Jewish communities across the U.S. are ramping up their security measures and emergency preparation ahead of Rosh Hashanah and other High Holidays.
Israel’s emergency medical service, Magen David Adom, partnered with the U.S.-based Community Security Service to hold trainings for security volunteers at synagogues across the country. Senior paramedic Aryeh Myers told Fox News Digital that community members remain deeply concerned about a rise in antisemitism.
“There is this heightened sense of concern, of worry that these attacks are now a question of when rather than if,” Myers said in an interview.
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Myers has held First 7 Minutes trainings in the U.S. and elsewhere with Jewish, Christian and non-religious groups, teaching volunteers how to respond in the minutes after an attack has occurred and before first responders have arrived.
His trainings focus on first aid, how to communicate most effectively with first responders and how best to assist them once they do arrive.
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“Our expertise is in response to mass casualty events…. We respond on the national level to everything from delivering babies, to terror attacks to war situations,” Myers said.
“The advantage that Magen David Adom brings is unfortunately having that level of experience, that we have seen multiple mass casualty attacks and multi-casualty attacks and have learned from those,” he added.
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Jewish communities across the globe have faced increasing levels of antisemitism in the years since the October 7 terror attacks in Israel.
Many U.S. universities became hotbeds for anti-Israel and antisemitic attacks amid Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
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A new report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found that Jewish teachers have also faced rampant antisemitism from teachers unions.
The organization surveyed 307 Jewish members of teachers unions, many of whom admitted to censoring themselves and being disappointed with how unions handled concerns about antisemitism.
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“What we found is not the work of a few bad actors. It is a structural and cultural failure,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Jewish educators deserve to feel safe and protected in their union spaces. And instead of that, they are self-censoring and fearing backlash for raising concerns.”
Sydney Altfield, CEO of Teach Coalition, an organization that advocates for Jewish schools, said the report was particularly concerning because teachers unions were meant to represent and protect all educators.
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“What strikes me is that these unions are supposed to be homes for everyone, and [they’re] not being that,” Altfield told Fox News Digital.
One of the key findings of the report was the high rate at which Jewish educators were self-censoring out of fear of retaliation. According to the ADL, 70% of respondents “somewhat or strongly agreed” that bringing up concerns about how Jews were treated in union spaces “could lead to reputational or professional consequences.”
Fox News’ Rachel Wolf contributed to this report.
