Jewish Americans take self-defense precautions before holidays amid rising antisemitism

Jewish Americans, bearing witness to soaring antisemitism across the country, are taking self-defense precautions during the back-to-school season with the high holidays approaching. 

Community Security Service (CSS) CEO Richard Priem tells Fox News Digital his organization has worked with approximately 500 synagogues and has trained an additional 15,000 community members around the country on how to keep their houses of worship safe amid a heightened threat environment. 

In the 11 months since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks, combined with rising levels of antisemitism at home, Priem said CSS has seen a "massive increase in demand" for its services, as the organization provides a sense of "empowerment" to Jewish Americans seeking the tools to "take ownership" of their own security. 

"When we talk about self-defense, you're not looking at it purely from, you know, can I physically defend myself? But it's also about the Jewish community taking some ownership over their own security, not to replace law enforcement, not to replace paid security, but to add an additional layer of community security that we own," Priem told Fox News Digital. "Our mission is to protect Jewish life and the Jewish way of life. On the one hand, we want to increase security around Jewish institutions and events so that we can protect the people inside. But we also want to maintain the Jewish way of life, meaning we want to be able to continue living as Jewish Americans who participate in all aspects of American life, but also Jewish life, free from fear." 

Priem said his organization provides "professional level security training" to Jewish community members and every day receives inquiries from "dozens of new volunteers stepping up."  

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Jewish Americans across the country, especially in jurisdictions with stricter gun control laws, are also looking to arm themselves with a non-lethal weapon called the Byrna launcher. 

Luan Pham, chief revenue and marketing officer at Byrna Technologies, tells Fox News Digital the Byrna launcher expels a kinetic round, made of a high-end polymer, capable of breaking side auto glass from 30 feet away. The nonlethal weapon, Pham said, delivers a painful, blunt impact capable of thwarting an attack or de-escalating an aggressor "without having to take a life." Upon impact, a Byrna round creates a six-foot dispersion cloud of chemical irritants that attacks an aggressor's central nervous system, making them feel like their skin is on fire for about 30 to 40 minutes without killing them.  

"That, you know, really changes the focus on the victim and back to the aggressor. And, where our product is extremely unique because it's very accessible," Pham said. "So the Byrna launcher does not require a background check. No permits are required to own it. We can ship straight to our customer's doors. It's very easy to use zero recoil, unlike that of a firearm where you have that, you know, very violent recoil. The Byrna does not shake in your hand upon fire. And there's no air protection needed because the registration blast is tolerable, you know, to the open air." 

In the last five years, Pham said the company has sold more than 500,000 units. After the Oct. 7 attack, he described a huge influx of purchases from members of the Jewish community around the country. He said that while at a Las Vegas event following the Black Saturday massacre, he met a Jewish leader who drove from Los Angeles wanting to purchase several Byrna launchers as soon as possible. The man relayed, according to Pham, that a rabbi, otherwise untrained in firearms, came to the temple with a bulletproof vest and carrying a .45, so he wanted a way to defend his house of worship without being reckless.

"What makes the product very unique is that you can train unskilled folks in the sanctity of your own property," Pham said, adding that people can train "inside church grounds, inside temple grounds or indoors." 

"Over the years, we have trained dozens and dozens of churches, on how to protect themselves, their congregation," he added. "And interestingly enough, after that first call, following Oct. 7, from a temple, the word got out, and then they all got together as a community and made a huge six-figure order so that, you know, they can defend themselves in the right way… while mitigating the risks."

"We believe in the Second Amendment, but we're gun owners with common sense," Pham said. "Our mission is to reduce deaths by firearm. And we believe that if we can get 100 million gun owners out there when confronted with a dangerous situation to reach for the Byrna first, imagine how many lives could be saved."

According to the New York City Police Department’s hate crimes dashboard, 200 out of the total 329 confirmed hate crimes recorded from the start of the year until June 25 have targeted Jewish victims. 

Between 2018 and 2023, hate crimes against Jewish New Yorkers rose 89% statewide, according to a report released by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli last week. 

"I'm not surprised by those numbers," Priem told Fox News Digital, reacting to the report. "Those correlate with the things that we're seeing on the ground every week." 

In 2023, a total of 1,089 hate crimes were reported across the Empire State, marking a 69% increase since 2019, DiNapoli wrote. 

U.S. antisemitism incidents spiked by roughly 400% in the weeks after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on southern Israel, according to the Anti-Defamation League. 

CSS, which has been around for more than 50 years, saw a 25% increase in the past 11 months in terms of institutions covered and the numbers of volunteers trained, Priem said. 

In 2020, the organization dealt with an average of 100 to 200 incidents on an annual basis. Now that number is close to 400, with the majority unfolding after Oct. 7. 

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Priem cited examples of anti-Israel agitators coming to a synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey, earlier this year and assaulting congregants, as well as other instances of anti-Israel car convoys blaring their horns through Jewish neighborhoods and insulting or harassing passersby "simply for the fact that they’re wearing a kippah," identifying themselves as Jewish. 

He made a distinction between anti-Israel agitators targeting an Israeli embassy and demonstrators targeting a Jewish institution or a synagogue. He said the latter, while antisemitic, is not always illegal, urging law enforcement to enforce existing laws on the books preventing masking in public or loud noises in residential areas to uphold a "more proactive, zero tolerance approach" to harassment targeting Jews. 

"They're holding Jews accountable for something that a foreign country is doing," Priem told Fox News Digital of anti-Israel agitators. "And sadly, we've now had to prepare our teams on how to deal with demonstrators, both demonstrators that are peaceful — and how do we de-escalate to make sure that none of the congregants or none of the Jewish participants of an event get drawn into a kind of confrontation — but also demonstrations that are directly harassing and intimidating, Jews and even demonstrations that result in assaults and violent attacks on Jewish community members." 

Before Oct. 7, certain security best practices CSS conveys to teams preparing for protests therefore weren’t as relevant as they are now, Priem argued. 

His organization also deploys additional volunteers to synagogues or other sites if they learn of planned anti-Israel demonstrations in advance. 

"In response to all this rising antisemitism in response to Oct. 7, we are seeing more Jewish people standing up for themselves, standing up for their institutions and saying, ‘I want to volunteer so that my kids could keep going to a Jewish summer camp or our kids can keep going to our services without being afraid, without having to keep them in our home, because we are worried about security,'" he said. "And luckily, whenever necessary, we've gotten a very constructive response from local law enforcement as well." 

Last semester, anti-Israel protests and encampments, some donned with Hamas flags and other terrorist propaganda, created standoffs on many U.S. campuses between students, administrators and police. 

As school starts up again and with high holidays approaching, Priem said CSS for the first time has launched a program to train Jewish students on situational awareness, self-defense and de-esclalation "with the purpose of giving them that confidence and resiliency to be able to hold their own and keep themselves safe in this campus environment."

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"Before high holidays, every year we take additional precautions, additional guidance, additional training. And this year, even more so given the environment that we're in," Priem said. "It's not to create some sort of posture of fighting back. That's not what we want to achieve. But we want to give those students some confidence, some resilience, that if they do want to speak out, if they do want to get involved with campus activism or anything that they want to do, that they… feel more confident and have more skills to handle this hostile environment that, sadly has been tolerated on our campuses for way too long."