volunteers are prepared to “work with law enforcement to ensure that (members of the Jewish community) can continue to enter and arrive at synagogue safely during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.” .