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Comment by Maas on June 29, 2012 at 8:12pm

The Akiba-Schechter Jewish Day School, in Chicago, put in new lights around its building and parking lot and now has a state-of-the-art video surveillance system with 12 cameras. Congregation Brith Shalom, in Bellaire, Texas, now has blast-proof doors and windows. In Baltimore, the Bais Hamedrash & Mesivta school installed a new gate to the parking lot and placed cameras throughout the building. Earlier this month, Congregation B’nai Israel of Staten Island put new shatterproof windows into its 40-year-old building.

All thanks to the United States taxpayer. The grants program is the pride of many Jewish communal leaders, proof of their commitment to improve security of vulnerable assets — houses of worship, schools and community centers. “The grants have been of tremendous value to this community. It is really unprecedented,” said Paul Goldenberg, national director of Secure Community Network, an organization established in 2005 to address potential communal security threats. Since 2005, the Nonprofit Security Grant Program administered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has provided $118 million to not-for-profit organizations to become better prepared for a terror attack. In the context of federal spending, it’s a modest effort and considered a successful one: An aide to Janet Napolitano, secretary of homeland security, recently said that he knows of very few government programs that show such “big results with small money.”

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