Volume XXV, Issue XX | www.jvhri.org Serving Rhode Island and Southeastern Massachusetts
HANUKKAH
15 Kislev 5779 | November 23, 2018
Here’s what it costs to put your synagogue under armed guard Manny’s iconic sign.
PHOTO | M. CHARLES BAKST
NEW YORK (JTA) – After a mass shooting in a heavily Jewish area shocked the nation, Rabbi Yakov Saacks felt like his Long Island congregation was at risk.
Dispatch from Chicago: The kishke chronicles
BY M. CHARLES BAKST
CHICAGO – We are in the celebrated, cavernous Manny’s Cafeteria & Delicatessen and I’ll give this to you straight: I am eating kishke, an Eastern European sausage-like creation of stuffed beef intestine casings, and it’s great. It may not be a pretty picture – and it certainly can’t be healthy – but it is evocative of a metaphorical expression familiar from my childhood. Surely you remember your mother saying, “They’re taking the kishkes out of me.” Or, worse, “YOU’RE
BY BEN SALES
taking the kishkes out of me.” Those kishkes weren’t from a cow, they were within the speaker, and these were expressions of exasperation, annoyance, agony. I often seize on the metaphor to describe the torture my sports teams put me through before eking out a close win. During the most recent baseball playoffs, after an excruciating Boston victory, I posted on Facebook, “I am functioning today without one of my body parts. The Red Sox removed my kishkes last night.”
So the rabbi had 17 cameras installed on the synagogue’s exterior that can zoom in to read numbers on license plates, as well as indoor cameras at each entrance. He began covering the windows with Kevlar, at
about $800 each, making them shatterproof in case vandals hit them with rocks. And he hired armed security guards to protect the Hebrew school and Shabbat services. SECURITY COSTS | 25
Local security on the increase BY WENDY JOERING In Rhode Island the Jewish Alliance is working with synagogues, day schools, agencies, Chabad Houses and university Hillels to make sure security is at the highest level. Since Oct. 27, you may have noticed increased police patrols around the Alliance, synagogues, police details at several synagogues for religious services and heard talk about more armed intruder training that will take place in
KISHKE | 6
Rehabilitation & Nursing Center
the next few months. There are many measures that have been put in place in the past few years by the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island as well as partner agencies. Many of these measures are not visible, but rest assured they are there. As security liaison, I work closely with local law enforcement agencies on a daily basis. The Providence Police Department’s Homeland Security Bureau and Special Response Unit have been
instrumental over the past two years in providing guidance and resources that enable me to be a resource not only for the Providence Jewish community but for the Greater Rhode Island Jewish community. I also rely on the expertise of SCN, Secure C om mu n it y Net work , t he national homeland security initiative of the Jewish Federations of North America. We have had relationships SECURITY | 23
Happy Hanukkah
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