Berkshire County — When Adam Solender entered Congregation Mickve Israel, a synagogue Savannah, Ga., on October 2—Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews, who undertake a 24-hour fast—he was handed a double-sided card detailing instructions as to actions he should take in the case of an active threat or shooting within the building. That information included a map of the structure and advised participants to run to safety or, if that is not possible, to get protection “between the pews or behind a pillar, keeping as low to the ground as possible,” making themselves ”a small target.”
As interim CEO of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts based in Springfield, Mass., the exchange was “a sober reminder of where we are in today’s world” for Solender. The Federation includes Hampden, Hampshire, and Franklin counties.
Last year, Solender’s organization banded together with the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and partnered with the Security Community Network (SCN) to address the specific needs of the Jewish community regarding antisemitic threats and attacks.
Identifying the need
For some time, the largest communities in the country, including Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City, already had security advisors, Solender said.
“People realized that this wasn’t a need only in large communities but in all communities,” Solender said. He confirmed that attacks on faith-based communities have increased over the last couple of years. “I would never say that this is a Jewish problem,” he said. “This is a security challenge faced by all faith communities, although the Jewish community certainly is confronting a unique and disproportionate level of threats. Whether it’s a church, a mosque, or a synagogue, they all have a fundamental tension between being opening and welcoming and the need to be secure and safe. And therein comes the challenge.”
Solender distinguished between physical threats and cyberthreats, noting the feeling of vulnerability from the number of incidents that have occurred against Jewish institutions.
For Solender, SCN empowers faith communities to address “what feels to be an all-new challenge to health and safety” and “has been an incredible partner with the Federation movement.”
“It doesn’t make a difference whether you’re in Chicago, you’re in Dalton, Mass., you’re in Austin, Texas, or Palo Alto, Calif., everyone is trained to do every act and respond the same way, and that in itself is very empowering,” he said of responses to possible mass casualty events. “This is a reality of what congregational life is about.”
Partnership
Coordinating SCN to partner with both the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires and the organization’s western Massachusetts group—two separate and individual entities—was no small feat.
Emergency protocols between the organizations were in place even before the pandemic, said Dara Kaufman, executive director of the Pittsfield-based Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, of training programs for situational awareness and the Stop the Bleed directive aimed at halting life-threatening bleeding that may stem from a mass casualty. About $45,000 in grants were distributed to its facilities to upgrade security measures at Federation-related sites.
However, after the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel, antisemitism attacks escalated, touching three Berkshire County synagogues in December—Temple Anshe Amunim in Pittsfield, Hevreh of Southern Berkshire in Great Barrington, and Congregation Beth Israel in North Adams—whose officials reported false bomb threats that coincided with other Jewish facilities within the state. In the month prior, the Berkshires Communists social media accounts posted threatening antisemitic language by its leader aimed at Great Barrington residents.
“We really began to realize we needed a more comprehensive approach, a more professional approach to security,” Kaufman said.
Enter the Secure Community Network.
Begun in 2004, SCN was founded as a nonprofit organization through a collaboration between the Jewish Federations of North America and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, groups that had steadily built a presence in larger municipalities to assess threats, provide training, implement security around events, and assist in writing grants to fund security measures, Kaufman said.
It started as a Jewish community response to the 9/11 attacks and to fill a need for threat monitoring and assistance, Deputy Regional Security Advisor Andrew Hoffman said. The program expanded in 2017 when on-the-ground security advisors were deployed around the country.
In 2021, LiveSecure, a three-year $130 million matching grant program was developed for communities to engage security services, Kaufman said. The action allowed the Federations to each raise $250,000 in matching funds to leverage that grant and pursue a six-year partnership with SCN, engaging one full-time security director to assist both communities. That came to fruition in October 2024 when SCN hired Hoffman.
A retired law enforcement officer, he performs threat vulnerability and risk assessments of the physical security of individual facilities, such as performing a comprehensive review of how to harden the structure or slow down the advancement of a perpetrator. These action items could be as simple as adding a lock to a doorknob or involve more intricate measures including replacing the structure’s windows with ballistic-grade glass.
The program is not “one size fits all”; rather, each protocol is tailored to the facility it seeks to secure. “When [Hoffman] is working with [Congregation] Knesset Israel, they have a religious school, that’s a different protocol,” Kaufman said. “I only have a little office. That’s a different protocol.”
Hoffman’s responsibilities extend to conducting multiple training events to safeguard summer camps or greeters and ushers at High Holy Day synagogue services, developing security emergency protocols and procedures for individual facilities, tracking regional incidents, securing event plans, and assisting in grant applications. His region runs from his Springfield, Mass., base to the New York and Vermont borders. As an organization, SCN covers the U.S. and Canada, employing about 60 security directors working with Jewish Federations as well as additional support staff.
In calendar year 2025, Hoffman has trained 921 community members in 30 sessions and conducted 15 security assessments.
“They only have to be right once, we have to be right all of the time,” Hoffman said of his clients’ adversaries. “That’s why we constantly practice and work with facilities to learn security. We work with facilities on training. We work with facilities on fast responses.”
Notification is a key component
The Jewish community in the Berkshires “has been dealing with security issues a long time,” Kaufman said.
A notification system regarding antisemitic threats was in place prior to the SCN partnership, but now that protocol involves an entire alert program driven by a software package that communicates with all the stakeholders within a community, at varying levels depending on what is happening, she said. “Should something happen at one of the congregations, we could immediately notify leadership,” Kaufman said. “The reality is, if you look at where I’m sitting, [the Federation office is] down the street from Chabad [of the Berkshires] that is across the street from [Congregation] Knesset Israel that is around the corner from Temple Anshe Amunim. So if something happens at one [site], we need to notify the others.”
That community alert system now includes summer camps and college religious centers.
As the recent Yom Kippur attacks unfolded at a synagogue in Manchester, U.K., Hoffman said that by 7 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, the SCN 24-hour Jewish Security Operations Center in Chicago had already publicized guidance for U.S. institutions regarding the incident that had occurred six hours ahead.
Although the LiveSecure grant does not fund safety renovations, it covers the cost of security professionals and adjoining services such as access to intelligence databases. SCN maintains an expansive intelligence-sharing system with national level agencies, including the FBI, and Hoffman has developed imperative liaisons with local and state police agencies, with an eye toward determining the best process to move forward with security threats and visibility at larger events. “It helps build those relationships between the community and law enforcement to help both the community understand the threats and for law enforcement to understand some of those threats that are out there to the community,” Hoffman said.
For instance, Kaufman recalled that during a recent collaboration with Shakespeare & Company, participants were restricted to only handbag-size accessories and required to show identification before being admitted to the program. “Things that will let anyone know who is coming to this facility that we’re checking, we’re paying attention,” she said.
Going beyond the Jewish community
According to the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires, last year, Jews were the target of 60 percent of all religion-based hate crimes and antisemitic attacks in Massachusetts saw an enormous uptick of 189 percent year over year.
But as with Solender, Kaufman understands that SCN’s benefits do not end at the exit door of Jewish institutions, and Hoffman agrees that those threats go beyond the Jewish community.
Following the recent shooting at the Annunciation Catholic Church school in Minnesota, Kaufman reached out to area Catholic schools whose parents were nervous about security, offering Hoffman’s training services at no cost in an effort to share solidarity.
Since the church shootings, Hoffman has been embroiled in interfaith work with other communities regarding security best practices “because it’s not just a Jewish issue, right now it’s a religious issue.”
Kaufman praised the “tremendous support” her organization has received from local law enforcement and the Berkshire District Attorney’s Office. “We’re part of a larger community that is incredibly supportive and recognizes this is a time where there’s threats not just in the Jewish community but in lots of other marginalized communities as well,” she said. “We don’t feel like we’re alone in this.”
Upshot
Hoffman said he unfortunately does not envision the need for security in the Jewish sector “going away” and his safety and security service is dedicated to “making sure Jewish life continues.”
For Kaufman, the SCN program helps community members feel “empowered in a time when it’s very difficult to feel empowered.” “This isn’t about being reactive or about fear,” she said. “This is about resilience. This community security initiative is about making sure that people feel comfortable about going to synagogue and worshipping, parents feel comfortable dropping their kids off for religious school, community members feel comfortable going to events and participating in all of the vibrant Jewish programming that we have. This is about ‘We’re going to prepare as best as we can and be as knowledgeable as we can for ourselves and for our children and for our faith.’ And should something happen, we have these things in place, and we will rely on these protocols, we will rely on the training, and we will do the best that we can to protect ourselves and each other in those circumstances.”
