Chabad Receives $1 Million to Protect Against Terror

JTA

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president and founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews has given $1 million each to the Jewish Agency and Chabad to help them guard against anti-Semitic and terrorist attacks.

The money will go to fund infrastructure upgrades and security measures for Jewish communities around the world that are unable to fund security expenses on their own.

“There is no one group that has accepted responsibility for security of Jews around the world. The Jewish community is not stepping up to provide security,” Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, president and founder of IFCJ, told JTA. “This has become a major need to sustain Jewish life around the world and it is going to continue to grow.”

Chabad will use its $1 million to create a central security system to protect its emissaries and upgrade security in its facilities that are at the most risk, according to Eckstein. The Jewish Agency will distribute its money via grants using an application process, he said.

The announcement of the grants came a week after a suicide bomber attacked a bus full of Israeli tourists at an airport in Bulgaria. Eckstein said that in recent months his organization provided $100,000 to Bulgaria through the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee to provide for the poor in the community as well as to upgrade security.

The IFCJ says it has given approximately $45 million for security-related issues in Israel and elsewhere since 2003, the year that bombings carried out in Istanbul, including some targeting synagogues, killed 67 people and injured hundreds.

8 Comments

  • THANK YOU, DONORS!

    Use it to protect European Shluchim. I have children on Shlichus in different European countries and I’m so afraid for them. Some are near Bulgaria and I’m scared there will be a problem with them and all the Israelis who visit.

  • Milhouse

    Thank you Rabbi Eckstein. He gets a lot of flak from some sectors of the frum world for the work he does; it’s a very difficult shlichus which is not for everybody, but it’s a real mitzvah.

  • security in 770

    It might be about time to upgrade the security in 770 itself. People come into 770 and some people we have no idea who they are and where they come from.

    For a start. there should be an accepted mode of behavior and accepted as a rule that no one should come into 770 with a backpack on their backs. (just last Sunday I saw 2 people with backpacks who I never saw before). Other accepted rules can also be initiated and everyone will accept them if they are for security reasons.

  • 770

    I agree about 770. 100%, I hope we never have to say “I told you so” but please whomever has the authority to establish proper protection in and around 770 should do it already!

  • to #5

    you are right. anyone with “anything” can walk into 770. but as we both know, nothing will be done until………..
    and then all the Monday morning quarterbacks will out and about.